The clock chiming outside our window woke me up this morning so I opened the blinds and had a peek outside – yet another dawn bridge (to be?) getting her photo taken in front of the clock. You really got to ask yourself – with the amount of post-processing that the Chinese apparently like in their photographs (people photoshopped out, rubbish, pigeons, and all sorts of things erased is okay) why don’t they just use huge backdrops and shoot them in China?
Breakfast from Mozart’s Cafe which is the Grand Hotel’s restaurant… of course with clock outside the breakfast room.
After breakfast, we had arranged a private transfer to the train station having discovered it was pretty much the same exorbitant rate that the rip off artist taxi drivers and Uber drivers were charging from the train station anyway… only this way we would have a fancy car and a nice man helping us with our luggage. Worked well and we got picked up right in the pedestrian square in front of the hotel.
We arrived at the train station around 0930 for a 1024 train. The train station is huge having been remodelled in the last decade or so and felt like a shopping mall that happened to have trains going from it – plenty of stores selling shoes, handbags, toys, books, as well as cafes etc.
Once we figured out the boards, we waited patiently for our platform to be announced. I was getting quite concerned – it was nearly our departure time and no platform had been announced, I wasn’t looking forward to having to run for the platform with my suitcase in tow after having been standing around waiting for 50 mins…
Time was moving slowly. We were really unsure what was going on. No one seemed to know what was going on. There were several delayed trains showing up on the board that were possibly holding up other services from arriving.
Eventually, our train showed a 20 minute delay and we all dutifully stood around waiting to see the board give us a platform as there might be plenty of shopping opportunities at this train station but there is very limited seating for people waiting for trains on the concourse.
When the 20 minute delay was announced, it was then that I felt we needed to find a seat. I can’t stand around indefinitely with my stupid back pain and I really can’t do it after all the standing around on street corners listening to Martin that we did yesterday.
I ended up having a chat with Mr K back home, that went like this:
Mr K: What train today?
RMB: None at this rate. Delayed. No platforms on the board and we are getting rather stressed. Krakow if it ever turns up.
Mr K: Bugger. I am sorry to hear that one. Hopefully, the train ride itself is enjoyable.
RMB: Just delayed another 20 mins. So our 10:24 train that we were here for at 09:30 is now allegedly going to leave at 11:05 and there are no seats in this entire fucking place.
Mr K: No seats? I don’t think people who design stations ever use them. That makes no sense. <3 Sending you love, that sounds awful.
RMB: There’s too many people to provide enough seating. James just hovered over some poor people until left, so I have a seat. For now. But it’s been panicky all morning as we have come close to and seen our departure times keep lapsing. They have no platform on the board. So it’ll be a mad dash once they tell us. Other trains are delayed 40, 70, 100 minutes. So fuck knows how long before our train comes. And that means a LATE arrival to Krakow. Seven-hour trip. So we won’t get there until well after dark now.
Mr K: Fuck. That sounds terrible for you guys. I can’t imagine how stressful that is. :'( Travel days! Did you at least get a decent nights sleep?
RMB: It’s fucking public transport is what it is. We’d be dealing with none of this shit if we had been able to keep a hire car to take into Eastern Europe. Yes and no on the sleep. Lots of yahooing in the square over football matches or some such shit.
MrK: Yes I am sure every delay has a little twinge of painful due to the car hire situation. Would annoy me.
RMB: So they only just made the announcement that our train is now 50mins late. But that 50 mins is up in 2 mins, so I guess it will then go in a queue for another late announcement after all the other late announcements.
RMB:
RMB: That column on the right shows how late the trains are. Photo was taken 20 minutes ago.
Mr K: That is a difficult board to read
RMB: The platforms are the second last column. So we’ve been standing around for about 45 minutes waiting for a platform only to start seeing the delays.
RMB: 90 minute delay now.
Mr K: Your story is not getting any better here :'(
RMB: I am aware. We could have had a midday check out from the fancy hotel. Instead, we rushed out by 9am. :/ This is a bit balls. We have just heard that one trains has been replaced with a bus service. Hopefully that was a domestic route. But we are looking at flight options in case our train is cancelled all togheter.
