Friday 8th – Melbourne to Nelson

It was a cool 9 degrees in Melbourne when we arrived for our 90 minute touchdown at Melbourne around 5am local time. Because of the hassle J had with his screen, he asked for new seats for this last leg and managed to secure 2 seats in a row of 4, with the other two seats being empty. After we had yet another breakfast on board (we have had 1 lunch and 3 breakfasts in the last 24hrs), I could curl up on 2 seats and had a bit of a snooze. Greeted by a stiff wind and showers when we arrived in Auckland and an even cooler 7 degrees. Checked our bags through to Nelson and scurried between the international and domestic terminals. Sat down in the café and had the best coffee I’ve had in 4 months. My first flat white and it was delicious.

We had told Scott we would have 5 hours to kill at the airport and he took time off work to come and see us, which was nice. By the time he’d left we were starting to suffer from the lack of sleep, and were nodding off for a few seconds every minute. Pretty weird. It was good getting on our plane to Nelson so we could nod off for the trip south. Sally was there to meet us, and so back to home!

Some of the shops of Céret

So, a very good trip. Lots of excellent memories, some 4000 photos, a bunch of fridge magnets, and precious little else. Oh yes, also an apartment in Céret which we thought we’d leave there rather than bring back. The book research had gone well, we’d stayed healthy (but not terribly fit), and had met many interesting and enjoyable people. Can’t wait until next year!!!

Thursday 7th – Dubai to Melbourne

We slept pretty well and down to breakfast at 7.30am. Soaked up the last hot weather we will have for a while when getting on and off  the shuttle bus that took us to our plane on the tarmac. It was 35 degrees and gorgeous. Our flight to Melbourne left on time and, despite its 12 ½ hours, seemed to go reasonably quickly. Occupied ourselves with movies again, and an hour or two’s sleeping. J had a bit of trouble with his movie screen, but thankfully it could be rebooted and more or less worked again after that. 

Wednesday 6th - Prague to Dubai

An interesting modern building

Woke to a gloriously summery day today. Had an earlyish breakfast and then out for a last wander around. We wanted to have another look at some of the antique shops, and came across a number of buildings we hadn’t already seen. We have really enjoyed Prague and are a little sad to leave. We could easily spend another 3-4 days here.

Marched back to the hotel to arrive at one minute to noon, with checkout due at noon, not that it really matters. We collected our bags and trundled off to the railway station. It was very straightforward to pay for the bus to take us to the airport, and only had to wait 20mins for it to arrive. It was amazing – a 30min trip out to the airport for only NZ$2 each. That’s the cheapest airport transport we have ever used. Compared to the cost of NZ$45 each for the 50min trip from Mulhouse airport back to Freiburg (after we had dropped off the Peugeot lease car), it was a very pleasant surprise.

Old Skodas used for tourism

To the airport in plenty of time and looking forward to just kicking back and watching a movie or two on the 6hr flight to Dubai. We are due to arrive there at midnight and leave for the onward leg to NZ at around 10am the next morning. We have always found overnighting in Dubai (courtesy of Emirates) works out pretty well.

The flight ended up leaving a little late so we arrived at Dubai about 12.20am, and then had to circle for another 20 minutes. It was a good flight and we caught up on a few movies, though the plane was ancient with an old-style watch-what-is-currently-playing system. relatively promptly onto the transfer bus to the Emirates hotel and finally into bed at 2am. As with previous times, the immigration queues were slow, the Arab staff arrogant and surly, while the hired-help Filipinos and Asians were cheerful and pleasant. The class structure riles me a lot.

Packing to go

Tuesday 5th – Prague Architecture

Art Nouveau

Our last proper day’s travel for this trip. It’s been a great trip, quite apart from the thrill of buying the Céret apartment. We’ve survived, in fact really enjoyed, each other’s company 24 hours a day for four months, we’ve seen all kinds of awesome things, avoided any accidents despite 5000km of driving, kept up with work, stayed healthy, enjoyed Alastair’s company and bought an apartment!

