Cesky-Krumlov, Telc, Olomouc, Kromeritz

In late June and early July, 2005, my family and I (I'm Glenn, by the way) took a trip to the Czech Republik. It had been a long time since we had taken a proper family trip together, since my wife and I usually got vacations at different times and the kids also were in different schools with different vacation schedules. But finally, everything came together, and we decided to splurge and make a trip. We had been wanting to take a trip to Prague for fifteen years, even had it planned one time in the early 90's, but this time we made it happen. You can see the route we took on the map at left.

About an hour south of Prague you will come to the castle of Konopiste. This castle was owned by Franz Ferdinand. For those of you who think Franz Ferdinand is a rock band, he was the nutcase whose assassination is generally considered to be the spark that touched off WWI.

The reason I call him a nutcase is that this man killed what averages out to an unbelievable 300 animals per day over the course of his life. He then had the animals stuffed and mounted, with the date ad place of their demise painted on the mounting plaque. If you take tour 3 (the castle has been broken up into three tours - you can't just wander the house) you will see that he covered almost every square inch of wall space with animal heads.

I couldn't help but think that he deserved to be shot himself. For more information see http://www.worldwar1.com/biohff.htm .

Several more hours down the road you will come to the wonderful little town of Cesky Krumlov. You can't get a picture like this one without a helicopter, so excuse me if I use a postcard picture here. The old and scenic part of town is built in the middle of a gooseneck, and it took us several circles of the place before we figured out the secret of how to get into it - the bridge is less than obvious.

So at first we didn't drive in at all, but rather parked in the parking lot of the castle and walked across a pedestrian bridge to get in. Looking up, we saw this fine view.

We walked across the river into the town proper and proceeded to check a few hotels. After we found one we liked, we asked the proprietress how to get in with a car, and she let us in on the secret.

Once checked in, we just started to explore the streets. We found the whole town to be a living fairy tale with small, winding streets dominated by the castle tower.

One thing that makes the Czech Republik the Czech Republik, we found, is the way they paint rather than chisel. This part of the castle at left looks like it is made from hewn stones with statues carved into the walls, but it's all an optical illusion painted onto the walls. I'm sure it takes some drawing and planning to get it painted on right, but it must be a lot faster in the long run than chiseling the stone.

The beautiful blue skies you see when we arrived only lasted the first day. When we got up the next day it was raining. We climbed up to the castle anyway to get a view of the city, and this is what we saw.

In a way, the heavy skies serve to make the church look more dramatic, like the swirling background of a Van Gogh painting.

This is the way I remember Cesky-Krumlov. Narrow streets, cobblestones, almost no traffic, not many people, and me bringing up the rear behind my wife and kids. As I was taking both video and still shots, I ended up going a little slower.

We ended up walking all over town looking for a place to eat. The first time we passed by this restaurant there some noisy people in there smoking and we gave it a miss. Still, it looked like a place where you could get some authentic Czech food. We looked in our Japanese guide book for inspiration, and it suggested a restaurant that we walked in circles looking for, until we realized it was the place we had passed up. I went in after all, and I liked the atmosphere.

Pork, duck, dumplings, sauerkraut, and a big stein of dark beer. It was just what I was looking for and I didn't go away disappointed. I'm afraid I don't remember the name of the place, but it is right next to the wax museum.

About an hour west of Cesky Krumlov is the city of Telc. Telc is situated around a huge triangular square (I know that sounds strange) and the rows of store fronts look like this.

At one end you will find this church. I believe you can go up in the bell towers. There was a man with a horse cart giving rides around the city.

As you can see, the Czech preference for painting over stone carving is widespread. Those stones at the base of this building are painted on.

That said, the buildings really are ornately painted.

I can't tell you a lot about Telc. We had lunch there, and then we pushed on.

That night we got as far as Olomouc. It wasn't really a destination; it was dark and we needed to pull off the highway and find a place to stay, and Olomouc was the place. We had some recommendations from our trusty Japanese guidebook again, but it was dark and raining and we couldn't see the street signs to figure out where we were. We finally checked into a dump of a place just off the town square, pictured here. The hotel was really Soviet era, with a TV and radio in the room that looked like "the people's radio and TV" from the 60's or something, and they didn't work anyway. The toilet was such a scream when you flushed it that I took a video of it. It started slow and then gradually revved up to a mighty and deafening crescendo. Wild.

In the morning, it was, unfortunately, raining again. There was a stage, visible here, set up in the city center with musical acts being broadcast on the radio. There were a few people listening under their umbrellas, but not too many.

If you look closely just to the left of the blue-roofed stage above, you can see this clock. Not quite on the scale of the one in Prague, but impressive nonetheless. The lower dial had the names of all the saints listed, and you could see which saint's day it was that way. I know that the Czechs are not very religious these days, in contrast with their neighbors the Poles, but evidently they once were.

As we drove through the Czech countryside, we could see field of white flowers. We asked ourselves what there could be fields of that were blooming white in early July, so I pulled the car over and went to take a look. To my surprise, they were field of poppies! Gee, could the Czechs be crazy about poppy seed rolls? Don't know, but here's a shot of a little countryside church surrounded by fields of poppies.

We stayed one night in the city of Kromeritz. If you look carefully at the map up top, you'll realize that this picture is actually out of order, as this was where we were on our way back to Prague after visiting Auschwitz. Anyway, we stayed at the Hotel Excellent, pictured here, and this time we were able to pull into town to find a place to stay when it was still daylight, although the shadows were long and the light golden. The Hotel Excellent really was quite classy and well appointed, with a nice restaurant with tables on the sidewalk. We just stayed the night and then drove on, so I'm afraid I can't say much else about the town.

Although we ran into some weather on the trip, we had a lovely drive across the Czech Republik. I took most of these pictures while we were on our way to Auschwitz in Poland. If you are interested in seeing what we found once we gat there, click the link below.