Mr K: <3
RMB: You want to know how stressful this is for everyone? Some guys is literally having an epileptic seizure right near us. He’s on the ground and people are tendering first aid and calling emergency services.
Mr K. No, I have a fair idea. but that is a bit full on.
And so on and so forth. There really was an unfortunate gentleman having a seizure right near us. He seemed well attended by family, and people were on the phones presumably for ambulance etc, but I did see someone who obviously worked for the train station walk right past the situation without doing anything or calling for assistance.
By the time we were done we had been waiting for nearly two hours. The poor man had his seizure only minutes before our gate was finally announced.
In the interim we had people of varying proficiency sititng down to play this nearby piano. It was in equal parts delightful and atrocious.
At one point a well dressed lady on her phone sat down on the piano stool with no intention to play the piano and was patently ignoring the dirty looks people were giving her for using the stool for a seat and not playing (station’s fault really for not providing enough seating and many were sitting on the floor), until some kids came along and started mashing the keys incoherently which eventually forced her to relinquish her position so she could stay on her call. Gotta love kids – they don’t care.
Then predictably our platform was posted without notice and it was a mad dash to make it to the platform. Given the delays we had no idea how long it was going to wait around to load passengers.
We get up to the platform and see the signage is telling us that yes, this is the train to Krakow. Our previously posted 90 minute delay was now showing a 110 minute delay, so we found ourselves standing around on the platform with a bunch of Czech people who looked confused. I spoke with them and they said they didn’t think this was actually the train to Krakow. FFS. They seemed to have a slightly better knowledge of what was happening than we did – so I thought we’d stick with them until we were sure this was our train… last thing we needed after over two hours of waiting was to get on a train going somewhere else!
They spoke with a lady who was cleaning the train who told them the train was not going to the town they wanted which was on the way to Krakow, so they thought it wasn’t the right train. Then another lady came along and said it was the train to Krakow but that the crew hadn’t arrived yet (How the fuck could the crew to drive/service the train not be there? We had been waiting for over two hours?!).
On the platforms, we could no longer hear the PA system’s recorded announcements telling us what was going on with the delays or final boarding calls anymore. So confusion reigned for everyone – tourists and locals alike. Eventually someone came along and said that this was definitely the right train and it was definitely going to Krakow and we sort of went… ‘Well, ok then’ and boarded the train, still somewhat unsure of what the hell is going on.
We settled into our compartment and were hoping for the best. Two people came along to talk to us, neither of whom spoke English so we were still a bit ‘Errr…?’ until about 20 mins into the journey a conductor came along asking for tickets. We handed over our ticket and she didn’t express any alarm about us being on the wrong train so we took that for a good sign. 
Finally felt like we could relax a bit and just let this damn train journey happen. yale went down to the dining car and found some Happy Hour ciders at just 55kr each (about $1.60) and I was starting to feel like maybe this won’t be so bad. We are at least on our way.
The next six hours passed in a blur of forrest and small towns with the occasional stop to not pick up anyone and seemingly not really to let anyone off. The train was more than half empty so I have no idea how this is at all profitable to run.
I spent most of the day catching up on my post about our stupidly ambitious Prague walking tour. That and drinking more cider.
Some late afternoon views as we were heading closer to Krakow.
So, we know we are going to arrive into Krakow station a full two hours late. Yay! Which means that we had been on the phone from the train trying to make sure that our hire car would still be able to be picked up. We were concerned that their office may have been closed. Turns out that was an impossibility, they don’t have an office, they have a guy who meets people at a pickup point in the main carpark to hand over keys and sign paperwork so we had the hire car main office people trying to track him down to make sure he could meet us in the carpark still.
We got off the station and discovered that there were signs leading to airports, connecting buses, taxis, a shopping centre, but do you think we could find our way out of there to a carpark? Any carpark? We were going up and down the levels of the terminal building looking for signs to a carpark when I nearly got cleaned up by a suitcase that someone had let go of, on an escalator. A young woman with a 60cm roller suitcase had stepped onto the escalator with her suitcase in front of her and must have either let go of it thinking it’d be fine or lost control of it, because yale grabbed my bag and hurried off the escalator backwards and yelled at me to get out of the way as this large suitcase was flipping down the stairs end over end heading right for us! FUN! A loudly spoken, cow/sheep wrangling American managed to stop the runaway bag from doing any damage, but the heart rate was up!
