Our trip today
Our plan for the day was to visit beautiful Praha, the capital of the Czech Republic, and then make our way down south to Brno, its second largest city. As we woke up and saw the daylight of Lovosice, our day started easy-going. Breakfast and coffee were good in our lodging, the Hotel Lev with spa and swimming pool and sauna, none of which we’ve made use of. Yet, this hotel in Lovosice was a whopping EUR 78,- all-in. Except for the TV and Internet, two things we really don’t need anyway, it served its purpose well!
Prague
We ghost and drop the bags in Tessa, which is parked just down the road, fully charged. That’s useful because our trip today is ~290km from here to Praha and then on to Brno, so we’ll need the autonomy. The drive to Prague is quickly completed, and underway Paul says “whoa, that’s some really big birds” and I scan the sky line looking for avians, only to completely miss the, well, big-ass hawk-like birds along the E55 highway on the ground. It feels silly to miss them, because they really are quite large.
Our drive to Praha is only 60km or so, and Paul decides to park us at the national theater just next to the old town. We proceed to walk the required Karlův most (Charles Bridge) and up a little way to the castle, only to get distracted by a few Bolt scooters. You know what that means! CZK 10 later, we feel like kingly kings with the wind in our hair, albeit at a meager 10km/h because it’s a pedestrian zone. It doesn’t hold us back though, no way, we dash around the old town to visit the sights:
- We start of course at Charles Bridge, it has an old town Bridge Tower
- We take a look at Franz Kafka’s rotating head ..
- .. which takes us quite naturally to Church of Our Lady before Týn (which dominantes Old Town)
- Then we spend some time (as do a few million other tourists) at the Astronomical Clock, which we find astronomically cool
- Randomly bumping into beautiful architecture and old buildings where-ever we go, we visit Národní muzeum at Wenceslas Square
- Paul is peckish so he nomms a strudel from the wrong country, at the Powder Tower, where Pim logs a geocache
- We pay our respects (no selfies, we swear!) at the Jewish Synagogue and Old Jewish Cemetary, which is beautiful
We take a look at a few places for lunch and decide for a local / simple cafe, which serves us some delicious salad and pork medallion in green peppercorn sauce (which is a bit runny for my taste, but I think Marina would think it’s just right!). Finally we take the small walk to St. Vitus Cathedral at the Prague Castle, walk the grounds a little bit (they now come free of charge with metal detector scanners at the entrance of the courtyards, was that always the case??), before making our way back down to the river and parking spot at 14:30 or so, as it’s time to leave.
Brno
In the car, I start thinking about hotels and Paul reminds me of the two Finns that we saw up in Mo i Rana (Norway), who just walked in and got themselves a significantly better price than we did on hotels.com. We make a pact: tonight, we’re doing a walk-in! I page my buddy Michal who is from these parts (even though most of his colleagues think he’s from Finland, I wonder who started that rumour ..), and ask him what the cool things are in Brno. He immediately comes up with “burčák” (young not yet wine):
Maybe check the veg market (Zelny trh) and thereabouts in Brno. It’s likely they will be selling “burčák” (young not yet wine). Better yet, find some wine shop for Burčák… it’ll probably be better. Oh, and under no circumstances by the side of the road. ;)
We park the car with 70km in the battery at a parkinglot in the center of town between Hrad Špilberk (Špilberk Castle) and Liberty Square. Walking into town from here we immediately see what appears to be a shopping mall. We enter it for a quick pitstop, but upon entering I detect a very familiar smell indeed: popcorn! We make our way up the mall, exploring it a little bit and find the culprit: a movie theater, which appears to have movies both dubbed and original with Czech subtitles. Why not catch a flic while we’re here?
We find a movie that Paul recommends: Bullet Train, a comedy slash action movie with Brad Pitt. Check (✅, or should I say .. Czech!): it is now booked for 21:30.
We explore Brno a little bit, take a look at that square Michal mentioned with the vegetable market on it. This city center is really beautiful as well, with historic landmark buildings littered over the entire place. Then we go to the steakhouse joint that Paul scouted on the intertubes, a place called Pavillon which sells you cuts of meat in 100g increments, including some nice starters and accompanying lesser important things such as potatoes and vegetables. We book it for 18:30 and are already starting to foam at the mouth for the delicious food that awaits.
