Our Summer Holiday in the Czech Republic – Part 1.

19th August 2017 Lenka Pagan

As you may already know, I grew up in the Czech Republic and every year my son Lucas (7) and I visit for our summer holiday. Usually we travel by plane, but this year we decided to travel by Czech coach – Regiojet by Student Agency.

We were a couple of hours late leaving London – after 1pm instead of 11am – due to a cycling event, arriving in Prague just after 10am, instead of 6.30am, the next morning, Monday 31 July.

The journey wasn’t too bad despite the long delay as we met some friendly people to chat with and each seat had a tablet fixed to the headrest in front with a good selection of movies, music and games. You could also get a free tea or coffee or buy some refreshments from the steward/ess on the couch. Lucas wasn’t the only child on the bus, there was another boy, also called Lukas, who was also 7! The two boys got along well.

Once we had arrived in Prague our first stop was an Italian Pizzeria, in Cerny Most, where we had a lovely vegan pizza. We took another bus journey, only 75 minutes this time, to my hometown, Novy Bydzov.

In the afternoon, we visited friends and relatives and in the evening, we visited an organic farm, http://www.kralickovabiozelenina.cz/ where I bought some fresh produce and booked horse riding for next day with a lovely lady Zuza, my friend and one of the hardest working woman on this organic farm.

The next morning, Tuesday 1 August 2017, was a beautiful sunny day so we went horse riding in the countryside. It was amazing and we’ll certainly do whenever we are back in my hometown from now on. I can highly recommend Zuza’s high-quality service – she is such a professional and a very friendly person. 🙂

We also tested that Yoga can be done anywhere and tried some poses on the horses!

After horse riding we went on another journey – over 3 hours this time by train, to the recreational area Dolce, http://www.kemp-dolce.cz/ where we’d hired a tent. It’s located in the quiet countryside, in the foothills of the Giant Mountains (Krkonose), 4km from the town of Trutnov.

There was no air conditioning on the train – it was about 37C – not the best weather for travelling and too hot for us! 😉 To pass the time Lucas did some more yoga poses.

The first thing we did after arriving at the camp, was to change into our swimsuits and jump into the lake. Afterwards we had dinner in the camp restaurant.

The next day, Wednesday, we had a simple breakfast of organic apple and mango puree (a kind of baby food) with bananas.😉 All the foods mentioned here and more you can see pictured on my FB page, the link is provided at the end of this article.

We then went to catch a bus to go on our first trip to Adrspach-Teplice Rocks, which was about an hour away. Unfortunately, there were not many buses running during the summer holidays, so we ended up walking 2km to the nearest village, Volanov, and waited for a bus there. During the walk we stopped and took a few pictures of the lovely countryside.

Due to the bad bus connections, we decided to postpone our trip to the rocks for another day and explore the nearest town Trutnov instead. And did a bit of shopping too.

After we bought our favourite unhealthy vegan treat, strawberry ice cream. We always have this every summer when visiting back home and it is probably the nation’s the most favourite ice cream as well.

We also stocked up on healthy and organic foods at Mates in Trutnov and my other favourite store DM, where you can find organic, vegan, natural non-perishable foods and toiletries. I so love this store as it reminds me kind of a mini Waitrose, my other favourite store in the UK.

Here you can see our organic (bio) breakfast to which we added some fruits such as banana and blueberries.

We were given some freshly picked blueberries by our new camp neighbours, Lenka (yes, the same name as mine 😉) and her family picked from the nearby forest.

Our first organic dinner at the camp was pasta with tomato ketchup and soya sausage. We ate outside of the tent. It was so lovely that we ate every meal like this.

If we’d had a car then we would have been able to do a bigger shop and get more fresh produce, but unfortunately there were no local shops. The camp was about 4km away from the nearest town, so we had to go with the flow, buy what I could carry and make the best of the weather and accommodation. I think for our first time glamping, we didn’t do too bad!

In the evening we met some more friendly neighbours in the camp and stayed up late chatting. 😉

On Thursday we wanted to try again to go on a trip to the Rocks, but we ended up staying in the camp as we were quite tired from all the walking and travelling of the previous few days.

Since it was very hot, even in the morning, we went swimming in the lake with our new neighbours. Here you can see our simple lunch of wholemeal bread with mushroom pate with cucumbers.

We had rain on Thursday afternoon for a couple of hours so we all had a nap or at least tried to. In the evening, we went for a walk to explore the other side of our camp.

Below is a photo of Lenka, my neighbour and new friend, with her two daughters, doing some chair yoga at the camp’s playground.

We also found a mushroom which ended up in our dinner later that day – vegetable spelt risotto with soya sausage.

On Friday we had an early start as we really wanted to go the Rocks this time, but you would not believe it – we never got there! We even took a taxi to the town this time, as there were no buses. And guess what! The taxi was about 15 minutes late so we missed the train!

So, what to do now? We quickly came up with another plan, thanks to the lady working in the train station, and took the next train to a completely different direction, Ceska Skalice which was about 45 minutes train journey away and about 2km of forest walk to Ratiborice, the place where our national writer of the most beautiful and popular childrens books spent her childhood.

What we found along the way! A little deer, a little snake, a black beetle and even a green dragonfly, the colour of which I have never seen before. I also did a little yoga in the forest. 😉

Finally, we arrived in Ratiborice where we stopped for a refreshing home-made lemonade before continuing on our journey. We visited the famous statue in Babiccino udoli in Ratiborice of the writer Bozena Nemcova.

Further on we visited a water mill which had the original furniture and household items that would have been used in her lifetime. Our next and last stop was Ratiborice castle before getting a lift back to our camp.

When we got back we had our last simple dinner at the camp – organic wholemeal pasta with ketchup and carrots (pictured), which we got from our neighbour Lenka’s garden. By the way, Lucas did the little flower arrangement on the table.

Saturday morning we are saying goodbye to our friend Lenka and her family as they were going home, as was our other neighbour Misa and her family. We all had a wonderful time and promised to stay in touch and hopefully meet again next year.