The rest of the Czech Republic

Okay, I'm back in Blois, and I know I haven't finished telling you about Morocco yet, but I thought I would catch up on my last vacation.

On Sunday, we explored Cesky Krumlov, which I think is mobbed with tourists during the summer, but was pretty empty. We slept late and missed the tour of the local brewery, so instead we got some brunch at a cute cafe and then wandered around the castle grounds (the inside was shut for the season). There were a lot of trompe de l'oeil paintings on the wall and a big tower. There were some gorgeous views from the walkways down to the river and the town. There was even a bear in the castle moat (which would have been more exciting if the bear hadn't seem so depressed)! After that, we walked around the town in its entirety, stopping to drink some tea and watch a cat chase a bird. Finally, when it was a reasonable hour, we went to a vegetarian restaurant, where we ate more delicious food.

Monday we took the bus back to Prague. We had to change buses in a nearby, but larger, city, where the bus station was on top of a large and very modern mall. Since we were carrying all of our stuff, we didn't do much exploring, but we did manage to get a pharmacist to understand that Sahar needed some decongestant. Once back in Prague, we dropped our bags in lockers at the train station and then walked to the Jewish Quarter, where we saw a lot of synagogues and a really old Jewish cemetery. Then we took a coffee break, and then after that went back to the New Town to do some shopping. (We were planning to take the last metro to the airport, so we had a lot of time to kill.) Sahar bought some shoes, and I discovered that H+M children's pants are my size. I ate a fried cheese sandwich from a stand on the street (it was not awful, but also not good, though the server seemed aghast that I wanted it with mustard, rather than mayo) and Sahar got a rolled-dough on a metal stick thing, which I thought was kind of weird. We ended up at a cool English-language bookstore, where I bought some old New Yorkers and we played trivial pursuit while drinking coffee. We caught the last metro and ended up at the airport at about midnight, found some benches and tried to sleep (our flight was at 6am), which was semi-successful for me, and much less so for Sahar.

Then we got our flight back to the Netherlands!