Sunday 21 July. Prague D

Today we did a trial run on a tram in preparation for our departure tomorrow. We got off a stop too early! It was too crowded in the old town so we walked over a bridge to the left bank and went, via the Kafka museum to the Petrin Funicular railway. We passed the Crawling Babies and the Pissing Men along the way.

A normal public transport ticket can be used on the Funicular. There are great views from the top and some beautiful rose gardens. There is a beer garden at the base of the Petrin Tower, a mini Eiffel Tower. You can walk up and down the tower via a double helix stairway. However 300 steps in a temerature of 30C was not to our taste. We chose instead to visit the Mirror Maze and the Astronomical Observatory.

We were more successful in finding our way back down from this hill and returned by much the same route we'd arrived to the Old Town. We had a very good meal in the Tratoria by Giovani before returning along the banks of the Vlatava to our hotel. Even after 6pm it was a very very hot walk.

Shiel watched the German TV in the evening which she insisted was somehow stuck on the sports channel.

Sunday 28 July. Meissen to Niederlommatzsch.

We left our B&B by 9:00am and headed down to Meissen. We had a very pleasant stay at our B&B with an excellent breakfast every day. If anyone needs a B&B in Meissen we can recommend where we stayed.

If you have a car there is no problem but if you arrive on foot or by bike you need to remember it is near the top of a hill. It usually took us about 35 minutes to walk into town, apart from the day I decided to find a short cut when it took us about 55 minutes!

Fortunately the predicted 36C for today did not develop until after we had finished walking. Shortly after we left Meissen it clouded over but it still remained warm and very humid. There were lots of places where flood damage was clearly evident but many businesses have obviously worked very hard to get back in operation

We arrived at our pension at 2:00 pm to find we were not expected, at least by the landlady! It transpired her husband had failed to inform her of our arrival. However she was only fazed for a few minutes before she found us a good room.

We showered, rinsed all our clothes and then rested for a few hours to miss the hottest part of the day.

At 5pm we walked down a small hill to a restaurant which overlooked the Elbe ferry. A beautiful spot and an excellent restaurant. I had smoked salmon with a very good salad and sliced fried new potatoes. Shiel had a turkey salad and we slaked our thirst  with a dry muller thurgau.

We then found a quiet spot to sit by the river before returning to the pension for another shower.

Storms are predicted overnight with some rain tomorrow but temperatures only in the high 20's.

Today's walk was only about 16.2km.

Thur. 25 July to Sat. 27 July. Meissen.

The last 3 days we have been in Meissen have really been too hot, even for sightseeing, typically around 33C.

However we have battled on. On Thursday we spent 4 hours walking around the Albrechtsburg castle/palace. The thing that sticks in my memory is a beautifully carved spiral staircase. Shiel was impressed with the size of the rooms, all with carved stone ceiling supports. It was home to the Meissen porcelain factory in its early years.

An audio guide in English covered the first two floors but note that there are 3 floors! The German audio guide covers all three floors. There are however plenty of signs in both English and German on the third floor.

Friday we made a 3 hour walking tour of Meissen with an audio guide. The guide pointed out many things we might have missed but was a bit too childish in its presentation rather than just being factual. We then did a tour of the Cathedral. Sadly there were no guides in English and the only signs were in German.

On Saturday we made a tour of the Meissen factory. I have to say the old Meissen porcelain is not to my taste but some of the more modern pieces are. However with a coffee jug costing over £1000 and expresso cups at £50 each I fear I will never complete my coffee set.

There was a lot of flood damage in the lower areas of the town but some shops have bounced back pretty quickly. We had two evening meals in an Italian restaurant that had been underwater just over a month previously. Good meals they were too, with friendly service.

Meissen is a pleasant old town and not too busy but would have been much nicer in the mid 20's C. If you've been to Dresden it's worth visiting Meissen to see the contrast.

