Brief weather report: the sun was observed in Karlovy Vary today and the temperature was pleasant.

I played Lyn Mortimer from Australia again today. She played very well, I escaped with a 64 67 (8) 63 win. I had a match point at 54, second set and Lyn won a long, hard fought rally. I got down 50 in the tiebreak and 63, rallied to 66 and missed a couple of balls wide, so it was onto the third set. In the end I made a few less errors than Lyn though she made a lot more winners than I did and I eked out the win. It was  good match.

After the match, I transferred my luggage from Ellen Neumann’s car (she was off to Munich, which is home) to that of Stuart and Wendy, Aussies who live in Japan…and whom we played first round in mixed. They invited me to stay at their rented apartment tonight, and their landlady helped me book my bus ticket to Prague for tomorrow morning.

After lunch we went down into Karlovy Vary, to take some photos, and look around the town. There’s a big film festival going on this week here and later in the evening the streets were really crowded. The tone of the people wandering the streets changed too, from older Eastern Bloc tourists to a younger, hipper crowd that’s more international. I actually heard a few American accents today, which was a first. The town is really gorgeous, despite all the film festival posters in the waterway!

Czech Republic is also known for it’s glass…including chandeliers which can be found in some of the many glass stores here. 

Here are a few photos, and I’ll be posting more online once I have the bandwidth for it.