May 13 - First official day of our Czech Tour

Guy left for the Prague airport early in the morning to go pick everyone up in the van.

Once we got back to the hotel, where some of us had lunch. (some of us were not there, Mom and J-Me, because they were shopping and lost track of time), everyone checked into their rooms. After being fortified,  off we went to our first appointment to see production of Fire Polish Beads being made. It was nice to see how it is made. But loud, wet and dirty.

Then on we went to a stockroom of beads which had pressed beads, fire polish and lampwork beads to offer. We could even go into production to create our own colors. Which some of us did.

Once we were finished Guy dropped some of us back at the hotel to wait for the next appointment who was coming to us at our hotel.
                                              Handpainted glasses and vases. They hand painted each color and fire it in a oven one color at a time. Some even have real gold painted on them.

The others went on to see a local bead store and what they had to offer. No one was very impressed, as they had many Chinese and Indian low quality beads to offer. Such a shame not to see Czech glass beads at this shop.

We all went off to various restaurants for dinner. Some to eat Chinese, a few of us went to have a lovely Italian dinner which is very near our hotel.
               
                       The evening ended for some of us with a nice glass of Moravian wine.

Actually, it ended in our room with a couple shots of Slivovice and Hrudslovice and a gift from the hotel of a bottle of moonshine cherry slivovice.(the cooks private stash - Jakob the young receptionist gifted it - hopefully the cook won't mind!)

The youngsters in the group slept while we all partied in our room - what they don't see they won't miss!