To Prague and then to Austria

Sunday 1st August

We couldn’t really afford to stay any longer at the campsite so decided on heading in the direction of Prague, hoping to find some free parking. After a fair bit of driving around through the lovely Czech countryside, we eventually stumbled upon a car park by a lake above the town of Melnik.

Lake near Melnik, Czech Rep

Yesterday Lorna had become ill with a bit of flu symptoms, the first time either of us had been ill for the whole trip! She blamed the weather!

Monday 2nd August

Lorna still felt bad so we postponed the trip to Prague, no fun would be had walking around the city while feeling ill! Had a walk around the lake and found at the back of the lake a few old houses built into the rock.

boat on the Lake, Czech Rep

House in the rock!

Around the corner I also found some large rock carvings!

We drove around to another lake and spent the day reading, while overlooking the water. Today was actually another sunny day, when it wasn’t behind a cloud!

Tuesday 3rd August

With Lorna a little better we headed off early into Prague to find the campsite. This proved very difficult and we ended up driving around a lot and even into the city centre. We eventually found the correct road, by a process of elimination and the campsite. It was a small place called Camping Zizkov, but the closest to the city centre.

We found a spot and then headed off on the tram to the centre, making sure we brought our raincoats as the clouds looked dark! No sooner we were in the centre the rain started, but only lightly. Prague centre was very pretty but very very full of tourists and a wet day is never the best for sightseeing.

Old town square, Prague

Strange clock face and carved figures, Old town square, Prague

As we were walking over the bridge towards the castle, the heavens really opened and the rain came heavily down! We decided to retreat to inside a bar, though one away from the very tourist parts (as they charge more!). We felt a little let down by Prague, but perhaps it was just the bad weather, I’m sure on a sunny day it would be better!

Prague

We headed off to pick up a postcard and head to the area near the campsite, which was supposed to be more of a student area! While buying the postcards we randomly bumped into Tom & Elise (the Australian couple we met in Hungary!). They also didn’t think that much of Prague and with the weather, were heading off to the cinema!

We found another nice bar near the campsite out of the rain, before heading back to the campsite. At the campsite they had a fire going and people gathered around, so the rest of the night was spent speaking to different travellers and the very friendly staff.

Wednesday 4th August

Got up to a sunny day! Typical really as we had planned to travel all the way down to Austria today! As the campsite wasn’t the cheapest we couldn’t afford to stay another day in Prague and actually see the city in the sun! So off we headed.

We were heading to Austria as we hoped it would be better weather, as well as lovely countryside and mountains. Most importantly though our budget was getting low and in Austria we could free park in most places! So we thought we would head that way, park for free and enjoy the great outdoors. We travelled south through Czech saddened to think this would be our last Eastern European Country and from now on we would be back in the so called west and worst still back in the expensive Euro!

We arrived into Austria and were greeted with nice roads, hills, forests and cows! Austria straight away is what you expect it to be lots of open meadows and Austrian pretty houses, although they have big houses! After a lot of driving around we found a spot to park down a small road near the town of St Oswald. We were right in a forest and so far had seen a lot of deer, always a nice sight