Our original plan was to give Brno another day so we could visit the castle that dominates the town. When we woke this morning Ton told me she had done some research on the castle. From the 1700’s on it had been turned into a prison by the different governments that ran Brno. So when the prison was closed and the castle was returned to Brno they decided to embrace its ugly history. So today it is a museum of torture. There are whole wings devoted to torture devices, and executioner axes. There is a display of cells showing how people were put into various uncomfortable positions using tools and rocks. Since we are not interested in this kind of thing we agreed that we didn’t need to visit the castle. So after some thought and faced with a deteriorating weather forecast the next few days we decided to move on.
Our next stop was Telc which was a nice 2 hour drive through rolling hills and farms. The canola fields were at their brightest yellow and Ton was entranced.
We parked up at a municipal parking lot that had a little food cart. While I was getting organized Ton had bolted out of the car and run to the cart. She had noticed that the cart was selling rotisserie chicken and she wanted to make sure they would still be open when we returned. Once we knew their closing time we moved on to the town square.
The square is about 300 yards long and 100 yards across and lined with buildings that all have 3 colonnades on one side and larger buildings with 2 colonnades on the other. They are painted in various pastel colors. It makes for a striking picture.
One of the towns main source of income in the past were fish farms from the two large man made lakes that flank the town center. The water in the ponds is remarkably clear but today the lakes go unfarmed.
The town had a fairy tale like feeling, and its main business is now tourism. There appears to be room to grow as a lot of the spaces facing the square were still vacant, but there were plenty of places to eat, and a couple of interesting shops.
In addition to the scattering of tourists there were a couple of student groups doing some sort of scavenger hunt assignment. Telc was a pretty stop with almost a movie set feeling. It is the kind of place that feels like it is one “break” away from being the new must see place.
Most importantly we got our chicken and a pork knuckle from the food cart so our next couple of dinners are set. We didn’t finish our day in Telc but decided to move on to Ceske Budojovice for the night. Tomorrow we will be visiting the most important business in Ceske Budojovice or to use towns German name Budweis.