Prague – Frantiskovy Lazne

We were up and out by 11am and on our way to Pilzn – famous for Pilsner beer, apparently the best beer in the world! Quite a claim, and one we definitely had to check out.

First things first – we needed food and beer – so we did what any normal people do, we stopped at Tesco! OK, so the second time round wasn't quite as exciting (for us) as it was the other day – but it is still a bit of a novelty. Didn't notice the carp tank this time.

We stocked up on food and a crate of beers – 20 x 0.5l bottles of Staropramen, including the crate and bottle deposit came to around £4.50!! Bonza!

We ate our breakfast in the car park – sausage croissants (the food just gets more and more evil!) and off we went.

Plzen came just over an hour down the motorway – and we saw the brewery on our way into town. I volunteered to drive after lunch so that Jon could enjoy the local brew. It was alright (I had a little taste – zero alcohol allowed when driving in CZ though, so it was only a small taste) but to be honest, I preferred the Budvar in the last beer town we visited!

We were in the beer cellar at the brewery – a marvellous place that you can imagine rammed full of people on a Saturday night, all enjoy the local lager (~50p a pint still) and having a jolly time! We ate in there as well – a mixed bag of stuff including Tom having half a duck, and me with my goulash in a bread bowl thing. Mmmm. Fab.

After that we had a walk into the town, to see what was there. The old town centre is pretty much all that is left of the historic part of the town – mostly due to bombings during the war. It's nice though – and continues the trends that we have seen of big market squares, extravagant churches, fantastically painted buildings with slightly “Wild Western” style frontages. It was a little bit odd though in that there seemed to be a heavy rock band warming up on a stage in the market square, and a wedding going on in the church in the middle of the square – someone from the wedding party actually went and asked the band to turn it down a bit – so that they could hear themselves exchanging vows I suppose.

We did fork over 30 Kc each to go up the church tower – and, although it was a big climb up some really obnoxious steps – the view was worth it. Also they had some information on the church on the way up – all about how the tower had suffered many great fires, mostly due to being struck by lightening, with the worst being in the 1865 though , where the tower was struck by lightening twice in the same night and the bells ended up a melted mass on the ground floor! A sorry tale if ever you heard one.

After that it was back to the van and on our way. Originally we had thought we would stay the night in Plzen, but there really wasn't that much to see other than what we already had, so we decided to push on to somewhere a bit more lovely.

We ended up doing quite a hike – through the rain (the weather really hasn't improved, it's cold and wet mostly) ending up in a campsite near one of the spa towns - Frantiskovy Lazne. The site is quite interesting. It has it's own swimming lake and is really very attractive – set in the woods, there are fire pits available and wood around the outside of the site that you can help yourself to and (if you came prepared) chop to burn. The site was in the camping book – which claimed that it had 3 toilet blocks – 2 old and one refurbished. Well, we searched for the refurbished one but didn't find it – so had to manage with the old cabins, complete with spiders and unusual toilet doors – with windows in, like my Nan's old front room doors (although most of you won't have any idea what they were like of course!).

Anyway, it was mostly fine.

We had a bit of a fire – Tish bartered a bottle of beer for a lend of next door's axe, and Jon massacred a lump of wood so that he could get things going – which he did very successfully. The crate of beer we had bought earlier was going down pretty well, and we made dinner – rather than eating out.

We had just finished eating when it started to rain – we had done pretty well really – so we moved inside for some cards and more beer. First time we had had 4 people in the van and it was pretty entertaining. 3 isn't so bad – 2 on the bench seat and one on the captains chair – but to provide the additional seat we had to use a deck chair over the top of the potty!! Pretty cool that it fit so well over the potty, but not the greatest solution! Plus, with the table up and the four of us round it – it was pretty cosy!