Our drive back to Czech Republic and onwards to Belgium

We started driving out of Gdansk and all was great. We are making great time and earlier then we had thought, as we were finding no Amber which we could afford to re-sell. Gdansk Amber is for retail customers on a holiday. Many nice jewelry pieces, sculpture and so much more, just not at wholesale prices. We will have better luck next year going to Lithuania, where we already have several wholesale sources. Watch for our future Amber Trail Tour dates.

Guy of course is enjoying some of the sausages he got while shopping in the Gdansk market.

                 Saw a cute little lookout tower top while driving along a country road.

We were making such great time and made it all the way to a nice hotel in Jelenia Gora, Poland by 5pm. They had 3 beds in our rooms, so maybe next time a certain Grandson could come with us.

Guy was so enjoying his dinner, that he decided to have a ice cream for desert. J-Me was being very good, as she was waiting for those chocolates in Belgium. 

So after dinner, Guy was talking to the waiter and he admired Guy's tie dyed T-shirt. Guy decided he would take it off and give it to him. So now, Karol has a really nice Oregonian shirt! Good thing that Guy had his leather jacket with him.

And of course we had a lovely Polish breakfast spread of all kinds of food. Guy was in heaven.

Next morning we woke up early so we could make another stop at the glassware shop. We think we needed some more glassware for our customers to see in Tucson. Make sure you stop by our booth at Jogs in Jan/Feb.

and then onwards into Czech Republic, we had to take a little stop to be one with nature in the woods, so Guy could take a little pee stop under a tree. We thought it was such a pretty trail, we went for a walk for about 20 minutes.

And take a look at all these lovely mushrooms we saw. And yes, we know, Do NOT eat the red ones, as they are poisonous or can make you very sick. But what fun it is to take photos of them!
We met two men who had their baskets and were out mushroom picking. J-Me had seen some which she thought were edible and showed them to one of them, He smiled and said yes, those were good to eat.

We decided to make a few more stops, which one of them had to be a Bead factory. J-Me was in a much needed bead fix. So we spent a few hours and picked out some beads to send back home. And yes, those are some uranium glass beads you are seeing here. We will have some of these beads available at our JOGS booth in Tucson, and on our Facebook selling pages.

So we have lunch in Jablonec one last time, before we head into Prague. Before we drive away, Guy spies the bakery he likes to get goodies at. So we stop and buy a bunch of them for later.

We must leave our home away from home and head to the Prague Airport.

                                         We will be leaving on AirFrance to fly to Belgium.

So you know when you walk thru a airport and they have various art on display? Well, this time it was a Vintage Skoda car. I must say that I have never seen a Skoda we liked, but J-Me feel in love with this one. Do you think they would notice if it disappeared????

Off we fly to our first stop, which is in Paris, where we take a train to Brussels, Belgium. Guy is like a little kid running around taking photos, he is so excited to be going on a train. He misses those train rides he took as a kid in Rhodesia.
Guy watched while they loaded our luggage. He is always concerned he will see our luggage end up somewhere else.

J-Me was trying to figure out what everything meant on the train tickets.

This station attendant had a whistle she blew to get people away from the track, when the train was about to arrive.

And here is the train arriving!!! Yipppeee, another place to go see.  Brussels- here we come!

We get to Brussels and have to then take a bus to get to out hotel. Now trying to find someone to help us figure out which buss to take and how to get Euro money to get on that bus. J-Me found a information booth, which was for train tickets and the woman was a bit upset that someone would just not know how to go to the correct bus. finally she understood we have never been to Belgium before, let alone Brussels. So a older man helped us out and told us which bus to take and where to find the bus. Outside and around the corner under the water. Huh? well, next was the explanation to try to get money exchanged. He told us we could only use the atm machine, which we did not have any atm cards which are accepted in Europe. so we went over to a western union wot find out there was a noter booth next to it for exchanging money. Yeah! Next was to find the bus we needed. We walked out of the train station to find buses everywhere. Now to figure out the one under the water. Well, it was really under the overpass. We found the correct bus and got on it with all our luggage.                            
                                                         Well, that was fun!

We get off on our stop, which is supposed to be near our hotel. We walk up and down several streets and fro not see the name anywhere. So finally Guy says to J-Me, "wait here with all the suitcases and I will go ask at some of these stores and inside those other hotels". about 45 minutes later, J-Me is wondering if she should find a police to help find Guy or maybe end up sleeping in the church where she is sitting on its steps. Guy comes walking up to say that he had found it and it had a key code to get into a gate, then up several flights of stairs (which turned out to be 4 flights, of which each flight had two landings, so really it was 8 flights of stairs).  But in order to get the key code, Guy had to go into the restaurant on the first floor and get the information from them to get in. There was no one to greet us, no front desk, no key to get in and it turns out it is NOT a hotel at all, but a flat. After we are both in our room, we look around and think ..... hmmm, this will have to be okay, as where else can we go now?! It is clean and very modern, not what we normally like in Europe. It has a toilet in one very small closet room, a shower and a sink in another room, and the main bedroom with a desk area, which also has a mini fridge, a hot water pot, and some coffee cups. We can do this! We are both so tired, we lay down for a nap. J-Me sleeps thru the night and Guy wakes up to go walk on the street for awhile, finding a little grocery store to buy some food.



                                               What an adventurous day we have had!