Into Czechia

Waking up at 3am to head to the train station, since we didn’t know if we could catch a cab this early, we decided to walk. It was 45 minutes through the deserted streets of Krakow. It was too early in the morning to be this sweaty.

The train ride was only three hours long, but was the cheapest option available - probably because of how early in the morning it was. Riding a train in Europe is the best experience, and I think everyone should do it. It is nice and doesn’t jar around like a bus, you get food service and a great view. The experience is night and day compared to the chicken buses we’d gotten used to only a few months ago!

Arriving in Ostrava it seems just like a regular working city, with no amazing buildings, no real downtown square like the rest of Europe, but something feels great about this city. Maybe its just nice to be in a city that hasn’t been over run by tourists, or maybe it just feels more like home to us. We don’t know, but we like it here and feel comfortable.

We check into our place, which ends up being right above the party street, and head out explore some of the city. The first thing we do is buy some meat, cheese, bread and beer and have a picnic in the big park and watch life go by. We are still a little bit sleepy from the early morning train ride, and need the break. It wasn’t until much later when we learned that the park was formerly a graveyard that got covered over and turned into a park. I don’t think that we will be having any more picnics in that park for a while.

The reason we visited Ostrava in the first place was for a Travel Bloggers conference. As a result, we ended up getting quite a few free tours around the city, including a food tour, beer tour and coffee tour. We learnt a lot about the culture through food and beverages which is the reason for our travel and were over the moon with excitement.

Below are photos of what we ate and drank, and the amazing time we had even before the conference. I won’t write much about the conference, because it was mostly about learning how to be a professional travel blogger and can get a bit boring in theory. However, it’s what we’re working towards, so it was a very valuable experience for us. We learnt a ton of information and we met so many amazing people doing exactly what we are doing.

We spent three days in conference rooms learning different aspects of the business and were so excited to start working. On top of the learning, we each got picked for a FAM trip after the event. These are given to bloggers by the tourism industry in order to educate writers and industry people so we can be introduced to unique experiences and different regions. From there, we write about our experiences and share them with you!