Last updated on February 15, 2023
We watched our bus drive away!
You would have thought that I would have learned by now to read the Google directions ahead of time and make my own plans.
Weeks ago, a friend and I decided to take an overnight trip in November. We wanted to stay at one of the recommendations from Amazing Places, but I could not find any availability for one night on the weekend we chose. I suggested a spa day in Teplice instead. A friend had gone there a few years ago and recommended it.
Getting to Teplice
Teplice is only an hour from Prague so it seemed a good choice. I checked their website to confirm the COVID guidelines and confirmed that we could visit. No appointment was necessary for access to the spa. However, I started worrying that we would have no entry on Friday before our Saturday trip and tried to call the spa all day. I also sent an email. While no one answered the phone, I got an email response confirming the spa is open and no appointment is necessary to visit.
Here’s where Google comes in. I checked the directions from Hradcanska to Teplice and saw we could take a bus from Nadrazi Holesovice. I confirmed the directions on IDOS and purchased two tickets on Regiojet. Sharing the instructions with my friend was the last step.
On Saturday morning, we met as agreed at the tram stop. This is where I went wrong. Instead of thinking about what the most efficient way is from Hradcanska to Nadrazi Holesovice or following the plan from the night before, I outsourced the decision to Google.
Long story short. We started following the directions from Google before I realized that it would throw off our schedule. We revised the plan and made it to the location of the bus stop with minutes to spare. Except we didn’t know where the bus terminal was, got out the wrong metro exit, and the minutes ticked by.
As we walked down a little grassy incline, we watched our bus pull away.
My friend was gracious and said we could just catch the next bus. So we sat at the bus stop for one hour while I bought new tickets on my phone for about 150 crowns.
The trip to Teplice was uneventful. Once we got off the bus, we figured out where Beethoven House is, and headed there. We could see the place and thought we were walking right to it. Instead, we had walked around it; the entrance was on the left of where we’d headed.
After multiple false starts, we had made it to the spa. From my research, I knew that the Thermalium was on the first floor so we headed up there.
Planning A Day At the Spa
The Thermalium provides access to the swimming pools and saunas. For treatments, you have to go to the zákaznícke centrum on the ground floor. When we were there, only one guest/group could be served at a time. There were no massage bookings available; we could only make a reservation for the salt cave.
We spent 45 minutes in the salt cave and about 2 hours in the pool and sauna. There were two pools, 5 or 6 saunas, and a cold plunge pool. The Finnish sauna provides a nice contrast to the plunge pool. A cold dip is refreshing and invigorating. If you go to Teplice, try to stay in the cold plunge for 2 minutes. It’s an exhilarating challenge.
We arrived in Teplice at about 11 am and left the spa at about 16:30. This gave us a chance to grab dinner from a Cuban restaurant before catching the bus at 18:00 back to Prague.
A Few Random Pics in Teplice
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