A Weekend Drive

It is over a month since my last entry here. I have been busy working and spending the weekends doing things and seeing things, but I haven't taken the time to write about them.

I have just under three months left here in Prague and am trying to make the most of it. We decided that we should have a car here now that it is Spring. We can travel at weekends to explore the country. I flew to the UK on Friday so that Sue and I could bring my car out here over the weekend.

We left the house at about 5:15 on Saturday to drive to the tunnel. Our check-in time was 7:20 and we arrived in sufficient time to get a second breakfast at the terminal before checking in. The check-in and journey to France went very smoothly, and we were soon settled into our journey along the autoroute. Sue drove through France, Belgium and across the south-east tip of the Netherlands where we stopped for lunch just before the German border.

I took over after lunch and drove through Germany for about 150 miles while Sue had a snooze. She then took over until we arrived at Nuremberg at about 6:30. We found a hotel after a slightly fraught drive through the city, and after a shower we went off to explore the old town and have dinner.

We had no idea beforehand that Nuremberg would be so pretty. We had walked around the centre during the last of the daylight and had a quick beer before looking for a restaurant.

We were delighted to find an authentic bierkeller and had a hearty dinner there. The cuisine was quite similar to Czech food with lots of pork, dumplings and cabbage.

On Sunday morning we found the hotel restaurant crowded so we decided to eat in town. There was a lovely pavement cafe serving a good selection of breakfasts. Sue had croissants and I had ham and eggs. We had decided to stay and explore the town until lunchtime so we walked up to Albrecht Durer Platz, the city walls and the castle.

We weren't too hungry by twelve, so lunch consisted of an ice-cream sundae before we set off on the road once more. Sue drove out of town, only slightly hampered by my GPS-assisted navigation. She drove as far as the German-Czech border, which took about an hour, and we stopped there to buy a motorway vignette. I took over to drive the rest of the way to Prague, and we arrived at the flat at about 4:45. The overall journey was about 800 miles.

We enjoyed the trip, especially with the bonus of the visit to Nuremberg, and realised that driving to Germany for holidays would be quite practical in the future.