On Friday, I woke up early and met up with my tour group for breakfast at the hostel restaurant. This tour is 9 days through some Eastern European countries - Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Croatia - with a company called Busabout. This tour is pretty different from the contiki tour that I did back in March. It's a very small tour group (only 19 people on a 50 seat bus). Also, Busabout must be geared towards a slightly older age group; Contiki was mostly e...

Day 2: Yesterday, I did another walking tour. This one went up the hill to Prague castle. The previous day I had done a city tour and a beer tour with the same guide, so we became buddies by the end of this third tour. The castle and the surrounding buildings are very beautiful. There are a lot of beautiful aristocratic palaces, and also tiny little colourful houses. It also helped that the weather was beautiful, making the panoramic view of the city that much m...

Getting to Prague: On Monday, I arrived at the bus station in Vienna to catch my bus to Prague. I was about an hour early, so I sat in the waiting area. There was a TV there showing coverage of flooding. Once I realised that the headline was from Czech Republic I got a bit nervous! There was wifi on the bus, so I emailed the hostel owner asking how bad the flooding was in Prague, and he assured me that all was fine - the hostel was still open and accessible and ...

My day had a bit of a rocky start. I went down to the communal kitchen and had breakfast, and then proceeded to pack my lunch for the day. When I opened my bag in the fridge, I saw that someone stole my cheese and had enough tact to leave the empty wrapper! I thought that was a bit rude, but I still had some deli meat, so my sandwich wasn't completely lost. This morning brought more rain, but like always I braved the weather to make the most of the day. I arriv...

I think I'm becoming too efficient of a traveller! I covered so much today before 3:00pm, that I didn't know that to do with myself! I had a big day planned, so I woke up early and hit the road by about 9:00am. The weather was very beautiful today, which was nice because I planned to be outside for most of the day. I started at Schonbrunn palace. This palace was the summer palace of the Habsburgs (The royal family who lived in the Hofburg, which I visited yester...