April 20th

Day 7 - Saturday 20th April 

The room at the Thistle was fine, and  we slept well, waking up at 4:30am to get over to the terminal ready to check in for our international flight. Of course when we got there, there was no customs, etc as really all countries are open in the EU, and everything is a 'domestic' flight. Our plane was late coming in, so we left about 30 mins late, but it was only a bit over 2 hours in duration, so we got into Prague with heaps of daylight left.

We were booked into the Clarion hotel in the old town so after about 20min drive, we were at the hotel and checked in, except our room wasnt ready so we could only check our bags in, and went wandering the beautiful, cobbled streets of Prague.

Peter and Cheryl don't arrive until about 9:30 pm, so it is just the 2 of us until tomorrow basically. They flew from Sydney to Dubai, then onto Prague.
 

The architecture was amazing, as was the condition of the buildings. Everything looked like it was on show. Of course, Czech had been attacked many times, with horrendous damage to the whole country, not just Prague. It wasn't just WWII, but also the onslaught of invaders and oppression from the north, as late as the 1980's. 

There are a lot of different people here!!

The famous Astonomical Clock

part of Parliament house - 691 rooms, 25km of stairs!

Powder Tower

Part of St Vidas Cathedral

One of the many well adorned streets

For the Easter, there were street markets everywhere

The castle at night

 Getting around town

There was lots of choices to get around town. Except for the Castle area, the town of Prague itself was relatively flat, so that made it easier.Of course, being prestty flat, walking was the cheapest, so that is what we did for the whole of the first day - before Cheryl and Pete arrived. The above photos were from that day/night.
Other forms of transport are:

• Trains
• Buses
• Taxis
• Trams
• Trolley cars
• Bicycles
• Cars
• Scooters of various sorts

Here are a few examples:

There were all sorts of cars, in various shapes and sizes

Some even floated on the water

Trams

Horse and carriage

 

River cruises

 
  

Old Trolley Cars

Just plain Old Cars

Hop on/off buses

Do something really bad

TukTuk

Electric scooters that really go fast

Fanicular

....and a favourite of the young blokes in for a bit of a party

The Beer Bike

  

Bomb shelter

April 19th

Day 6 - Friday 19th April  
We woke up to another nice day, and was greeted with cheese, toast and fruit for brekkie, followed by a bit of washing and commencing to pack up.
Gillian and David took us to Castle Hill and Castle Tower....although I couldn't find Castle Towers Westfield shopping centre. This was a structure overlooking Huddersfield. The tower was built in the 1850's as a tribute to Queen Vicoria's jubilee. A fire was lit on the tower, as were others around the country. It was later renamed to Victoria Tower.

Castle (later Victoria) Tower on Castle Hill

Doing a lap of Castle Hill with Ben the dog

The view over part of Huddersfield

The tower again

The view from the first landing of the tower

From the hill we could identify the station at Huddersfield, the large viaduct we crossed and Lockwood which was significant in the war for building tanks.
We also saw John Smith's Stadium which is the home to Huddersfield Town premier league football team, although will soon be relegated.
We walked around the perimeter of the hill and 'Ben Dragon' Gill and David's dogcame with us. He has not been well (old), so it was a surprise and a delight for him to walk most of the way.
We arrived home and ate a hearty ploughman's lunch in the courtyard of the house.

After lunch the inevitable thing happened - we had to pack our gear up and put it in the car. After a sad farewell, we headed east towards the M1, and then south, heading to London. The drive was uneventful - in fact the road was almost empty in comparison to normal days. Of course, this was Easter Friday, so we appreciated the good run. We stopped about 40 mile outside of London for Costa's coffee, and then headed into the inner sanctum of Heathrow airport.
We had booked a hotel room at the 'Thistle' hotel at Heathrow airport Terminal 5 which allowed us to easily catch a 7:30am flight onward to Prague. The Thistle is right next the runway, so we had dinner and watched all the planes land just near us in the setting sun.....the sun wasn't near us, just the landing planes!