It's been a long time since I felt like exploring a town. We stopped in Hradec Králové, yesterday, and it had a nicer feeling about it than most of the cities and towns I've seen this year, but after an hour, the traffic and noise had done their worst, and I really felt like I'd seen it. We hit the road.

In the evening, we came into a beautiful little town with a pretty park and plenty of trees. The park was full of statues of people you never heard of and treehouse-style garden buildings, which gave it a very homely and safe feeling. It was going to be home for the night, but every kid around there had a scooter and was apparently determined to show us. When 3am ticked past, and we were still being disturbed by drunkards shouting at themselves, rice boys revving whatever engines they could afford on supermarket wages, and someone apparently having a good look at Burt, we called it a day and moved on. When we finally did stop for the night, it was in one of the free spaces along a side street in Jičín.

The following morning, we had a good, long stroll through the town and some of the outer reaches, taking in the castle tower and everything between the bus station to the cop shop. To my surprise, there was still some interest left in me by lunch time. Score one for Jičín. That's good going.

Throughout the day, I saw more than a few arrangements that took me back to Barcelona, and in particular, some of my favorite parts of it - barrios El Born, Barri Gòtic, El Raval and Ciutat Vella - and the clear, blue sky in Jičín didn't shatter the illusion.

Jičín has an old wall running through part of it, like a lot of old towns, and the dry stone even has an Italian feel. In the tourist center ('old town', as historic centers are usually called, here), a handful of sculptures that actually work, including a dragon that reminds me of Wales. And, even though the town is mostly aimed at visitors, it didn't feel tacky, but more 'lived in'.

All in all, we stayed put for a couple of days - long enough to need a launderette - and I found a great camera shop, chocked full of retro parts and picked up a lens adapter and a case for one of my Instax cameras that I' d been looking for for ages. Score another one for Jicin.

But, on the last day, as I approached my fourth full lap of the town, the novelty was wearing thin and the wanderlust was kicking in. After a coffee in one of the cosier cafes, we were back out on the road, looking for somewhere else to be. But that wasn't before taking a few pics of the, erm... artwork. :)

I also would have taken one of the imaginarium, just because it looked like fun, but a bunch of mothers appeared and coochie-cooed their toodlers to death for longer than I could bear, and short of manually clearing them from the frame, I decided to give up. Even so, Jicin was a nice stop and a town I'd recommend looking at, if you're in the area. And the parking is pretty much all free, which is a huge bonus.

This one is just for the word 'hilarion', which I'm kidnapping in place of 'hilarity'. Look for it in a post near you!

Bit of um.. Yeah.