Czechia

After our nice slow amble across Germany we are now sprinting across Czechia in three days, in order to get to Krakow by the weekend. We therefore head off from Wurzburg nice and early, but it turns out to be a rather miserable drive with lots of sleet, hundreds of trucks, and at least 80km of road works along the way.

We arrive in Pilsen and check into the hotel, but head out almost immediately as it's chore day, and we have a LOT of laundry to be done. We were lucky in France that several of the places we stayed had access to a washing machine, but now we're stuck with the dreaded laundromat. Luckily it's pretty quiet, and once we work out their token system and make two trips to the supermarket to get change, we're in business.

On Thursday we head into the centre of Pilsen by trolleybus. It's a balmy 0 degrees and we spend a couple of hours wandering around the surprisingly excellent Christmas market. There's a lot of stalls and actually a better variety of gifts and produce compared to the German markets we've recently visited. It's also nice to have some different food... it's still sausages but now they're spicier!

Mark managed to find a tower to climb, as usual:

After the markets we have a booking at the Beer Spa. We went to one of these in Prague earlier this year and said we would definitely do it again some day. Didn't think it would be the same year!

It's basically two jacuzzi baths, with hops and other beer ingredients in the water. Oh yes, and there's two beer taps beside each bath, dispensing unlimited light and dark beer. The only problem is that an hour is not enough!

On Friday morning we leave Pilsen to head most of the way across the country, to the town of Olomouc (pronounced Olomoats). What looked like a 3.5 hour drive back when we planned this trip in September turns out to be an almost 6 hour marathon due to constant traffic queues along the way. We passed three different car crashes along the way, not really surprising considering how aggressively the Czech drivers change between lanes without signalling and without leaving adequate space.

Once we've checked into our (very basic) hotel, we head into the town centre to our second Czech Christmas market. Again it's a surprise, a really huge market with a great range of stalls and lots of interesting food options. It's very busy as it's Friday evening but it's well laid out and very enjoyable. We even find a stall selling "Irsky Punch", which is mulled wine with Jameson in it. And cherries. Actually tastes better than it sounds!

Olomouc is also famous for its Plague Columns, which were built after the Black Death outbreaks in the 1700s, praising god for their survival. There is also an Astronomical clock similar to the very famous one in Prague.

We head back to the hotel for an early night, as tomorrow we head to Poland!