| Home |
We are on the road again!
We arrived at Frankfurt airport around 5PM after 10.5-hour direct flight from Seoul. We took a train from the airport to the main train station downtown and walked to Comfort Hotel, which I had booked on-line. We spent the next day exploring the "German Manhattan" until we got on a night train to Prague. With its mirror-glass skyscrapers, Frankfurt is a typical big city, but has some nice old sites that you can explore. Here is what we saw in Frankfurt. --> Frankfurt
We arrived at Prague's main train station at around 8:30 in the morning. After we booked a hotel room at an agent at the station, we started dragging our suitcases down cobblestone streets to the hotel. We explored Prague the first 2 days and then rented a car to see some of the countryside. Prague was the most beautiful and artistic city I'd ever seen, and Czech Pivo was the best!! Enjoy the pictures ---> Prague
The lady at the car rental office gave us a useful info about where we should go in the Czech Republik. We got a map and hit the road!
On the way to Cesky Krumlov, we stopped by Castle Konopiste, about 50 km southeast of Prague. It was raining and cold when we got there, which was too bad as we couldn't walk around and enjoy the lake and the castle. We had hot chocolate and took one of the tours coming up. Konopiste has been divided into 3 sections, and you cannot walk freely around it; you must take the tour coming up in the language it is given, The next English tour for us was tour #2, the guest rooms. This castle is famous because its last owner was Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo triggered WWI. We toured the huge collection of animals he had hunted. Lots of them decorated the walls, marked with the date and location of its demise. As every inch of wall space was covered with dead animals of all sorts, the scene looked bizarre and cruel. Our guide said that he had hunted about 300000 creatures during his lifetime - an average of 20 per day! No pictures from this visit since we were not allowed to take any pictures inside, and the weather didn't allow us outside. Bummer...
We continued to Cesky Krumlov in Southern Bohemia, and it had stopped raining and gotten hot again by the time we arrived. After we checked into a hotel, we started exploring this beautiful town. According to the guide book, Cesky Krumlov is the second biggest historical town after Prague and became one of the UNESCO's World Monuments in 1992. I loved the view of this old town from the castle tower. It was fun to explore the narrow winding streets with interesting shops. Here are the pictures of this beautiful old town. ---> Cesky Krumlov
FYI, this restaurant fed us the best Czech dinner! ---> Hospoda Na Louzi
We were thinking about driving to the border of Poland just for fun, but changed our plan and decided to go visit Auschwiz in southwest Poland. On the way to Poland, we stopped by a little cute town called Telc, and continued to Olomouc where we stayed that night. Here are some pictures of those towns. ---> Telc and Olomouc
It was tough to get to Auschwitz with no map and no compass, but we made it!
Our tour started from the camp gate, which has the (in)famous motto "WORK makes FREE" written above. We followed the English-speaking guide, touring the blocks of buildings. Some blocks contain exhibitions with photographs/documents/objects belonging to the victims. Some blocks present prisoners' torturous living conditions. Looking at the Death Wall and the Gas Chamber was heartbreaking. I felt guilty that I didn't know much about all the shocking truth, and have been following up since this trip. While I'm writing this, I can't get all the things I saw and heard out of my mind. I hope history won't repeat itself. Here are some pictures we took at this concentration camp. ---> Auschwitz
We bought a map and also got some tourist info from a lady at the bookstore at the camp. Thanks to our "Mapa Polski," we had no problems driving in Poland!
While we were driving on road #28 to the south from Oswiecim (Auschwitz), we felt like we were in Switzerland! We decided to stay in this beautiful area, and found a nice motel easily. Polish sausage and piwo were so good that we ended up ordering more at the hotel restaurant. We found out that we were in Rabka Zdroj later that night. The next morning, we started driving to Zakopane, which we had heard was a good place to visit. This mountainous area seems popular for skiing in winter and camping in summer, equivalent to Nagano-ken in Japan. We saw many cheese vendors on the street here. Those must be from the enormous cows we saw while we were driving! We spent the last of our Polish zloty on cheese since this was our last stop in Poland. We really enjoyed Polish cheese! ---> Zakopane
We just drove through Slovakia to get an idea what the country looked like. Noticed that street signs contain different letters and spellings. We got out of Poland through Chyzne, and entered Slovakia and soon we saw a stone castle on the top of the hill. After that, we just drove down flat country roads until we hit the Czech border.
Our next destination was Kutna Hora, about 70km east of Prague. This was our last stop before going back to Prague. Here are some picutres from this driving day, including the hotel we stayed at in Kromeriz that night.---> border
We continued on to Kutna Hora the next morning.
We couldn't wait to see the church decorated with human bones, which we had read about in our guide book. It wasn't easy to find the church, but we eventually made it when we were on the verge of giving up. A lady and a girl were collecting entrance fees at the door. They were also selling some souvenirs made of artificial bones.
Here is the story about this church, which I read in the English brochure I got there."In 1278, a famous monk brought a jar of earth from the Holy Land, and spread it over the cemetry of this church. That made people consider this cemetary as a part of the Holy Land, and people from all over Europe wanted to be buried here after they die." I guess the church needed more room for newcomers, and came up with a unique and artistic idea. The guidebook says that 40,000 sets of human bones were used to decorate this chapel. The bones are real. I had never seen anything like this in my life!! After looking at the bones, we drove back to town and visited the huge cathedral, the church of Santa Barbara. Judging by the size of the church, I could imagine how rich this town became after they discovered silver. Here are more pictures ---> Kutna Hora
Going back to Prague was like going back home after a field trip. We went back to the same hotel (pension), and took the car back in the evening.
The best way to explore Europe seems to be by driving, and we really enjoyed it!
Guess what, we didn't see any tollgates while we were driving in Europe. Hard to believe for residents of Nippon.
We enjoyed shopping and a Czech dinner on our last day in Prague.
Off to Frankfurt to catch our flight to Japan via Seoul the next morning.
We had so much fun and learned so many things about the places we visited, and hope we can go back sometime.
Thanks for the inexpensive offer, safe trip, and good service, Asiana Airlines!
| Home |