The past few days have been spent doing a bit of sightseeing in Czech and just generally lazing, although the sightseeing has been a bit hit and miss.
First off we visited Hradec Kralove, which is about 100km NE of Prague. I wasn't expecting much to be honest, but I was pleasantly surpised. It used to be the dowry town of the Czech queens (That must have been some chat-up line: "hey gorgeous, if you go out with me I'll give you this town". And what did the queens do with the town? it's not like you can wear it, eat it or play with it.) so it has a charming old town, with plenty of renaissance and baroque buildings, and even the new(ish) part of town (from before WWII) is really pretty. And that's another thing that I really like: even though the buildings from the turn of the century are all built in the same style, they are all individual due to their facades which have little statuettes, reliefs and other forms of ornamentation that make them unique. You just don't get that these days. Definitely worth a day trip, although my day seemed to be punctuated by a catalogue of minor mishaps: walking into a bike rack (don't ask!), hitting my head against a low doorway (and I'm not that tall to begin with) and stepping in some dog crap being some of the more colourful.
The next day we decided to visit Telc, which is a beautifully preserved little town with an exquisite old town square (which is deservedly a UNESCO world heritage site). However we didn't manage to get there on our first attempt, as our bus broke down half way there. And since there wasn't any hope of a replacement bus the driver gave us back our money and advised us to try and hitch hike (even though some of the passengers were elderly or very young)! Needless to say the next day we went by car.
Yann left this morning and I've got another 4 days to catch up with some local friends and buy cheap booze before I head back to Brum and work.
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