We shuffled the schedule a bit to make sure we cover as many of the things we’d intended while we are here. On our river cruise we had a choice of visiting Salzburg or Cesky Krumlov. We decided that we would go to Salzburg which we both thoroughly enjoyed with the knowledge that we could pick up Cesky Krumlov from Prague. That seemed like a good idea until we started working on the logistics and in the end it was about a 3 hour train trip plus a twenty minute walk which was down hill into town.
Our experience with the Czech people has generally been that they don’t smile a lot, but they will do everything they can to help. We have learned that a shake of the head doesn’t always mean ‘NO’. The other oversight for today on our part was the most museums and palaces are closed on Mondays, as was the case today. It wasn’t really a big impact, but I’m sure the palace would have had it’s own degree of opulence… hard to beat those Hapsburgs though!
Český Krumlov is a town in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 13,000 inhabitants. It is known mostly as a tourist centre, and is one of the most visited places in the country. The historic centre with the Český Krumlov Castle complex is protected by law as an urban monument reservation, and since 1992, it has been a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its well-preserved Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture.
The town itself is pretty ‘touristy’ with lots of jewellery, souvenir and food shops, although I still forgive that for the privilege of exploring the laneways, churches and restaurants. There were lots of tour groups there today, but it certainly didn’t feel as crowded as some of the other places we’d been.
The Český Krumlov Castle was founded shortly before 1250 by a local branch of the noble Vítkovci family. The town was established in two stages. The first part called Latrán was built spontaneously below the castle, settled mostly by people who had some administrative connection with the castle. The second part was subsequently founded as a brand new settlement and called Old Town. The former Church of Saint Judoc in Latrán was abolished in 1787 and is now it is used for housing and shopping purposes. The tower is accessible and serves as a lookout tower that dominates the town. We had lunch on a terrace and below is the view we had of the tower.
We spent the rest of the afternoon strolling the town before it was time to walk back to the railway station. The return journey was predominately up hill, so we’d definitely worked up a sweat when we got back to the train. Once again we’d had another day of cool, blue skies.
I’m finally getting used to layout of Prague, being able to navigate from the train station to our apartment, complete with a dinner stop without any of Deb’s expert guidance powered by google maps.
Until tomorrow!
Rob's "Beats Working" Blog 