We did eventually manage to find a ‘P’ for parking sign that led us out to a rooftop car park hat extended in every direction for almost as far as you could se. Bugger. How are we going to find the meeting point here? Even Google maps didn’t help us – it was showing several rental car meeting points. yale left me with the bags and went to scout out the probable location, at which point I was like, is this wise? I’m here with two bags I can’t carry, and a few big boofy looking Polish dudes standing around shooting the breeze looking rather bored. Hmmm…
Anyway, he didn’t walk far and came back to get me. We went to the meeting point and ran into some hapless South Africans who had been waiting nearly an hour for their appointed meeting to actually occur and what little energy I had for dealing with transit crap just fled. They said our guy had been there earlier but had left. So we waited no t knowing how long the dude would be or if he would turn up at all… we were only able to contact the head office people?!
Eventually he turned up. Hoo-fucking-ray. And they did the paperwork in the half dark and we got our car. It was nearly 8pm now and we had expected to be doing al lthis around 5pm. So by the time we got our stuff loaded into the car and drove the 10 minutes to the hotel we were shattered. Dinner? Oh bother. Should have grabbed something on the way. We ended up doing something I find positively abhorrent and used Uber Eats to just ‘find food’. It was nigh on 10pm by the time we had something to eat.
Long stupid transit day, done. Urgh.
Down the road a little bit is a monument called ‘Prague Tower’, which is a monument to the Catholic Virgin Mary.
Schwarzenberg Palace is famous for its striking sgraffito decorations. Sgraffito is a decorative technique based which is created by the application of two layers of mortar. After the mortar layers are applied, skilled craftsmen scratch through the top layer until they reach the black bottom layer creating intricate designs and illusions, giving the walls unusual depth and dimension. The method reminds me of the black and coloured crayon artworks we used to create as kids – put a myriad of colours on the paper and then cover it with black crayon, then we would scratch the black off to reveal patterns and drawings. 
Originally the palace was built for Florian Griespek of Griesbach, who was secretary of the Czech Chamber and confidante of Emperor Ferdinand I in the first half of the 16th century. But then Ferdinand bought the palace in 1561 and gave it to the Prague Archbishop, Antonin Brousa of Mohelnice (as you do!), and it has been the official residence of the Prague archbishopric ever since.
Prague Castle is THE largest ancient castle in the world, occupying an area of almost 70,000 square metres, and is about half a kilometre long and about 130m wide. It is one of the most visited attractions in Prague, seeing nearly 1.8 million visitors per annum (which means sections of the Castle are frequently closed for renovations and restorations), and it takes a good three to four hours to go through properly. 
One very bored palace guard. At least he’s allowed to wear his Raybans so the tourist can’t see him rolling his eyes at them…
Usually the couple would get dressed up and go somewhere nice and have their pictures taken and then copies are printed out and given to guests, or images are printed and on display at the actual wedding or even used in videos etc,… but as the Chinese population are becoming more and more affluent, they are studying and travelling abroad and choosing to have their pre-wedding photographs done at famous locations. For some of the more wealthy Chinese families, this is turning into a grand European tour with stops at many famous locations for a staged and posed series of photographs that could take several weeks to complete – which certainly explains why so many of the grooms look thoroughly over it. There are many Chinese photographers (the Chinese prefer very staged and posed photographs, and won’t use local photographers who aim for more candid and natural poses) basing themselves in desireable locations to capitalise on this market, and they sell packages which include photographer, makeup artists, gown rental and even permits to shoot in public places, in London and Paris. So that explains that.
Originally the courtyard was 4-6m lower than it is currently, but has been built up over the centuries. I imagine that it is a rather interesting and impressive archaeological dig that we are walking over. 
Construction of the present-day full-on Gothic cathedral began on 21 November 1344, when the See of Prague was elevated to an archbishopric. At that time, King John of Bohemia starting the building of the current impressive edifice. Apparently Charles IV, King of Bohemia and a soon-to-be self proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor, was heavily involved in the construction (read: patron/donor) and he planned for the new cathedral to be a coronation church, family crypt, treasury for the precious relics, and the final resting place of Saint Wenceslaus with a view to it also becoming a pilgrimage site. Charles IV, however, didn’t live to see much of the cathedral built. 
