Beers and bicycles

In the past 16 months, we've been to more than our fair share of tourist hot spots – places like Amsterdam, Oktoberfest, Rio, Machu Picchu, Barcelona, Cinque Terre... – but we've never been to a place more saturated with tourists than Prague (OK, there was Rome. But hey, it's Rome).

Walking through the narrow streets of the old town, it was almost like we were drowning in lairy-clothes-wearing, map-deciphering, ice-cream-eating, loud-speaking tourists.

Yes, I agree it's pretty hypocritical to be bagging out tourists when we are, by definition, tourists ourselves (minus the visors and bumbags), but I don't care. Trillions of tourists trying to cross the Charles Bridge at the same moment you are is just plain annoying.

But who can blame them? Prague is cheap (by European standards), stunning, and boasts some of the best beers in the world – it's no wonder every man and his guidebook is flocking there!

Preferring to watch the crowds rather than navigate our way through them, we found an overpriced bar near Charles Bridge and watched the world go by as we tried Budweiser Budvar (not to be confused with the cheap American Budweiser).

Once we downed a few pints, we decided to hike our way up to the castle, which, while providing some spectacular views, wasn't as fabulous as the guide books make out.

With only one full day left in Prague, we decided to pack in as much as we could by doing a bicycle tour of the city. It was bums on seats for over two hours as we zoomed past the Charles Bridge, John Lennon wall, a billion beautiful buildings and a gazillion statues.

All that cycling makes you thirsty! So it was off to a cheap, local pub for some beer and traditional grub – er, I think we ate pig brain, not sure.

In typical tourist fashion we only spent two full days enjoying Prague. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

Back to the UK

NOTE: Catch-up post

One thousand six hundred and fifty five – the number of freckles on Lindsay Lohan's stomach, the amount of times per day Craig thinks about food, and the distance (in kilometers) we travelled in two days to get from Cesky Krumlov to the UK.

Like bats outta hell we drove across four countries (five if you count the UK), praying we would get back to England incident and accident free. 

God musta been on his lunch break, cause just a few hundred meters after we crossed the border from the Czech Republic into Germany, we drove past a German police car parked on the side of the freeway. We'd seen lots of the green and white patrol cars on the super-fast German highways, and we'd shat ourselves every single time – we'd heard plenty of stories about the German police screwing over foreign motorists for teeny misdemeanours such as not having 3cm of tyre tread. So when this particular cop car started tailing us, and then proceeded to pull us over, you can imagine we were pretty freaked out.

Surly and authoritative – just the way I like my police! We scrambled around frantically when they requested our passports and registration papers, jumped out and eagerly unlocked the van doors when they asked, ripped out the entire contents of our backpacks so they could see there was no drugs or weapons inside, and stood there patiently while they searched our van and ran passport checks on us.

Eventually, they let us go – fine and jail-term free. But the whole event just confirmed we were doing the right thing by abandoning the van trip.

Other than a stop overnight in Frankfurt and some seriously painful traffic jams on the German motorways, the rest of the journey was pretty uneventful – the Big Guy Upstairs musta finished his Chicko roll and choccy Moove.

The relief we felt when we hit the road in the UK was akin to that felt by the entire world when George Bush handed over the keys to the White House. We were back to driving on the left side of the road, we could read all the signs, and if anything horrible were to happen (like a ball joint breaking and careering off into a ditch), we'd be able to communicate to passers-by and mechanics alike. 

But it wasn't all fun and games. We had planned to live in a caravan park just outside London until we sold the van. But when we arrived at the camping ground in Chertsey, we realised that not only were we in an absolute hole about 50 kilometers outside of London, we were also paying £15 a night for the privilege of staying there.

This was not on. So after a few frantic phone calls to my London-based pal Jackie, we arranged to stay at her place in Clapham for a 'couple of weeks', until we found jobs and our own place to stay. Our London experience was about to begin....

Down on our luck and dossing on an friend's couch – doesn't get more Aussie-in-London stereotypical than that!

Cesky Krumlov, a police encounter and the beginning of the end

NOTE: Catch-up post.

If I had to describe the town of Cesky Krumlov in three words, I'd probably go for quaint, charming and picturesque (thanks thesaurus.com!). Cesky is the ideal pit-stop for the travel-weary backpacker, a place where they can simply stop, relax and take their time exploring the cobblestone streets of this pretty little town.

But for us, Cesky will forever be tainted with the title of The Place We

Decided To Ditch The Van – or something to that effect...