By now it’s about 5pm, so this gives enough time to check in to our hotel. We scout one with 58 rooms, which we’re happy to spontaneously walk in to, but it’s a little bit out of the city (which also makes it cheaper, like EUR 88,- cheap), and they have rooms available on hotels.com, so off we go. We pick up Tessa, drive up North 8km or so and find a huge touring car in the parkinglot, plus a string of cars behind it (on a one-way street). Paul jumps out of the car and dashes in and quickly back out, to report that they only have a double room, no twins. The problem is, by now three or four more cars are behind me while this asshole touring car is empty and clearly going no where. A lady is also trying to exit the parking lot but she eventually parks the car again and goes inside, I can only assume to complain about the situation. After sitting around for 10min, Paul kindly asks the folks behind us to back out as we want to bail. They oblige and we’re on our way again.
So much for a walk-in! In the car, I book another hotel on-line, South of Brno, and it’s called Hotel Pyramida, so we drive over there, it has included WiFi, parking and breakfast for two, that’ll do. Except, it won’t do. We arrive there, seeing that the parking lot is in the courtyard behind the building, with a teenie-tiny double door to squish our boat-sized car through. It reminds me of that time with the Hardship Brotherhood when we drove our car into some italian garage somehwere, and as was then, the car is frantically beeping and signalling “don’t do this, you’re gonna kill me!"-style warnings, which as was then, I just ignore to the best of my ability. I manage to drive safely through the passage and park the car. Alright, stress over, let’s check in! No, let’s not. The lady informs us that, as soon as she saw the booking from hotels.com, she declined/canceled it because they are full. FUCK. ME.
It’s now 18:15 and our dinner reservation is at 18:30, so we leave our car here and commandeer some scooters and make our way down the 1.2km to Pavillon. There, we proceed to have a fantabulous dinner, huge steak, a bottle of Czech wine for me (which was very tasty, our waiter made a good recommendation which I appreciate). There, I made a reservation for the second time, third hotel, you have to say three time’s a charm!? and it’s at the reservoir North-West of Brno called Orea Resort Santon. Something goes wrong with the reservation - it does succeed in the hotels.com app, but I do not get a confirmation. I mess around with e-mail, then try to call them, but for some bizarre reason when I click the button on the website, the phone rings and Marina picks up (color me surprised!). I do it again, and the line is dead. This is not my evening!
At some point you just have to let things be things, and I decide this is one of those moments, so I declare this quest for hotels done and decide to enjoy the remainder of my meal. We settle the bill and make our way to the movie theater, where we have a great time watching Brad Pitt, Joey King, Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (and as it later turns out, a tiny cameo by Sandra Bullock ❤️❤️, my all time favorite actress). It’s hilariously funny, and I really dig Ladybug’s dry humor as well as the quippy dialog between Lemon and Tangerine and the running gag about Thomas the Train (née, Tank Engine).
After the movie we grab a few Bolt scooters, it’s now just after midnight, and I try to navigate with my iPhone in my pocket. It’s a bit erratic, telling us to go left, right, turn around, and also often just “Head South-East” style commentary. Not useful when you can’t see the Sun and you left your digital compass in your pocket. At one point, Paul gets pulled over by the cops, because he’s scooting on the left side of the road, where we’re about to make a hard left turn. I find this ironic, cuz I’m the guy with a bottle of red wine in me, yet he’s the guy that gets in trouble with the law. Isn’t that WEiRD? Spoiler: Yes, he is.
OK, entirely without getting arrested, we pick up our car, which now has 68km, and we drive it to the resort next to the reservoir, after which it has 41km. We check in to our hotel, and color me surprised, but they actually have the reservation and proceed to drop me the room keys. Yaay! Up at the room, we do a little bit of math, the Brno supercharger is 21km South of here, and we have 41km in the battery. I’m worried that tomorrow morning we’ll have lost another kilowatthour or so, and we may have to end up pushing Tessa downhill. Talk about range anxiety!
Not many words are spoken on this issue, Paul and I drag our poor souls back into the car, and he proceeds to drive the most careful and respectful he has likely ever! I can see the sweat pouring out of his armpits and eyebrows, as we see the juxtaposition on “21km to destination” and “29km left in battery” switch places. But, we arrive with Tessa at the supercharger like a total boss, it has 3% battery, 12km left. Paul triumphantly plugs it in and … nothing happens. You have got to be kidding me right meow! But, I notice on the website that there’s six chargers here, even though there are eight physically installed, so I conclude that a pair of them must be busted. We move over a few spots, plug Tessa in once again, and it proceeds to literally transfigurate the electrons out of the wire, it’s so happy to be fed.
A weight drops off our shoulders, we go get a local geocache, hang out until there’s 250km in the battery, which will be enough to make it up to our hotel, and in the morning back down all the way to our next destination: Bratislava in Slovakia. After charging, we go to the hotel, I take a quick shower, and we pass out. What an egg-citing day!
