We got a bus at around 12 from Florenc station Prague which offer numerous destination both in and out side of the Czech Republic, the bus was old but comfy and regardless of the no drinking and no eating signs we successfully stunk the place out with yet more sandwiches purchased from Subway, 2 hours later we arrived into Cesky Kromlov and it was freezing. Having learned from various hostel encounters on our way Nina had taken down all the directions to the hostel, however once again these were some what lacking in detail, they simply said we are 50 metres from the town square, given the size of Cesky Kromlov this meant the hostel could be pretty much anywhere, however we successfully found the hostel in record quick time and all seemed pretty nice, the Host was a little short (in manners not size) and there was a bit of a funky smell but the hostel over looked the river so this was to be expected.
We managed to check in, dump our bags, find somewhere to eat later in the evening and locate a pub playing the football all in time for the kick off off the England Russia European qualifier, two hours later we wished we hadn't off bothered, after going to the carefully chosen restaurant to grab a bite to eat our defeatist moods were not improved when we saw that it was now shut, however we quickly found some where else and had relatively decent bite to eat, that evening we some how manged to find another themed bar this time it was called the Horor (Horror)Bar. On the outside of the bar was one solitary red candle below a poster advertising the place, we then entered a nearby door and followed more red candles down a flights of cold concrete steps into what was either basement of a crypt (I'd bet on the latter) inside there were zombies. skeletons and other demonic images all over the place, the drinks were cheap and the atmosphere was great, we ended up continuing our back gammon games to corrected yet still not correct rules and I continued to win.
The following morning Nina woke up with a fair few bits, we were a bit miffed as we hadn't seem any mosquitoes for some time as the climate had severely dropped, we headed out to Cesky Kromlov's main highlight which is the magnificent fortress which over looks the whole of the town. We took the steps up the ornate clock tower which you can see from everywhere in Cesky Kromlov and saw some awesome views of the town and the surrounding area we then spent a good few hours just wondering around the fortresses gardens with Nina giving me a few more Italian phrases to learn, one of the most amusing sights we saw on our wanderings was a group of Japanese tourist that were stood completely in the way of a group of builders just taking loads and loads of photos, I know its a cliche but it was so funny. We later wandered round to where the builders were and could not find anything whatsoever worth photographing. The gardens looked simply gorgeous due to the onset of Autumn there was such a beautiful blend of colours all around. All in all we spent about 4 hous wondering around the fortress and its grounds so after grabbing a bite to eat we still had a lot of time left.
We found three museums of note in Cesky Kromlovs centre there were the Torture Museum (again, woo hoo) the wax works and the puppetry museum, having both admitted to a fear of dolls and puppets we bypassed that one and hit the torture museum and was museum instead for which you can get a multi access ticket which saves you a few crowns. The torture museum was a bit different to what we had seem before, it was more like a cross between the scary walk through ghost thing in Bran (Romania, with Mr Satan) and the torture museum in Prague (and English comparison would probably be London Dungeons), I would love to give a more detailed account of this but given that the whole thing was under ground in gloomy poorly lit cellars, was accompanied by groaning was figures and just random screams I was dragged through at quite a speed by Nina who just completely freaked out, I think we did the whole museum in maybe 10 minutes.
After absorbing the daylight for a little while we decided to use the second half of our ticket and head to the wax museum, sadly this was also underground and for Nina just as scary, by this time I have to admit she had also managed to freak me out a little and again we sped through the museum in record quick time and vowed that we were done as far as underground museums were going. That night we headed first to a random cocktail bar before going for a bite to eat. After asking for and getting Englidh menues the waitor still attempted to speak to us in "German", however eventually we over come this little set back and ordered our food, ten minutes later two plates were plonked in front of us, we both looked at them puzzled and this caught the attention of the restaraunt manager who came over to enquire if there was a problem. We advised him that this ws not what we had ordered, after a bit of conversation between him and the waiter he came back and said "Can't you just eat them" we said sadly not due to the fact Nina was vegetarian, slightly put out by this the manager then said "Well have you got time to wait for the correct meals" we cheerily advised him we had nothing else planned that evening, in the end we did get are correct food and it all turned out to be really delicious and cheap. After letting the food settle we headed back to our new favourite haunt (he he) the Horor bar and drank cocktails until late in the evening, as we left Nina was complaining about her bites and me in my usually sympathetic way told her to stop scratching and moaning all in one breath. When we got to the hostel I looked at her chin to see blisters appearing in front of my face, not nice and I did feel pretty guilty though of course I didn't let on. That night I received constant up dates as the blisters kept coming an popping.
The following morning we checked out of the hostel and hit the Internet cafe nearby for a good few hours just to kill time before we had to catch our bus back to Prague, Nina was not in a great way she had got more bites and her chin looked minging and painful. We put the bites down to bed bugs but it did seem strange that she had been covered where as I received non whatsoever, that along with the shirty attitude of the host meant that Hostel Merlin in Cesky Kromlov got a less than favourable review from us. the bus journey back to Prague was comfortable enough because we were lucky enough to get seats however we also found that coach drivers really don't understand when they are full and as more and more people crammed in we half expected a ladder to be pulled out so people could sit on the buses roof as well, unexpectedly the bus dropped us right on the outskirts of Prague how ever their rail network is so good that this was not a problem at all.
Cesky Kromlov turned out to be a really nice little town and we glad we had taken the time to go there and it had certain given the motivation to visit a few more towns in the Czech Republic over the next few days. A few days later I was reading through a travel magazine and found that Cesky Kromlov was used as the filming location for the movie Hostel. This I found amusing for a few reasons the first being that I though I recognised a few of the roads and the second being that shortly after deciding to go travelling me and Nina watched Hostel which was in fact based in Slovakia and Nina decided there and then that she would veto Slovakia as a place to visit, I had great delight in telling her this information and she vowed that had she have known we would never have spent 2 nights there.
TTFN
Daz
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The plan ... well really there is no plan, but there is a good reason ...
Watch out Europe here we come. After working in travel it's time to put in action what I've learnt!
I can't take you all with me but here's the next best thing - share our travel highlights and fun experiences as we check out as much of Europe as possible over the next 10 weeks.