Completely exhausted from our Oktoberfest adventures, we packed up our tent, said goodbye to The Tent and journeyed into the third country of our van tour, the Czech Republic.

Grey skies, dodgy roads and a high percentage of people who looked like serial killers – our first impressions of the country were pretty crap to say the least. Driving down the narrow country lanes, we both played hypotheticals – 'What the hell would we do if we broke down here?', 'What if a ball joint broke now?', 'What if those people standing there with rifles see our Great Britain number plates and want to kill us?'... sure beats number-plate bingo!

There's nothing like a policeman coming up to your vehicle's window in a foreign country to put you at ease. Since the main area of Cesky is a vehicle-free zone, we drove as far as we could and I jumped out to go find us some suitable accommodation for the night – since we were both really sick from four freezing nights in a tent, we decided to treat ourselves to a decent night's sleep in a hotel. While I was running madly about the town, some police saw Craig illegally parked and decided to pay a visit. Luckily, they were very nice about the whole situation (and spoke English to boot) and directed Craig to a nearby carpark. Unable to find anything in our price range (cheap), I stumbled upon a van-less Craig searching for me.

Over it, we decided to head into the nearest hotel and, luckily for us, the prices were somewhat bearable. A warm room with real beds, our own en suite and a TV that had 471 channels in every language but English was exactly what the doctor ordered. After lying around and showering, 

we decided to loosen our purse strings that extra bit further and treat ourselves to pizza for dinner – justifying it by telling ourselves that we were kitchen-less and had no other choice.

'You don't want to go back to the van now, do you?' joked Craig the next morning after after sleeping in an actual room in an actual bed.

'No!' I started crying, the thought of ever having to drive anywhere or sleep in that horrid van ever again filled me with dread.

A serious conversation about how much we hated the van and were struggling to enjoy ourselves because of the constant worry about our safety ensued. I just knew that if something Bellebrune-esque were to happen again, I just couldn't cope. We saved up for two years and gave up our jobs so that we could have the time of our lives, not to watch our bank accounts plummet while we eagerly counted down the days before the trip was over.

The decision was made, a 'for sale' ad was promptly put on gumtree.com

and a huge weight was lifted from our shoulders. We were gonna head back to the UK the following day, sell the van and postpone our travels until summer, after a stint of living in London – and all this was decided over the free hotel breakfast, we Couchsitters don't mess around, y'know.

So, sorry Cesky, we did think you were beautiful, but we couldn't really take it all in – we kinda had more important things on our minds.

The comeback post

It was inevitable.

From the moment I started this blog there was always gonna be a time when I went off the rails and metaphorically shaved my head, hired and fired several assistants, forgot to wash my hair for weeks at a time, went to rehab, lost custody of my children and stepped on stage at the MTV awards in a bikini having eaten a few too many In-N-Out burgers.

Keeping a blog is damn hard work — even when you are narcissistically posting about you and only you, it can be hard to maintain the enthusiasm. Combine that with the insanely high cost of internet in Europe (€4 an hour!) and some seriously stressful moments, you get a blog that's as neglected as Sean Preston and Jayden James.

But in true Britney style, the blog is back!

For now, I'll give you a quick rundown of what's been happening in the dramatic world of Lisa and Craig ('cause unlike Brits, our every move isn't splashed all over Us Weekly, OK! and PerezHilton.com), then over the coming weeks I'll get you fully up to speed with some more in-depth posts.

So, here's what's happened since we left you in Paris...

• We made our way to Dijon, France, where we met some other twenty-something Aussie vanners at our camping ground.
• We hotfooted it to the Black Forest in Germany, where we spent our days trying to decipher menus (schlachtplatte or tafelspitz, anyone?).
• We totally rocked Oktoberfest, drinking beer by the stein and eating pork by the knuckle.
• Once the Oktoberfest festivities were over, we made our way to Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic — the most picturesque place I have ever been. It was here we made our decision to drive back to the UK and sell Ace VANtura, aka 'the bane of our existence'.
• 1,400 kilometres and two days later, we were back in the UK and sleeping on my friend Jackie's floor.
• We slept on Jackie's loungeroom floor for five weeks, while we got jobs (Craig a three-month contract at an insurance brokerage, me some freelance gigs at You and Your Wedding, Star, Zest, new!, more! and OK!) and found a place to live.

Phew! And here we are, living and working in London about 60 days before schedule.

Stay tuned for further updates. Here's to the comeback of both Britney and the blog.