Letter about keeping the kids amused

A lot of people ask us how we keep the kids amused and occupied when we travel – I always find that a pretty strange question because with free time and imagination surely kids (of the age ours are) can keep themselves amused anywhere, pretty much??? There are another couple of things that help though – trying lots of the local snack food, and finding a playground every now and then!

In Cesky Krumlov we tried out the Trdelnik – a kind of doughnut baked around a cylindrical spit then covered with your choice of almonds, walnuts or spiced – the kids loved it – so did we!! They made for a perfect snack when we’d finished our amusing tour of the castle!Our second day we pottered around Cesky and did a lot of nothing much – the town is really well known for rafting – it’s set around some meandering bends in a river and I first read about it in the book 360 Degrees Longitude which has a particularly amusing account of backpackers getting pissed up and going rafting down the weirs. We spent some time over those few days in cafe’s overlooking the river and watching some of these mad people ourselves – rafting down with their crazy hats on, their dogs on the back of their canoes, their shouts and screams and whoops of laughter – yes, we reckoned they’d probably all been partaking in the local grog – a warm rum drink – they probably had to cos it was so bloody cold in Cesky!!! And for that reason we declined all offers of rafting – we are tropical souls and rafting down a cold European River in 10 degrees C would just not be fun!!! Not to mention we only had 1 pair of trousers each and no waterproofs!!!

So, in the course of our pottering we did also find a playground – and a stall just by it which sold mojito’s – perfect – kids happily playing, and Mama and Baba keeping warm! We therefore visited it a couple of times 🙂

And that almost covers our few days there – blissfully relaxed, with the right amount of things to see and fabulous food and drinks…. follow our further travels in the Czech Republic next…. Kirsty