Wending our way back home

A week has gone by since our last update and it seems a while since we were in the Swallows Nest.

 We visited the Turda salt mine, wondering if we would see anything much different to what we had seen in the salt mine we visited in Poland last year.  It was well worth visiting, as it was very different, having been excavated centuries later as one huge cavern rather than a series of interconnecting smaller excavations

Most surprising was that the bottom was given over to an entertainments area!

A secondary excavated chamber housed a boating lake

The photos hardly do justice to the size of these excavations, which were about the length of a football field and about half the height.

En-route we saw these people travelling along – the horses and carts and guy on the mobile phone sum up the contrasts of Romania rather nicely!

We wonder, is if it’s an offence to be using a mobile phone while in charge of a horse and cart?  In any case it probably doesn’t matter, since in Romania, as in every other country we visit the mobile phone law seems to be flouted with impunity.

 We visited the Scarisoara Ice Cave, an underground glacier.  On the surface it was about 22C, despite the fact that we were high up in the Carpathian mountains.

Taken on the way back down, of course.  We had about 10km of this gradient on the way up from the already high level we started from!

 The views were spectacular, though the heat haze has meant the photos haven’t picked up the distance too well.

So, to the ice cave

And the glacier itself – not as we usually see glaciers in this way

We stopped just one night in Hungary as it was very hot about 32C, and the campsite by a lake we went to was actually by the levee behind which the lake was to be found, so no cooling breeze off the water.  We stayed one night in Lower Austria, then travelled into Czech Republic, first to Ceske Budejovice, home of Budweiser beer

I ordered two small beers but ended up with two large ones – unfortunately.  I had to help Frances to finish hers. (Oh dear! What a shame!!)

We climbed the Black Tower from which you could see over the city and into people’s garden - well, one garden, ingeniously installed on a roof

From there we continued on to Cesky Krumlov.  Dominated by a huge castle, with rivers running all around, a lovely town square and a few splendid churches, it is one of those places where any direction you look in is a lovely scene. Being a World Heritage Site, and judging from the number of Polish and Hungarian coaches, just about do-able in a day from Krakov and Budapest, it has a ready supply of oriental visitors who stay for about one hour.

It was warm the day we visited, so the climb to the castle was good exercise – some found a good way of cooling off!

 We are now at a campsite by Lake Lipno in Southern Bohemia; this was our view from the window yesterday evening

We will travel on tomorrow towards Bamberg in Bavaria, then towards Calais and the ferry home in the next week or so.