Onward to Pottery Town

We both woke up around 3am, but did manage to get back to sleep, a real feat after coming to Europe. Usually we are awake in the wee hours and can't back to sleep. Mary started to fade in the afternoon. Perhaps my superb driving. (I actually took a nap after arriving at the hotel.)

Speaking of driving -- our car has a navigation system. We tried it today. From Pilsen to to the town Most it worked fine, but when we tried to put in our next leg, it didn't understand construction, detours or the fact that some roads had new turns or new numbers. It said we were "off road," and to follow the arrows on the screen. We avoided some right turns it insisted on because there was only a field with corn stubble there. We tried "follow signs" that pointed to the city we wanted to go to and that only made the system "mad' and point back down the road we had just come down. Of course we were going South when we thought we should be going North. The SOLUTION...turn it off and go back to the tried and true "Mary the Navigator System (vers. 1)" which worked perfectly and we arrived at our hotel without a problem from that point on. Hurray for MTH (vers. 1). The moral of this to you computer folks is don't throw out your old software until you figure out if the new stuff works. We did go through some beautiful countryside - the northwest part of the Czech Republic, the southeastern corner of Germany, and then into Poland.

We are staying at the most delightful place, "The Blue Beetroot," in a little village by Boleslawiec - the pottery town. It is an old restored 18th century barn. The story goes that back in 1791 this area of Poland was all planted with beetroots and that one of the most popular uses for beetroot was moonshine! It was secretly brewed in the cellars of the barn. We are so glad that we decided to stay here for two nights. We had a delicious dinner - Charlie had meat filled pierogi and I had goulash on potato pancakes - yum!

Off to get a good sleep so we are ready to hit the pottery shops and explore the town!