how people in landlocked countries cool off

arrived back at madhouse hostel in prague shortly after 3pm from cesky krumlov, and was told to get changed into my bathers as everyone was about to leave to go to the beach club. so of course i hastily complied and then as a group we all trammed to the 'beach'. in the czech republic, a beach constitutes a large grassy area on the banks of the filthy river, which we of course swam in repeatedly as it was 37 degrees!!

after an enjoyable 4 hours at the beach club drinking mojitos, we came back and had dinner at the hostel before heading out to a series of bars. it was quite a weird night, didn't get to dance much and seemed to wander from crappy bar to crappy bar until 4am when we had gyros and called it a night. still had a pretty ok time, but hoping tonight will be better!!

beautiful prague

so after one of the worst nights of my life - 100 times less enjoyable than my overnight bus in turkey - i am now staying at my best hostel so far. sure, the rooms are quite small, but the common areas are awesome and they arrange activities every night! 

after reception opened at 9am, i slept on a couch in the lounge on and off until 1pm, and then decided i couldn't waste an entire day! ventured out into the old town to join a free tour of prague.

for three hours our tour guide callum (randomly from melbourne, as was half our group) took us around and explained the history of this gorgeous old city. he was really knowledgeable and it was a fantastic tour, going to have to go back to some of the places he showed us over the next few days.

anyhow, after a family dinner at the hostel for $2.50 each, i'm off to bed! total party pooper i know, but i want to have lots of energy for my river pub crawl in cësky krumlov tomorrow afternoon!!

turning into a bum

how did i not realise before that backpacking was lowering my standards on the acceptable bit by bit? this morning i found myself sleeping on the ground at prague train station after a horrible 12 hour train trip from ljubljana. everyone else seemed to be, so i surrendered to my tiredness on the warm concrete. to enlighten me to my fall from grace, at 6am i was kicked into consciousness by security guards like a bum at flinders st station. awkward. 

so now, i'm sitting on the bluestones in the lane way outside my hostel, waiting until the reception opens at 9am. please just let me sleep! never again do i want to go on overnight trains or buses!

a nice day in ljubljana

since we knew nothing about ljubljana we decided to attend a free walking tour this morning. meg was sick so she went home to sleep 😔 our guide eva took us around the old town for over two hours, during which time we walked maybe 500m and learnt a whole lot about the history of ljubljana, slovenia and the break up of yugoslavia. 

as our tour was ending another thunderstorm rolled in, so steph and i took shelter in a pastry shop - such a coincidence! of course we just had to sample a couple of their delicious mini black forest cakes, accompanied by a hot cocoa. had a lovely time chatting for a couple of hours before heading back to check on meg.

took meg back to our favourite supermarket and trusty drugstore, before depositing her back in bed and heading back out for another wander. 

ljubljana is so small for a capital city and the buildings are really new in comparison to the other old cities in europe. regardless, the city was really pretty and we had fun being super touristy.

once again back home quite early, though we may go people watching or see gatsby again. anyhow, got to start eating my packet of soup for dinner! 

 

a place that can't be real

today the girls and i got up bright and early for a trip to lake bled. after a relatively short bus ride we arrived at the picturesque town of bled (think sound of music) and immediately made our way down to the lake. it was utterly spectacular, it looked like a movie set rather than something you'd see in real life! 

we started to walk around the lake first as the weather forecast was not that fantastic. the girls got snap happy and i went a little overboard feeding signets pringles. so cute!

we had a whole lot of touristy things we wanted to do for the day, first thing on the agenda was hiring a rowboat and going to the island in the middle - the only natural island in slovenia. of course we had to make sure we found the cheapest rentals and shortest distance to the island possible, so walked half way round the lake to find the appropriate vessel. had a bit of fun going back to my old rowing days, kept wishing there was a slide in the boat! 

after a look around the island we rowed our little boat back and proceeded to pass out on the manmade pebble beach for an hour or so. while we were there a thunderstorm began, but strangely the sky was still mostly blue and the air was warm. anyhow, was a nice energy boost before we set off to finish our loop of the lake and somehow find vintgar gorge.

on our way we managed to hike up to the castle, but like on the island were too cheap to pay entry fees. instead we trotted off and asked for directions to the gorge as we started to get lost. a lovely man at a hostel showed us the route on our map, a meandering wander through slovenian streets and little towns to the gorge. 

despite the looming bad weather, we were so glad we persevered. vintgar gorge was absolutely breathtaking! seriously something out of a fairy tale.

the way out was a little bit hairy, utterly exhausted we were trekking through forest on barely marked paths. thankfully we made it out alive and once back in bled i inhaled a chicken kebab. 13 hours after our day begun we made it home, going to sleep well tonight! 

post croatia sailing depression

after our highly enjoyable trip to slovenia -during which we hardly slept and coughed our lungs out - all we did today was go for a little bit of retail therapy and sleep. 

we want to be back on the boat with everyone so badly, was the best week ever and now everyone has scattered around europe and the world. we were definitely heartened to hear that pen-dizzle and the crew are missing us all!

we found an awesome supermarket today (photos coming mum) so are planning on cooking dinner at our hostel tonight. off to lake bled tomorrow, can't wait!!

a nothing sort of day

today was spent in dubrovnik killing time before our overnight bus to ljubljana in slovenia. checked out of my hostel at 10am and was not permitted to leave my backpack - thankfully some of the boys from the other boat had a sick apartment close by.

watched dodgeball with neil while waiting for the girls. meg arrived a sweating mess - steph had fainted on the bus. so we jumped on another bus to go find her armed with water, soft drink and food. eventually she was ready to go into town, so we went back to the boys apartment. 

spent a couple of hours figuring out accommodation and transport around eastern europe before heading to the beach. except we never made it, as we discovered that steph had fallen on her slr camera when she fainted and had broken the lens despite it being inside its bag. so the next few hours were spent at the bus ticket office and then traipsing through scorching heat to find a police station.

first police station on our map informed us they could not help as they were traffic police. the second yelled that its not their problem if something gets broken, it's not their job, and told us to leave the building!! we were absolutely shocked given how much of a touristy place dubrovnik is!

so that ended any plans for the day, instead we bought ingredients to make pasta for everyone for dinner. had a bit of fun cooking and hanging with the boys, and then it was off to the terminal. a 10 hour bus ride and a 2.5 hour train ride will get us to ljubljana. see you on the other side!