Budejovice means Budweis in German. And beer from Budweis is therefore Budweiser. You may now wonder why you always thought that Budweiser is an American beer? Well, apparently the founders of a US brewery decided to use the name Budweiser to name their beer back in the 1800s because of the fact that Budweiser is synonymous with good beer.

Obviously, the brewery in Ceske Budejovice (the home of Budweiser Budvar lager) wasn't happy with this and so both breweries have been making beer called Budweiser and fighting about it ever since! If you ask us, the Czech beer tastes better, although we are not exactly beer connoisseurs, but beer always tastes great when you are swanning around on holiday.  Ceske Budejovice has an absolutely massive town square, with beautiful buildings lining all four sides and a stunning fountain in the middle.  We headed straight to the tourist office (be careful parking on the sides of the square, there is no parking on the side of the square where the tourist office is located and the parking inspectors are keen as mustard).

The lady in the tourist office fixed us up with a private room for a reasonable price and the owner (who David named Vlado) came to the tourist office so we could follow him to his place.  Vlado was a large Czech chap who wore board shorts and spoke broken English.  Even though we had agreed a price without breakfast with the tourist office, we had a confusing discussion about breakfast with Vlado.  He insisted that it was "better for him" if he gave us breakfast and we naively thought that meant that it was included in the price that we had agreed on at the tourist office, (and that the tourist office lady had written down for us).  Following a feast of cold meats, cheeses, yoghurt, flat egg omelette, fruit and coffee, the next morning, after stuffing ourselves with food, we found out that it was "better for Vlado" if we had breakfast because it meant we had to give him more money than we had agreed!  Because we only had enough cash on us to pay the originally agreed amount, Vlado had to wait while we went to the ATM and got out some more cash.  Oh, and on the way there, David was pulled over by some scary looking Czech policemen.  After lots of attempts to communicate (lots of hand gestures) and after handing over every travel document on our possession we realised that the problem was that we were driving without our headlights on.  Mind you it was 9am.  It all ended well in the end though, I'm sure those Czech policemen were talking about those crazy Aussies for a while after we left.

Travellers Tip 1:  In Czech Rep you need to drive with your headlights on at all times of day and night.

Travellers Tip 2:  Verbally confirm your accommodation amount with the owner of a private apartment rather than relying on tourist office info and ensure you clarify the deal with breakfast.  If you feel like something is not quite right or too good to be true then follow your instincts.  In the end, we weren't too concerned because the difference in Aussie dollars wasn't significant and we got to witness Vlado pretending to be the next Czech celebrity chef.

Sedlice is a tiny Czech town that we drove through when heading from Ceske Budejovice to Bamberg in Germany. As we drove into town we saw this little shop perched on the corner of a side street with lots of frames in the window. We pulled over for a closer inspection and soon realised that the shop specialised in local, handmade lace products which were made in or around Sedlice.

A lot of the products were actually made by the lovely Czech lady who ran the shop.  I was keen to buy lots of lots of gorgeous things but David convinced me to be practical and we settled on a framed bobbin lace artwork and a painting of a cute cat on a wooden tile.

We found Sopron a bit of a weird sort or town. Perhaps I think it was just one of those days where we feeling a bit tired and judgmental, but for some reason it just didn't make us feel hugely warm and fuzzy.  

Although a highlight was finding a restaurant called Crazy Joes where we stuffed ourselves with Rancho style American food. Not at all in keeping with our tradition of trying the local food but still very enjoyable.  The hotel we stayed at was quite nice but the decor took some getting used to (ala Franco Cozzo - all you Melbournites will know what I mean). We did find a cute little shop which sold local arts and hand crafts where we managed to obtain some contact information of local artists prior to leaving which helped us stock up for the nest.