We finally had a great night's sleep and at 9am we were ready for the first adventure of the day which was the free breakfast which comes with the price of the room. The choices accommodate every nationality so available in buffet format was everything from cornflakes to cheese and salami, yogurt and fruit, salad and cake. Also a lady making eggs and omelette s while you wait in line. The food seemed to be spread around the enormous dining room and we had to tour around a couple of times before we even figured out our choices.
Michelle and I always rate restaurants by the coffee and the bathroom, and this breakfast would have rated poorly based on the coffee (very surprising) however the orange juice turned out to be a very yummy mango and OMG Steve, the bread was to die for!
After breakfast we headed out into the town for a stroll to the information centre. It was sunny and warm and we took our time and looked at all the posh stores selling designer clothing as well as the many jewelers selling gorgeous stuff at surprisingly reasonable rates. I'm very tempted and Roger doesn't know it yet but he may have to buy me a belated birthday gift. Since our last trip six years ago, we noticed a couple of changes. The first is that the Asians have discovered this tourist destination and there were numerous groups of Chinese and Japanese. Even a couple of the vendor booths were Asian owned. Along with this fact, there are a lot of people who now speak English. Six years ago we had real difficulty here as people only spoke German or Russian along with their Czech.
The atmosphere here is so relaxing. People visiting to drink the spa waters are strolling the promenade along the river, their cups in hand. At intervals there are taps and you see them stopping to refill the speciality cups, a cross between a cup and a teapot. The vessels are shaped like cups but have a spout which comes from the bottom of the cup. This allows the person to drink through the spout while continually taking their exercise along the promenade. There are flowers everywhere, plenty of benches so you can stop to rest and the buildings are just gorgeous, renovated and painted. Horses and buggies clip clop along the road adding an old world charm to the place. It is delightful but for the times you get behind a smoker. It seems a lot of Czechs still smoke. Have to say though the place is incredibly clean.
After enjoying our stroll we walked up the hill to a building that was once an old folks home. It also happens to be the place where my mother got married. I wondered if perhaps they had some old records but it seems they were all lost during the war. However, the lady there had the records of everyone buried in the old cemetery. The list showed the location of each grave and so from there we took a cab to the cemetery and were able to locate several family graves including my great grandfather and mother. We paid the cab driver $9 to wait half an hour for us as we had no means of getting back to town. We are using the hotel WiFi but otherwise are off line. After the cemetery the cab took us to the famous Moser glass factory. After all the previous activity we were more than ready for afternoon coffee which was so good , as was the European baked cheesecake with the chocolate swirl.
Although the many photos that we took came out better than expected it was really hard to do justice to these pieces of art. This factory and the pieces produced here have found homes with Kings and queens of the world since the 1800s. The first Moser started the business from scratch and found notoriety through his innovation of new techniques. To this day pieces are hand made and the artists who work here are still inventing new techniques for blowing and etching and decorating the glass. Needless to say all purchases are way beyond our means but there were many pieces we would have loved to take home. When you see the real deal, you realise how much crap is out there today.
After a rest at home for an hour we headed out again later for a traditional Czech meal of roast pork, Czech dumplings and sauerkraut. We both had the same meal followed by apple strudel and ice cream and we shared a bottle of water. The bill came to $30 for all of it and you can't beat that!
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