Vienna to Prague bus ride

Day 8:
A long bus ride from Vienna to Prague. There are places to stop in between for lunch and breakfast.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant at a place called Melikana about an hour before reaching Prague.
It's a buffet style lunch with lots of buses arriving simultaneously making it a run around carrying platters. Food is OK. Coffee too but not as good as in Budapest. There are charging stations for smart phones and ATMS. They accept Euros or Czech currency. They have only pay toilets, better take Euros or Korunas.

We reached Prague late in the evening and had our group dinner at our hotel. Later went out without tour director who showed us how to work the Metro. The nearest Metro to our Hotel was Andel. You come across many shopping areas before you get to the metro, a 10 minutes’ walk. Metro is quite clean and Czech people value their assets, no defacing of the walls etc.

We walked around the old town and had the first look at the Astronomical Clock...

Here are some pictures of the day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtIyGsg-pDU

Visting Český Krumlov on the way to Salzburg from Prague - Day 11

Český Krumlov is on the World Heritage list 1992. It is very beautiful with the castle, the monastery, and the gardens. A place you must visit if you are anywhere near Prague or Salzburg. Its early owners were Germans later acquired by Czechs.

You must see to believe how beautiful it is and the next best thing is to see its pictures on the Internet.

This one is a slide show of pictures taken with iPhone 6S and Lumia 950.

Prague a beautiful city

Prague is a historic place with lots of church spires and Baroque architecture; a city cut in two by the Vltava river. Charles Bridge connects the two halves, the old town and the new. It is a truly beautiful city with ancient churches and history dating back to the Roman Empire. We had an optional tour to visit, a walking tour of Jewish Quarters. We missed it as we wanted to see more of the city.

Tour of Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Salzburg - 6

You may get to a place fast if you fly (in most cases), but traveling by bus is a great option as you can see the changing landscape, the rivers and valleys, the people and their costumes, etc. We traveled by bus and the ride was long but it was worthwhile. Our tour director took us out to introduce the city of Prague. We stayed at the NH Prague Hotel near the metro station ANDEL (about 500 meters away).

One of the things that happens when you cross country boundaries is the currency related issues. At this point both Germany and Czech Republic accepted Euros but some of the Prague businesses used strictly Korunas [Czech crown (koruna), abbreviated as Kč, with the international abbreviation CZK].  Our tour director advised us to change as little as possible to Korunas as its usability in other European cities was limited.

I saw a number of shops selling alcohol and liqueurs and strangely Absinthe appears to be a popular drink as I saw a large number of shops displaying absinthe prominently.

Here is a video of our bus travel from Vienna to Prague, the Day 8 our tour.

Visiting Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Saltzburg - 2

The breakfast was good at the Radisson Beke hotel in Budapest.

We left around 8:00 AM for the city tour and we had a very good city guide. Our main, more detailed tour consisted of visiting the Castle District; the Fisherman's Bastion; the Matthias Church and the Parliament. After this some of us opted to visit the City Market and have lunch there and take our bus back to the hotel.

The rest of what we saw was from inside the bus. We could have spent some time near the Hero's square.






Tour guide explaining finer details of the beautiful roof of the church

Day 1:
Tour of Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Salzburg - 1 

Day 3:
Tour of Munich, Budapest, Vienna, Prague and Salzburg - 3