It didn't take long to remember why we love Czechia

Up early and driving right away Wednesday morning. The cloud and rain from Tuesday was a one day anomaly, and we woke up to clear blue skies and sunshine!

The original plan was to head for the city of Brno. But when we pulled over for a breakfast break I was looking at the maps and noticed all of the cycling routes at the large town of Uherské Hradiště located on the Bata Canal.

So we stopped there instead. It's easy to get sidetracked in Czechia. We were here in August of 2012 (then called Czech Republic), and it didn't take us long to remember why we loved it then. There is an amazing network of well marked hiking and biking trails in the whole country!

We could easily live here for six or eight months during the summer. So much to keep us busy.

Scenery along the way (still in Slovakia).

Close to the Slavkia/Czechia border.

Entering Czechia.

Czechia is part of the European Union (EU) and the Schengen zone. Since we are already in the Schengen zone when we crossed into Hungary, there are no border controls between Slovakia and Czechia. You can see in the photo above all of the trucks. There was a lot of truck traffic on this highway and we had breakfast in the big parking area. We decided to take a more rural route once we left there.

That's better... no trucks.

Driving through a small town.

We arrived at the large town of Uherské Hradiště where they have a free motorhome parking area right downtown with free electricity. 

First thing we had to do was to get more internet. Very frustrating! We had bought a SIM card in Slovakia and were told that it would continue to work through Czechia, Germany, and Denmark. And they didn't lie... it was working, but at dial up speed! It turns out that in countries that don't have an Orange Cellular network, it will still work, but ridiculously slow. 

So we got another SIM here from T-Mobile Czechia. We got lucky and the guy helping us spoke really good English, even though he swore he hadn't used it since high school. He got us all set up including downloading the app for us and making it work in English. Nice guy! A little more expensive here though, at 10 GB of data for 469 korunas ($25.60 CAD, $20 USD, €19).

We went for a quick walk around the downtown area.

Big town square.

People enjoying the beautiful day.

Interesting decorations.

Town square.

The train station.

Courtyard of the St. Francis Xavier Church.

The church was built between 1670 and 1686.

Holding up the balcony.

Another square.

We went back to Max, had some lunch, and then took off for a bike ride along the canal.

Yes, it was a gorgeous day!

Bike route map.

All of the pink lines are cycling routes.

The canal is 53 kms (33 miles) long.

The canal was built between 1933 and 1938.

They say it's popular with pleasure boats, but we didn't see any yesterday.

We ended up doing about 20 kms (13 miles). 

We've now decided that we're going to avoid the city of Brno. There are things we want to see there, but it will have to wait for another time. Today is another beautiful day so we are headed north of Brno to an area that has a lot of caves and gorges... as well as many hiking and biking trails.  Like I said, it's easy for us to get sidetracked here!

Did I mention that Czechia has over 400 breweries?!

Another reason to love Czechia!

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Nice price drop on Thermacell Mosquito Repellant Refills.

And in Canada...

Greenworks Cordless Leaf Blower.