Wednesday 24 July. Dresden to Meissen

We left our hotel early but not quite early enough to catch the 8:09 train to Cotta so we finished up having almost a 45 minute wait on platform 3 of Dresden station before the next train turned up at 9:09.

One point to note regarding suburban  train travel around Dresden. We bought the ticket the day before but it was only valid as a ticket after we put it in a time stamp machine on the platform. After that it was valid for one hour.

It took less than ten minutes to reach Cotta, where we joined the Elberadweg going west whereas previously we had gone eastwards to Dresden.

The first picture below shows the height of the June floods which can be estimated from the debris hidden in the foliage of a river side tree.

Further along we passed a picturesque windmill on the left bank with a beer garden behind it. As it was a very hot day we stopped for refreshment. The owners had worked hard and it was difficult to imagine that all that area had been under water a few weeks earlier.

There was still a lot of  work being done along the riverbank  collecting  up debris from under trees with bulldozers.

One picture below shows a sign posted above the men's urinal in the beer garden behind the windmill. It's what might be called lavatory humour.

There were some very pleasant pastoral riverside  scenes but the day was a little too hot and sunny for pleasant walking. We tended to dash from one shade tree to the next and some were kilometers apart! We crossed by rail bridge over to the right bank of the Elbe near the halfway point for the day.

A few kilometers short of our B&B, which was itself about 30 minutes east of Meissen, we stopped in our final beer garden of the day. The northern bank had started to rise up from the river by this time and was covered in small vineyards. We reached our B&B around 3:30 after a 22 km walk.

We showered and rested and then walked down the road for a meal in the local pub. The menu said I was getting rabbit fillet but the bill said I was given hare, but who was I to split hairs.

Tuesday 23 July. Dresden Preamble.

As we had a day to spare in Dresden, and we had done our sightseeing on the last visit, we decided to walk part of the way to Meissen today. We initially just meant to walk the bulge in the Elbe between Cotta and the Dresden centre in a clockwise direction so on Wednesday we could just walk straight out to Cotta from the main line station. However we got lost in the maze of railway lines leaving the Hauptbahnhof and by the time we reached Cotta (a name we only learnt when we got there) we had travelled more than six hot and sweaty miles. We had a few drinks to rehydrate which produced a remarkable improvement in mood. At least in my case as I was drinking beer.

We then walked back along the river to Dresden where we finished walking last year. It was only just over 4 miles back to the town centre via the river. It was a very pleasant, if at times somewhat warm walk, along the sandy and stony river bank. It was the closest one could get to the Elbe without wading. From what we saw of debris in trees just over a month ago the river would have been above our heads.

Tomorrow we hope to take a train back to Cotta and start walking again from there. It is still about 12 miles to our B&B which we think is enough when it is so hot.

Monday 22 July. Prague to Dresden

Today we left the hotel about 11am and took a tram to Starometska (?) and then via the metro a train to the main line station. We then took the train to Dresden. It was hot and very crowded but Shiel and I got seats in a 6 seat compartment. Some people had to sit on small pull down seats in the corridor.  The train was on time in the Czech Republic but lost time after crossing the border.

In some ways it was like going back in time, as we travelled a lot of the way near the banks of the Elbe.  I expected to see Shiel or myself walking along the Elbe Fussweg (our terminology) below us.

Our hotel is only 300m from the main station.

We went out for a meal in the evening to celebrate Kate Middleton's good timing in delivering the future Monarch of England on Shiel's birthday and William's good sense in producing a future Duke (not Duchess?) of Cornwall.

Saturday 20 July. Prague C continued.

After lunch in the restaurant we went for a walk around the ramparts and looked down over the Vlatava. Some views were quite vertiginous. We looked down from viewpoints we'd looked up at whilst walking from Prague centre to our hotel. After a complete circuit we tried to head down in the direction of our hotel butfinished up on a dead end path locked by a gate. It was just a path to the rear entrances of private houses. We then had a steep climb back up to  a main road (see photo below) from which we finally found our way back to the botel.