Prokopské Udoli

Today is the first day of our holiday, we are having a week off but staying in Prague. This came about mostly because Petra still has a lot of holiday to use up and I should have been working, so I had said to her that she should take a week off and just use some of her holiday, however, I finished my job last Friday because I have a new job to start on the 12th November (next Monday) I realised that I may as well have the week off with her to.

First thing this morning we planned to go the the district offices of Prague 8, where our new flat is situated, so that Petra can begin the process of changing the registered address on her ID and driving licence. It is quite a simple process but as usual with things here, someone will always make it more difficult if they can, and they did. Therefore, we will have to go again on Wednesday with additional documents so that we can complete the the first process, 3 weeks from then we can continue with the second.

This afternoon we decided on a walk in the fresh autumn air, I already pressured Petra into going to an area that I have discovered previously when out mountain biking by myself. It's called Prokopské Udoli (Udoli-meaning valley) in Hlubocepy, Prague 5, south of the city. It's an incredibly attractive area and not really that well known. I'm trying to think how to describe it accurately, it's a spine of rock and cliff formations and forest area with a valley between them, starting quite close to the Vltava river and moving away to the south west. My idea was to get Petra to go with me and make our way as directly as possible up the rocks to the top so that she could immediately see the magnificent panorama of, pretty much, the whole of the city of Prague, and after looking around and taking it all in with our usual game of picking out all the landmarks and points of interest around Prague, to then take a long walk across the high ground making our way along the spine to the west of the Valley, where we could make our way down and stroll back through the valley to the bus stop in Hlubocepy which would take us home. Everything went well and the walk and fresh air was great, although taking a bit longer than I thought it would, we walked for about 3 hours and I got really hungry. The temperature dropped towards the end and it was dark by the time we got back to the bus stop. We also discovered a secret lake between the high rock walls with two swans who tried to mug me for any food I was carrying which by then was nothing more than a few peanuts, good enough for one of them but the other wasn't to partial and kept pressuring me to offer up something else, so in the end I had to do a runner, leaving Petra standing and laughing by the secret lake.

Both back home now and feeling satisfied by our walk, bellies now full of Risotto and ready to watch a DVD starring Wesley Snipes in Contractor.

Here are a couple of pictures from today. Let me know if you like them.

The tree looked interesting with the broken Kite stuck at the top