August 22 - Back to the Border...almost

Saturday - Karlovy Vary to Cheb
It almost doesn't matter what the rest of the hotel looks like, the breakfast room always looks elegant.

Made Donna feel like being artistic with her breakfast this morning.

It is a little hard to capture in a picture but this is a traffic circle over the top of the river. They didn't need to do much landscaping of the middle!

Blue skies, 50F, and no wind....looks like the Czech Republic is going to try to bribe us to stay.

The Karlovy Vary horse race track.....

 .....with a golf course in the middle of the track.

Beside the elf on the wall, there are also 2 dogs looking out the window...and they didn't bark.

Heading into Sokolov and that is a lot a bare rock up ahead.

It turned out to be an open pit mine that went on for miles. We think they were mining coal as well a other mineral and rock resources.

We were gawking for so long that the police car that passed us earlier stopped when going the other way to see if we were OK.

In Sokolov, there was a road construction project that totally changed our route to Cheb. This was another project just outside town and we are just waiting our turn.

This WWI memorial in Treben has a bench behind it that said it was time for lunch.

Photo courtesy of the local trash can.

This big group of  riders passed us just as we left our lunch spot.

One of the unexpected pleasures of our detour was the town of Frantiskovy Lazne, which was not on our original route at all.

There were extensive park grounds surrounding this central area.

We stopped at the Tourist Info office and picked up a map of the local bike routes.

Donna was waiting for Doug to take a picture when this young woman stopped to chat.....in English. She was very interested in our journey. Rick Steves says that 90% of tourists to the Czech Republic only go to Prague. That is unfortunate for those tourists because the people are so nice and it is a beautiful country.

Route 23 was recommended to us by the Tourist Info office as the way to get to Cheb. It took us along the Ohre River.

And on a dirt path.

Just on the outskirts of Cheb....their sports stadium.....we must almost be there.

The sign next to the door says "call this number"

Our room key is needed to get through this door...coming and going, which feels a little wierd.

But the room is great and our host, Michael helped carried most of our gear up to our room for us.

On our way to dinner.

We must have passed 5 of these nail stores.

Michael recommended that we eat dinner at the Incognito. They were having a company party later that night and all the waiters were wearing costumes. Dinner was excellent.