Claire on the Move

Having had no lunch and feeling cold and a little hard done by, I determined that a cup of tea and something ridiculous was in order to celebrate our last day in the Czech Republic, when we arrived in Ceske Budejovice. This absolutely fitted the bill. Any complaints from the keeper of the purse were easily squashed by my reasoning that I had not had one beer the whole trip (no hardship there). This hazelnut tiramisu had little plastic hearts that acted as a pipette that, when squeezed, doused the cake with alcohol. They have been smuggled into my luggage to make it home.

The next priority was finding the river. The city was the one place that I had already visited in 2003, but I was coming down with flu. I can only really remember not feeling like eating my tea, the main square and a nice wool shop.

The Vltava seemed placid and just plain ordinary. It is wide and calm at this point and I just hear the main theme of the music- not the majeatic pomp or peasant folk music of other parts of the work. Our walk through the city was a little complicated by a big event that we really did not understand but seemed to culminate in a night run. Everyone in the city looked like they were about to compete, or just had.

The main square is a real example of how to maximise a ciy’s assets – in the UK it would probably be a glorified car park but here it is a vast space to be used for public events or just space to circulate and enjoy with the Samson Fountain in the centre. The photo of the deserted square was at 7.30am Sunday as we made our way to the station to start the journey home.

Rob really worked so hard to make this trip happen. I am all in favour of travel by public transport and have spent all my life travelling this way, but writing this on the journey home as we have battled rail replacement buses, German railways struggling to keep to time and resulting in tight connections, it is so useful to have a companion who can tell you that if you get off at Frankfurt Flughafen you will be on the same platform and not have to lug the folded up bike up and down stairs yet again. Thanks Rob for the fun, putting up with my grumps and taking care of anything that I didn’t want to! And thanks for those of you that have followed these travels. I turned comments off as knew I wouldn’t have time to respond but hope you enjoyed the ride.