Leaving Poland early in the morning we arrived in Prague to find noone at our hostel.  But there was a note on the door saying the receptionist was out and would be back at 3pm  so we settled into wait for her.  Around 3:30 we finally got into the hostel but Stephen who was supposed to have landed around 2pm was still not around.  At 6pm he finally turned up and after a quick catch up on the last 3 years we headed out for a late dinner (It was now 9pm or so). 

We explored Prague on foot and then in the afternoon by Segway.  A segway is a two wheeled vehicle that it is reportedly impossible to fall off of as it balances your weight.  You lean forward, you move forward – you lean backward, you reverse.  You lean too far forward trying to go faster it pushes back at you.  Jason however discovered how to trick it into letting you fall off.. you go over a jump it turns off and you find yourself eating pavement.  Our guide was interesting and towards the end he took off the turtle restriction on the segway allowing us to really get up some speed!  Now, I wonder how much it would cost to buy one in Sydney?

Not wanting to spend all our time in Prague we hired a car and headed out into the countryside.  Our first stop was Kutna Hora to see the famous ‘bone church’.  Basically the church was built on top of an old cemetery and some monk decided to get artistic creating a fascinatingly beautiful church.  It is estimated that around 40000 skeletons were used to create the decorations. 

After further exploration of the town we headed towards Cesky Budejovice with a random detour via a black dot on the map.  As we got close to said black dot we started to see tourist signs.  Woohoo!  Good sign.  It turned out to be a pink castle built in the middle of a lake.  We had a pleasant walk around the grounds but declined to do a tour of the castle which was only offered in Czech.   We arrived in Cesky Budejovice and found a guesthouse owned by a son but his mother lived in the other half of the house and seemed quite distraught at all the guests.  We were a bit too much the party animals up talking at 9:30pm.  

From there we did a trip out to Cesky Krumlov which is a beautiful old town nestled in the curve of a river.  We watched the kayakers heading down the rapids in various states of sobriety (It’s towards the end of a popular 5-6day kayaking trip and there was a constant stream going past).  We meandered down country lanes and visited a couple more castles in the surrounding area before heading back to Prague.