30cm and $6400 of art nouveau

Today was a fitting end to our travelling. After a dubious start, Prague finally turned on a bit of sun for us. We spent another eight hours walking the streets, mainly enjoying the wonderful architecture. We don’t think we’ve been anywhere else with anything like the variety and quality of buildings. Everywhere you turn there is something new to look at and enjoy. There’s even a style, Cubism, that doesn’t really exist anywhere else. The bulk is baroque with a good helping of rococo, but it's been the art nouveau, cubism and modernism that we’ve enjoyed the most.

We must have been in a dozen little antiquities shops looking to see if there is a nice piece of art nouveau we can afford, but it has become too sought after. The best piece we have ever seen was a cool 89,000CZK or NZ$6400. Mind you it was stunning. The glassware here is pretty special – from beautiful fine clear crystal, to blocky art deco in clear and black, to handblown more like Murano glass. There’s so much we like.

Cubism, Elisky Krasnohorske Apartments

Municipal Building

We didn’t actually go in any museums, just a zillion general shops, antiquities shops, and galleries. We probably should have gone to a concert or performance of some sort, we hadn’t realised until today that there must be a dozen on every night, but it’s just too late in the trip for organising something like that. Karen has failed to find a mother-of-the-bride dress again. As with everywhere else, the dresses are just too casual, or too short or whatever. Just not right.

Old Town Square

Mid-afternoon we sat for a well-deserved Pilsner Urquell in the main square for a break from walking and to just enjoy being there.

This evening, I’ve sorted the last of the photos (just 3,636 after a little pruning) and last of this blog, suspecting that if they are not done now they never will be, while Karen has been sorting our bags. 

Monday 4th – Prague Castle

The weather gods were kind today. Except for a little light rain around midday and cool temperatures, we managed virtually nine hours’ uninterrupted sight-seeing. We have just arrived home weary but happy after a very interesting day in and around Prague Castle.

Prague castle buildings from below

We headed off to the castle past a square where there had been jazz last night, then down to the river past the old and new theatres. The river offers superb views up and down, up to the Charles Bridge, and down to see rows of lovely buildings. The bridge was lovely – a long structure with excellent but very black sculptures punctuating the sides, and many sellers of arty objects such as earrings, pendants, paintings. The quality is a step up on the same thing anywhere else, indeed much of it is really good. I almost bought a lovely wooden chess set, but really don’t need it.

Replica mediaeval tavern in Golden Lane

St Vitus stained glass

We arrived at the castle not long before noon, to find crowds gathering to watch the changing of the guard. This duly took place, interesting but not such a spectacle as the Buckingham Palace equivalent. The Castle is a massive complex, full of many individual museums, but it wasn’t as “castley” as we expected because it had been heavily rebuilt in renaissance style, whereas we think of castles as gothic or mediaeval. The highlights for us were the mediaeval hall in the old palace, a room covered in painted shields in the same area, and the cathedral which was very airy. Unfortunately the main National gallery next door with its Breughel was closed, and the Lobkowicz Palace also with a Brueghel was quite pricey considering it was the only painting we particularly wanted to see (we have seen quite a few paintings this trip!). Maybe we will find time for the National Gallery tomorrow.

Land records from late 1600s

By 5pm we were on our way home, rather footsore and more than a little weary. However it had been an entertaining day. We do so enjoy the walking around these attractive cities, and Prague is one of the best. The lovely architecture always provides interest.

Sunday 3rd – Prague

It’s been an inside day today. J has worked hard the entire day and I’ve been learning French and doing crosswords/reading. It has been wet and cold (an unbelievable miserable 12 degrees) most of the day, so it wasn’t a great day to be out sight-seeing anyway. We popped out for a breath of fresh air to a local café for a coffee around midday. The skies cleared a little by evening, allowing us to go out for a Chinese meal and short wander around the neighbourhood.

We spent quite some time admiring the architecture here. It is unlike anything we have seen anywhere else on our travels. All the inner city buildings are 4-5 stories and, virtually without exception, care has been taken to design them and decorate them, with a keen eye for detail. There are a number of art nouveau and art deco buildings, some renaissance, mostly baroque, some odd triangulated ones known as cubist, and a few modernist. They are all extremely interesting and, with the very generous widths of both streets and footpaths, the streetscape is immensely attractive. In addition, there is a lot of public sculpture in evidence. The same went for Pilsen. Clearly the Czechs relish their art. They also take cafes and meeting seriously. There are dozens of little cafes, all full of people talking. It has a very intellectual feel.

