Skating on Letna

I haven't posted so much lately because I didn't think anyone was reading it, but my dear old Mum apparently is so here is an update of recent events.

We just got back from Skating, this evening we travelled from home to Letna Park to meet with Jana and Radek for a little social skating, the weather was perfect for it, nice and warm but not so much that you get all sweaty. Of course we managed a little beer during the session. The park is beautiful at this time of year, and people from all over Prague come and make use of the open space. There was a real mixture there, cyclists, skaters, skateboarders, walkers, joggers, kite flyers, footballers and today I also saw a few lads juggling, everybody in harmony getting on with there own little thing, it’s great. The main skating strip is super, but a few of the other paths could do with a makeover. Yesterday we also spent some time skating on a new piece of road by the river Vltava at Troja, it’s a fantastic surface for the blades, but occasionally a little windy in one direction.

We are still talking about and considering a flat in a building called Trojsky Mlyn, also just beside the Vltava river very close to the Prague Zoo. The building is a reconstructed Mill (Mlyn) and retains the central area where the old mill shaft used to operate. With the flat would come a small cellar and underground parking which is so much better. It is big decision though and there are many things that I or we are not sure about. The size or plan of the flat, if we would have enough storage, would the public transport become a pain, is there enough room in the bedroom for wardrobes to? The location is very pretty and there is plenty of green area around for running, walking, skating, biking etc we both like this benefit.

I have been studying hard at my Czech Language school, every morning from 8.45-12.00 I have lessons and also 2 evenings per week. This will change a little in May, I have 2 more weeks at level 3 and then I will continue at level 4 which the school has agreed to run as normally the highest level would be level 3, but fortunately there are a few of us that wish to continue with the studying intensive. So this will go on until 27^th April.

My brother and Helen will visit over Easter, which we are all really looking forward to, we have booked a Penzion in a famous town called Cesky Krumlov for a couple of days and will enjoy some rest and a little culture. Also Daron and Helen will stay in Jana’s hotel for 3 nights which they got as a gift for their wedding, so I think that will leave only a few nights for them to stay with us at the flat, we’ll see them a lot and I am sure it will be fun.

Lional Ritchie

I settled in now with the new school, it's mainly revision for me at the moment as I have already covered the areas of the language that we are studying, however, it is still very useful for me as I am quite poor at Grammar and repeating the areas that we are, has helped me to understand a lot more, so I am really pleased about this. I have one more week at level 2 then can progress to level 3. After this I don't know what to do other than possibly have some private lessons.

We are hoping to buy some in-line skates today, we'll go over to a sport shop in Kobylisy to try some on. unfortunately the weather is awful here today, lot's of rain. We have a better forecast for the week coming thank goodness.

Last night we went to a Lionel Ritchie concert at the Sazka Arena in Prague, firstly a little about the arena, it's the newest in Prague and having now been there I can say that it is an excellent venue, it has been built mainly for the ice hockey, however, it was also built with the intention of having concerts and events there to and it works well. It's also very easy to get to just next to the Metro station Ceskomoravska. The concert was excellent, it was Lionel Ritchies first visit to Prague ever! He performed brilliantly and interacted with the crowd constantly, to make it feel more personal. I was stood about 25m from the stage and had a great view of the whole performance all evening. His performance lasted about 2.5 hours so it was well worth the money.

Yesterday I had a call from the country manager for World Class in Prague but I didn't get to speak to him, so I will see what it's about on Monday.

Weekend trip

We had a good weekend, we hired a VW Polo, I guess it was a new one because it was quite big. I drove it myself, about 460 KM we covered during the weekend. We went to a spa town near the German border, called Frantiskovy Lazne. A really small but beautiful town, with some fantastic scenery on the way, also I saw 2 wild eagles, perched at the side of the road(but they Weren’t wild until I hit them). On the way back yesterday we visited another historical town called Loket, which is incredibly old and beautiful, the castle there is about 800 years old and we went to see it. From there we went to the town Plzen, where one of the big breweries is for Pilsen beer. We went to the top of the church tower, this one was really high and gave us a great view, except I didn’t see the copper who was waiting to pounce on me after we had lunch. We grabbed a late lunch, Pizza then walked back to the car. We struggled getting out of the town, my sat nav tried to take me the wrong way in the one way system, so I ignored it and tried to follow the blue arrows for the one way system, but they are only there to trap you as I found out, the copper following me pulled me over and it turns out we entered a ‚no entry‘ street so I had to produce my licence and he gave me a 500 kc fine. Then he escorted us out of the town onto the motorway. It could have been worse!

So back to school this morning, my studying has been going quite well just lately and i have learnt a lot more. Might not be too long til i can’t speak to Petras parent, so no doubt it won’t be too long until I have insulted them!