The cathedral has a long and illustrious history of various architects and patrons that goes on and on and which I won’t recount here – the long and the short of it is that the Cathedral remaind half completed for several hundred years, but by the time of St. Wenceslas jubilee in 1929 (yes, you read that right!), the St. Vitus cathedral was finally finished, nearly 600 years after it was started.
n 1997, on the 1000th anniversary of the death of Saint Voitechus, there was a dedication ceremony where the church was re-dedicated to include Saint Wenceslaus and Saint Adalbert, as the remains/relics of Saint Adalbert have been interred here since 1038.
If you are looking at the stained glass and thinking the designs seem particularly modern – you are quite correct. Most of the glasswork was completed in 1929… and are somewhat incongruous with the high gothic style.
My faith in Martin is thoroughly shattered – I have just remembered that the famous Strahov library is there! Nothing there indeed. 
Next, it was the long march/trudge down the stairs to the Mala Strana, or Lesser Town area. The Lesser Town is a hillside area with views across the Vitava River towards the Old Town. Traditionally its streets have been lined with hotels, bars, pubs and casual eateries. 
The Lesser Town was once a cluster of noble houses and small palaces that eventually formed into the city’s administrative and mercantile centre. Some of the famous landmarks here are the picturesque burger buildings of Nerudova Street and St Nicholas’ Church.
St. Nicholas Church (Kostel svateho Mikulase) was built in 1703-1755, on the site of an earlier Gothic church dating back to 1283. It is at the centre of the Lesser Town and is the largest Jesuit church founded in Prague.
Not far down the road, you can find what our guide told us was the ‘Church of the Infant Jesus of Prague, but what is actually the Discalced Carmelite Church of Our Lady Victorious… *inside* is a statue of the Baby Jesus of Prague which legend claims once belonged to Saint Teresa of Avila.
Next we scurried past the Knights of Malta
The John Lennon Wall is just a normal wall in a small square across from the French Embassy, however, since the 1980s it has been covered with John Lennon inspired graffiti and pieces of lyrics from Beatles’ songs. People started decorating the wall just after the 1980 assassination of the famous Beatle when an unknown artist painted a single portrait of John Lennon. Since then many people have contributed Lennon-esque images and texts to the wall. The original portrait is long gone under layers and layers of paint now, and once the authorities tried to clean up the wall, but within days the Lennon tributes were all back – so now it is tacitly condoned by the city.
The image above shows some flood markers from the 2002 floods (black mark just under the red street sign) and the earlier floods of 1890. It isn’t really apparent from this photograph, but that top marker is a full 7.0m above the level of the bank of the river. The floods were devastating to the old buildings in the area. Many of the cheaper properties were never restored as Kampa was once some of the poorer real estate available on this side of the city, but now of course with all the heritage buildings retained and the undesirable dwellings replaced, it has become quite an expensive location – about 5,000 per square metre (though compared to say, Tokyo, that is still cheap as chips!). Apparently, AirBnB is also contributing to the rapidly rising housing prices in Prague, which is lament heard nearly everywhere these days. 
This building would once have been known as the Blue Fox, and in this part of town, there would only have one blue fox building, one red fox building, one green fox building etc. Prior to universal education being introduced in the 20th century, much of Prague was illiterate and so no formal system of numbers and names existed for street addresses. To send something to this house you would have addressed it merely to Blue Fox House, Kampa Island. 
As a result of the devastating floods, a system of flood protection has been implemented on the river banks of the Vitava. These steel tracks allow for a 7-metre high fence to be erected to protect the city against future catastrophic flooding incidents. Every three years, the barriers are tested and constructed. It takes only 3 hours from alarms being sounded to the flood barriers being in place. This is the second line of defence flood barriers as there is another row like this directly beside the river bank.
By now we had been walking on the harsh cobblestones for about three hours, and even though yale and I were the youngest in our small group tour of fourteen, we were feeling really weary from navigating the uneven surfaces. Our guide was wearing sturdy boots and trudged on relentlessly, but some of our fellow tourists were wearing seemingly sensible walking shoes, but not really cut out for this sort of thing. Thankfully, the program had a cruise on the Vitava planned for us next, and we were all shepherded onto a long low riverboat for a 45 minute rest break and some views of the city from the river.
