Arriving in Prague

Sunday 4th November

We reached the Czech border by lunchtime. Suddenly things looked different, older and more basic, not quite like the smart Motorway services we are used to in Europe. The biggest change though was that we are now out of Euro land and have to calculate prices. It's east to compare say the fuel price from Belgium to Germany (more expensive in Germany) as the currency is the same. Now we have to get used to approximately 30 Czech to a pound sterling.

We had to buy a vignette to allow us to drive on the Motorways, this will cover us for 10 days and we had to pay 16 euros as we had no Czech currency yet. It probably would have been better to pay on Credit card charged to the local currency. We soon diverted off the Motorway and got to a small local town which had a much poorer feel to it. The buildings looked run down and the shops & restaurants had cheap looking signs. Also it was hard to read much as Czech language is written quite differently to Western European languages, though brand names are still the same. Prices are cheaper than at home and the range of products was good even though half the shop seemed to be full of flavoured bottled water. We bought what we thought was a natural sparkling water but even this was flavoured.

Luckily we arrived in Prague on a Sunday, there was little traffic which was fortunate as the main road we drove down was full of roadworks and it was a bit disconcerting being sent along tram lines in some sections. We had to skirt the centre of the city and get across a major bridge, fortunately we knew where we were heading was close to the zoo which was well signposted. The area we are staying in called Trojska is quite suburban, it's along a street where many of the large houses have converted their gardens into camping areas. Being November only 3 were still open but we found a reasonable basic place Camp Sokol Troja for 310 Kc (£10) per night without electric hookup.