Prague and Beyond...

Hello everyone from the amazing city of Prague!! It has been a GREAT few days.  The departure from Hyde Park was quite the show with the array of cars and characters.  We ended up convoying with 2 other cars heading to Dover where we saw the beautiful cliffs of, before driving our boat onto the ferry.  We arrived in France about 2 hours later and immediately headed towards Belgium.  Our convoy had grown to four cars, the other three teams consisting of guys from the UK: one Scot, one Irsishman and four English.  A great group of guys.  We exited France pretty quickly into Belgium.  All four vehicles had walkie-talkies going which was helpful for direction comparing, but also useful for walkie talkie kareoke at like 2 a.m.   At 4a.m we stopped in a truck parking area and slept in our car for about 3 hours, woke up at 7:30 and headed onwards towards Germany.  That ended up being a big day as we wanted to make it to Prague that night for the big Rally party being held there.  We got a bit lost in Germany (the highway signs dont display cardinal directions...) and then were held up briefly at the Czech border (a Welsh team we ran into there were strip searched...).  We didnt role into Prague until about 1:30 a.m, exhausted.  Up until that point I had been doing about 95% of the driving so needless to say I was ecstatic to have arrived finally (Jon - you proud of me or what??!!).  Most of the ralliers were parked in this one car park so after getting together in a local pub until about 4 a.m, we put sleeping bags down on the floors next to the cars and attempted to sleep.  Yes, in a car parking garage.  On the floor.  Apparently Alex was not a happy camper with this arrangment so I was awakened at 6 a.m to Alex barking about a hotel he had found.  I would have been happy sleeping on the ground, thats how tired I was, but Alex wasnt taking no for an answer.   The next day we just spent wandering around this amazing city.  My only regret at this point is that we dont have more time here -I'll just have to come back!!  We also have been communicating with a team from New Zealand who are driving our same route eastward so we will be convoying with them now.  Today we head to the Church of Bones in eastern Czech and then on to Bratislava.All is well with the car; Diana is running beautifully, we are very proud of her!  I will start letting the boys drive soon, I just didnt want them to drive in the dark or in the rain, or in complicated cities when their experience with stick is pretty limitted.  They'll be pros by the end tho!  Ok, we are off to find these NZ guys now and continue heading East!  So far this has been amazing, keep posted!!  Pictures will come when we get our act together, but many have been taken, no worries!(Oh, and if Im not a man by the end of the trip I will be very surprised...Suffice it to say there arent many female-ralliers...)