The Charles Bridge is probably the most famous bridge over the Vitava River. It is also the only pedestrian-only bridge crossing between the Prague Castle Complex to the Prague Old Town. Construction on the Charles Bridge began in 1357 under the direction of King Charles IV and was not finished until the beginning of the 15th century. At that time it was the only means of crossing the river and so it became an important trading connection not only between the Prague Old Town and the Caste Complex but it benefited the trade routes between Eastern and Western Europe in the middle ages.
The long-bow style bridge has 16 archways and is 621m long and roughly 10m wide. Each of the pylons of the arches is protected by timber ice guards to protect the pylons from ice in the winter time. However, these are largely decorative now. Since a hydroelectric plant was built upriver in the 1950s, the water temperature never gets cold enough to actually freeze anymore, which means no more large chunks of ice crashing into the bridge pylons. Apparently in winter when the ambient temperature can reach as low as -15C, the river at its coldest will only see a low of about 3C meaning the water keeps flowing and never freezes over – you can apparently see steam rising from the 3C water as it is such a contrast with the air temperature it appears ‘warm’.
The bridge is decorated on both sides by the ‘largest outdoor sculpture gallery in Europe’, with a continuous alley of 30 baroque statues, (I tend to disagree with Martin here – I have been to Vigeland Park in Oslo, and it blows this away for sheer size and on number of exhibits). Most of the statues were erected in 1700 but have nearly all been replaced by modern replicas now as the sandstone oxidises over time and wears away. Statue of St. John of Nepomuk…
John of Nepomuk was a priest in Prague around the time of King Wenceslas IV (son of the aforementioned, Charles IV). He was also the Queen’s personal confessor. Unfortunately for Father John, the King was a rather suspicious man and he demanded of John of Nepomuk to know all the Queen’s secrets. True to the sanctity of the confessional, the priest would now reveal the Queen’s confessions, so Wenceslas had Nepomuk executed by being thrown into the Vltava River from the bridge, whereupon he drowned.
Today visitors come to touch the image of the falling priest on the plaque, which is supposed to bring good luck and ensure that you will return to Prague one day. Others have taken to touching the puppy in the adjoining plaque which is supposed to bring good luck with the ladies.
Further down the bridge is a ‘Touch The Cross And Make A Wish point! All it is missing is a coin slot. It is said that your wish will come true within a year and one day if you touch this almost rubbed smooth wishing spot.
Old Town Bridge Tower It was built in the late 14th century, also during the rule of the Emperor Charles IV. 
Directly ahead of us as we exited under the Old Town Bridge Tower is a chapel that was dedicated to Saint Clement in the 11th century. A Dominican monastery was founded here in the medieval period, which was transformed in 1556 to a Jesuit college. In 1622, the Jesuits transferred the library of Charles University to the Klementinum, and the college was merged with the University in 1654. The Jesuits remained here until 1773, when the Klementinum was established primarily as an observatory, library, and university by the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (Ah, I remember her well – the Empress Maria Theresia and the Emperor Franz Josef from whom nearly all Europe’s royalty descended).
So finally, we reach the Old Town area which has the real jewel of Prague in it – the famous Pražský Orloj, or Prague Astronomical Clock. I am so taken with this incredible artwork and it’s long historythat I chose our hotel directly across the Old Town Square so we could see it from our windows. Having stayed in Rome with a view of the Trevi Fountain, I have come to the realisation that paying a little extra for a couple of nights accommodation in that one special place can leave a lasting impression. On this trip, it was here – at the clock so we could enjoy it at various times of the day and from above the melee of the tourists that mill about from 8am to past midnight.
The Prague astronomical clock has literally only just come back on display after being under scaffold from for most of the year. It resumed operations barely two weeks ago at 6pm local time on 28 September 2018.
In 1629 to 1659 there were wooden statues added to the clock and some figures of the Apostles were later additions after yet another major repair in 1787–1791. The next major repair occurred in 1865–1866 and the craftsmen at that time added a golden crowing rooster to the decorations.
