Day 20

74 km, Usti nad Labem-Kralupy nad Vltavou

We slept in late today, and left Usti around 1 o'clock. The first part of our trip was on a bicycle path along the river Labe. A note for the future if you are pulling a cart: take a detour before you come to the dam, because that involves carrying your bike up and down some stairs. A challenge, but there were several helpful other cyclists there who helped. Anyway, by 2 o'clock we still didn't ride more than 9 km..

We're glad we followed the path further, as it turned out to be full of little restaurants just for cyclists. Just imagine a garden full of parked bicycles, and tables with just as many bicycle helmets as beer glasses, and happy people enjoying the shade. All in all, we might have seen more cyclists today than during our entire trip so far.

In all, we have the impression that the Czech countryside has retained much more life than what we saw in Brandenburg. We remember the day when we cycled through village after village for 70 km without a single place to buy anything, and now we had places everywhere, both restaurants and small and big groceries shops ("Potraviny" is a useful sign to look for).

We had another few stops for small meals and to rest. At one stop, in Litomerice, we bought some water melon in a little shop, and sat down at the curb in front of a train station. Not maybe the perfect spot for a picnic, but it did fine. After cycling three hundred meters later we discovered the most beautiful park...

Our final stop was in Kralupy nad Vltavou, 20 km from Prague, where we stayed at Hotel Sport. Although modernized and probably more welcoming than in the past, it had a clear heritage from the communist times. First, who today would build a "Sport Hotel" with a long, wide stone stair case to the entrance of brownish glass doors. Old black and white clips with Karel Gott on tv in the restaurant. A perfect time machine, worth a visit. :-)