Day 3

The day started with a very civilised Prague Hilton style breakfast and then the whole party met up for a tour of Prague. We started with a bus tour to Prague Castle, which isn't a castle in the way we understand it in the UK, more of a very upmarket stately home. Unfortunately, nothing was open so we couldn't go inside at all - a real shame since we were all absolutely freezing!

Have you heard of defenestration? Well this is where it happened. The Czechs used to hold their government meetings in this castle and if someone became unpopular they would throw them out of the window. Apparently one bishop survived the fall because he landed in a manure heap!

Prague is known as the city of a thousand spires, and you can see just a few of them in the photograph taken from the Charles Bridge.

There were huge crowds in the square waiting for this ancient clock to chime for the hour. It was the only time we were warm all day, squashed in the crowds like that. It wasn't particularly spectacular when the hour arrived, but the clock was beautiful.

After that we left the group and went in search of hot drinks, woolly hats and lunch.

In the afternoon we set off by coach to head to the ship, the Viking Fontane, which was to be our home for the next week.

We were shown into our cabin, small but it had everything that we needed. 

We then headed back to the Viking Lounge for tea and a welcome from Simon, our Programme Director, who told us a bit about the boat and the cruise.

That's Milan you can see playing the piano, our resident musician.

We then had time to unpack and change before heading down to the restaurant for dinner.

In the evening we were entertained by a group of Czech musicians and dancers. We were a bit sceptical about the idea of folk dancing and music, but they were magnificent.