The Orloj was renovated in autumn 2005, when the statues and the lower calendar ring were restored. The wooden statues were covered with a net to keep pigeons away… nowadays I think they need to invest in a net to keep the crazies away. Like a cell phone jammer ought to do it.
Still… so many gorgeous Renaissance buildings. Love it! <3 
I got a better photograph of it as we were heading towards the Jewish Quarters a bit later…
Across the corner from the Old New Synagogue is the Jewish Town Hall or Židovská Radnice which was constructed on the corner of Maiselova and Červená Ulice in 1586 in Renaissance style but in the 18th century, it acquired a Rococo facade.
The Jewish Town Hall also contains a most famous Hebrew clock… which has the numbers running anti-clockwise around the clock face and it runs backwards. The concept behind the clock is to encourage the Jewish community to never forget and to think back on their past… apparently – I can’t back that up anywhere. I think it maybe just that all Hebrew is ‘backwards’.
Maisel Synagogue is one of the historical monuments of the former Prague Jewish quarter. It was built at the end of the 16th century which is considered to be the golden age of the ghetto. Since then its appearance has changed several times, its actual style is neo-gothic.
And our last stop – the Franz Kafka Museum, where we had a five minute Jeopardy style, ‘Who is Franz Kafka?’ speech for the Americans on our small tour. 
Woo! What a huge day. And it was not yet 5pm. So yale and I went a wandering back over some of the winding little streets we had passed hoping to get a better look at a few places in the Old Town.
After watching yale not quite making it through an entire Trdelník, I did a bit of shopping before going back to the hotel for a well-earned soak in the tub. My poor little feets! I have totally forgotten how hard it is walking all day on the cobblestones is – 10.38kms of it.
As we were wandering around looking for somewhere to have dinner – we spied a ‘Captain Candy’, I had to go in and photograph all the pretty coloured sugar.
Dinner was a U Dvov Sester – a lovely little local Czech restauarnt with live music and a really nice atmosphere.
Marinated bried with onions and spices.
Roasted homemade sausage with moutarde and horseradish.
Pork knuckle of enormousness (650gms!)
And goulash with doughboy dumplings, just like Mum used to make.
A little further down the street, I found a famous bakery called Bäckerei Möbius that has been here since 1908, so we stopped for aSchwarzer Tee and some schnecken before doing another quick turn around the city.
Memorial marker for a place where a medieval church had been but had been destroyed by bombing in WWII.
Der Cholerabrunnen – the Dresden Cholera Fountain – was constructed in the mid-1840s for Baron Eugen von Gutschmid as a celebration of the sparing of the city from a Cholera epidemic that ravaged the region in 1841/2.
No idea why, but it is covered in lizards…
A nearby restaurant shows its ingenuity in getting around language barriers on menus.
Advertising for a high-end jeweller – let’s not muck around, let’s show them we can make elaborate Rennaisance/Baroque masterpieces! Bit much for everyday wear, I think.
The Semperoper Dresden looking much more impressive in the morning light.
The back of the Katholische Hofkirche… needs some serious restoration work done. I think many of Dresden’s buildings could do with a bit of time under scaffold being cleaned – they appear to be wearing most of the 19th/20thC grime that most other European countries have long since cleaned up.
We also stumbled into some open stores – at least two of which were perennial Christmas stores! Exactly like the one we saw in Quebec in July – only with a clean, crisp, minimalist Nordic / Ikea feel to it.
Also doubled back around on the Frauenkirche, and it was open this morning so we were able to go in and enjoy the interiors.
Saw the strangest ‘weird tourist’ moment in the church this morning when a woman put her €1 in the collection box to pay for a votive candle, and instead of lighting it and saying a prayer – she gave it to her kid who pocketed it. No idea where they were from, but I’m never seen someone ‘buy’ a votive candle to take home before.
Neumarkt:
Our hotel. Lovely place, highly recommend it… and so cheap compared to Iceland! 
On the way through – I saw this awesome luggage conveyor belt to help you get your luggage up long flights of stairs when there are limited or no lift facilities. Never seen anything so brilliant before in my life – Japan, New York, take notes: You need these!