Saturday 2nd – Mlada Boleslav

Neither of us slept well. Despite gorgeously light duvets and pillows made of down, the beds were unexpectedly soft, and a number of people came back late at night and very noisily managed to get into their rooms. This is the nicest place we have stayed in in the whole trip, though still a very reasonable price.

We were well awake before the alarm went at 7.15am so started to get up. Our plan for today was to visit the Skoda factory at Mlada Boleslav, about 1¼ hours out of Prague by train. We had checked all the relevant websites and knew we had to get the 9.25am express train.

A nice surprise when we revved up the laptop to find we had a written offer for the bach on the West Coast. It was a very cheeky offer, but we know the potential buyers are getting a formal valuation done on Monday so we hope a more realistic offer will come after that. They seem very keen anyway, which is great news. Skyped with Suzy and Tim to discuss the offer.

Mlada Boleslav, outside Skoda factory

Downstairs to a tasty breakfast and then hotfooted it to the train station. Caught our train with no problem and had a relaxing ride to Mlada Boleslav, where we immediately jumped on the next train which took us on a 10minute ride around the outskirts of the city to deposit us right outside the Skoda factory. All good so far, and the promised rain had held off.

Walked up to the ticket counter at the Skoda factory to get sorted for a factory tour, given the website says there are daily tours, and no word that this does not include Sat and Sun. Alas, we soon found out it tours don’t run on weekends. Ordinarily we would have taken the trip to Skoda next Mon or Tues, but the website said the factory was closed for a short period over Mon to Wed next week. What bad luck. It just wasn’t to be. We could still have a look around the Skoda museum, but John found this very disappointing and expected there to be at least double the number of cars on display. Thankfully our trip was redeemed somewhat by the concept cars for the Yeti and the Roomster being on display. We are pretty interested in getting a Skoda Yeti sometime in the future, if we go down to one car instead of two.

Skoda Yeti and Roomster concept cars

We were all done at the Skoda site by 12.30pm (after expecting to be there a good part of the day) so decided to catch the next train back, scheduled for 1.24pm. One of the websites said it was a pleasant 20min walk back through the centre of town to the station so we set off. We found the centre of town, with some lovely sculptures but ended up taking a very convoluted route back to the station, and after a very fast 40min walk arrived there with just a little time to spare. Back to Prague by 3pm, a quick shop for groceries for dinner and back for a quiet remainder of the afternoon and evening.

Main square, Mlada Boleslav

The forecast for the rest of the week is pretty cool temperatures and wet so our sightseeing around Prague might be a wet affair over the next few days. The summer weather has been pretty poor for us. We’ve only had a couple of really hot dry days, but a great number of cloudy and rain-threatening ones. Two years ago we had only a couple of damp days the entire 3 months. This time we’ve had entire weeks of them.

Friday 1st – To Prague

High fashion at Pilsen Station

The trains from Pilsen to Prague run frequently, so no rush to get to the station.Quite a way to trundle our bags, but pleasant enough. The fashions here are rather like Croatia. There’s a fair attempt to look good, but somehow it never seems to come off right. Camo gear is sort of in for men, but gets paired with checked shirts, or socks and sandals or some other dreadful combination. In the shops too, the clothes look OK, but the fabric quality is always less than it needs to be. We got our tickets easily (trains are very cheap here unlike Germany) and filled in a small wait with a coffee in a café with a view over the main station hall where we people-watched.

Forest

The trip to Prague was uneventful, and we read and listened to our MP3 players. The forests we passed were interesting. They have almost no undergrowth except at the edges and clearings, and there is quite a range of trees. Lots of cropping fields along the way.

Gorgeous Art Nouveau building

Afternoon tea

On arrival in Prague we found our way to our pre-booked apartment. A bit of a wait while it was made available so we looked up all the discount cards and attractions to see what we should do. The apartment is lovely and once settled in we went for an orientation tour of the town centre, did a little food shopping, found a place for Karen to get a haircut and struggled to find a bank to swap our spare ringgits, Swiss francs and Croatian kuna into local crowns. The banks close early on Fridays, so we eventually gave it away and got some crowns from an ATM, only to find one bank open shortly after.