The train was clean and comfortable though, but unfortunately, the onboard wifi didn’t appear to be working – that or my enquiring of the (possibily Czech) train conduction ‘Sprechen zie English?’ was off-putting and she decided not to tell us how to hook onto it. 
We arrived in Prague around 3:30pm, and then went searching for taxis. On our way, we ran into another Aussie couple (the Crumpler bags and the 4163 postcode on their luggage tag told us they were from Victoria Point – about 20 mins from where I live!), they too were looking for cabs. Directly exiting the station we found the cab rank – we needed to go all of 1.5km and they were going approximately 1.6km. Walkable – but not really when you are dragging suitcases over cobblestones. The cabbies were all charging flat rate of €15.00 or Kč500.00 to take you the 1.5kms to the city centre… which according to the online fare calculators, it should be somewhere around the Kč215.00 mark to do the trip. Fuck the taxi industry – no wonder they have such shit reputations. When I started working down the line looking for a cabbie who would agree to take us on the meter, they all refused and told me that there were taxis upstairs outside the bus station that do metered trips. Get up to that rank and find the same bullshit ‘private car/flat rate’, Kč400.00 to get to the city. Urgh. It’s been a long day so once I managed two vehicles for our newly met neighbours from home, we capitulated and overpaid to get to our hotel.
And just like Fontana Trevi – the place was overrun with people waiting for the clock to chime the hour. The town square is packed, but I know it will be empty tomorrow morning and I will be able to get some quiet photos of the clock like it may have been hundreds of years ago.
As it turns out the 
The menu was quite extensive, it was hard to choose what to have – it’s so nice to be back in the world of affordable food again!
Baked brie with cranberry sauce served with toast:
And we totally over orded for our mains (after Icelandic food being rather fancy and small plated): 
Roast duck in Blueberry Sauce:
Potatoes with cream, Niva blue cheese and a bit of garlic:
Beef goulash in a loaf of bread:
Apple Strudel with whipped cream and Vanilla ice cream:
This is happy full yale – who ordered everything he wanted and yet the bill came in just under AUD$70 including 3 pints of cider and 15% included tip! Madness. If everything feels relative to Iceland, I think yale can afford to eat again after his two-week crash diet of cuppa noodles and wraps made in the back of the car for lunch!
With full tummies and a cider buzz, we talk a short turn around the Prague Old Town looking at all the touristy shit. The place sure has changed since I was here back in 1995… so many visitors, and flashing lights and massage parlours ( 
We had an uneventful though not overly comfortable flight. Icelandair is a budget airline so it’s bend over with the sandy lube if you want a yoghurt or a sandwich mid-air, and the cabin was freezing cold, yet when I asked for a blanket – they had ‘run out’. So I got to shiver my way to Berlin. I put on a movie which I now can’t even remember the name of, (something about illegal money being dropping at bars, Tom Hardy, I don’t know – typical crap, lots of ‘entertaining’ violence), and proceeded to nod off throughout the film.
After only a minimal amount of stuffing around at TXL – Berlin Tegel Airport – we picked up a hire car and hit the road headed to Dresden. Enroute we found ourselves stopped in traffic for roadworks and were inching back and forth with no fewer than nine of these police vehicles – right up until they got sick of the delay and hit their flashy flashy lights and the ever obedient predominantly German drivers moved out of the way, parting the traffic like the Red Sea. Damn I wish we could have followed them! We were stuck for about another 20mins or so.
Once we got out into the clear again, the Real German motoring experience kicked in and we found oursevles cruising along at 125kmph watching every man and his dog overtaking us like we were stationery!
We made our way to the Aparthotel Am Schloss (Hotel at the Castle) and found ourselves in the most enormous studio apartment I have ever seen in an inner city European city. It was easily 20′ square, without the bathroom (that is bigger than our main bathroom at home!) and 16′ ceilings. Not only was it huge, but it was also about 
We quickly checked in and went for a wander around town before we lost the light.
Statue dedicated to Martin Luther.
The Neumarkt square surrounding the Frauenkirche has many impressive baroque buildings that also underwent extensive reconstruction in 2004.
Neumarkt with the afternoon sun falling on the Frauenkirche
At 102m long, it is considered the largest known porcelain artwork in the world. The mural represents ancestral portraits of the 35 margraves, electors, Dukes and Kings of the House of Wettin between 1127 and 1904.
Semperoper Dresden or the Dresden Opera House, which was originally built in 1841, but was rebuilt by the original architect after a fire destroyed it in 1869.
The Zwinger and the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Museum of Fine Arts. Unfortunately closed this evening and we won’t have time to see it in the morning *sad face*. That is the real tragedy of transit days.
I tried the Braised Ox Cheek served with Mashed Potatoes and Carrots – no bloody celeriac paste in sight! It was delicious, though not the sort of slow cooked falling apart texture you tend to expect from beef cheek.
yale ordered the Shankhaus Pan – roast pork, smoked pork, roasted blood sausage, barbeque sausage with bacon and pickled cabbage and fried potatoes. I’ve never seen him defeated by a meal before, but I guess after a bowl of Lentil Stew and having nearly all the crunchy rye bread with crackling fat, it was bound to happen!
We got ourselves sorted, packed our backpacks, had a wonderful farmhouse breakfast made almost entirely from produce grown locally on the property, scraped the ice off the car, wrestled with doors that were frozen shut, and then made tracks.
When we finally got there and made the short walk out to the areas, we were confronted by this:
Repeatedly. He fluffed her and posed her and told her to look this way and that; to smile to look away, to lift her leg above the falls, to point, and to pout. Finally, after about ten minutes when I thought he was bloody finished with this monumentally important mobile phone photo shoot… he then handed HER the camera, and told her where to stand how low to crouch, how to line him up with the falls and pfaffed around for another five minutes before moving in front of the camera himself! Then he came back and checked the shots of himself and he made her do them again! Like, seriously!? Standing around narcissistically for over twenty minutes taking photo after photo after photo of yourselves while you have people standing around everywhere waiting for a decent view of the object we have all come to see – and these inconsiderate arseholes are in everyone’s way for just as long as you please trying to get the perfect photo. Let you in on a little secret here, people – there’s no such thing as a perfect photo. If you take two pictures, ONE of them will be your favourite, if you take ten pictures ONE of them will be your favourite, if you take fifty fucking photos – ONE of them will be your favourite!
Eventually, he came back to look at the camera again, and then I became *that person* as I then walked out in front of everyone before another pair of self-indulgent, self-absorbed tourists decided to repeat their performance. I am so frustrated at this shit behaviour, that I resorted to fucking up everyone else’s view for all of 60 seconds to take my three or four pictures so I could move on… and do you know how many pictures I took of ME in front of these waterfalls? Exactly none. I know I probably shouldn’t be posting pictures of strangers on my blog – but fuck them and their privacy. You want to take up a public space like that and be completely ignorant towards the people around you, then you get what you get.
After Goðafoss, we were back on the road towards Akureyri, with is the second largest city in Iceland at the base of Eyjafjörður Fjord. The weather was not playing nice with us again and the road conditions were still dicey for these Queenslanders. 
We didn’t really need the reminder that the roads were treacherous – but we did see a few upended vehicles which drove the point home more than adequately.
As we left Dalvik, though the road conditions seemed to be worsening and we were back in the snow again. Seeing snow at sea level always seems somewhat confusing to me, even though I have been many places now where it’s quite common – I think the association of snow only being on mountain tops is such a strong image imprinted on us in childhood, that it is a bit hard to let go of.
Out the other side of the tunnels and the landscape changes again!
We stopped for a bit of lunch and while the view was amazing – it was a bit too cold for us to use the outdoor picnic tables, so we made do with the dashboard. 
A quick drive through tp Siglufjörður and then onwards around the peninsula.
The lighthouse and lookout at Tröllaskagi.
After leaving Hofsós we were heading to our guesthouse for the night, Helluland Guesthouse which is set in a heritage farmhouse built in 1909 and which is still a working farm. Helluland is known for their Icelandic horse riding tours – you can go for a recreational ride for an hour or you can pack yourself up and go out overnight trail riding (though probably not at this time of year!). Being a bit of an indoors sort of girl, I’ll probably leave the horses for ‘other people’. 
Yes, I know these aren’t horses…
The views from our windows are incomparable – I can’t wait to see it in the morning light. In the meantime, tonight we are on aurora watch… even though we could both do with the extra sleep!