Cesky Krumlov is a favorite place of Ton’s. She has told me about it many times over the years. She visited it about 20 years ago with some of her old friends from Thailand and it was a memorable three day visit for her.
We had waited to visit until we had a good weather window as we wanted the city to be able to dazzle us. The weather was supposed to be sunny today so we were up early for the 45 minute drive to Krumlov. We pulled into the campground and quickly set up François. Just as we finished setting up I noticed a van getting ready to leave from a better spot down by the river. I told Ton lets move to that spot. So I quickly unhooked our electric and got ready to move. I normally do a walk around François before moving, but since we were only moving about 50 yards I didn’t. I forgot I had set out our two folding plastic stools on the passenger side. One stool we use to help step into François, and the other is a utility stool that is handy. As I was backing up I heard a crunch and knew I had hit something-it was the two stools and somehow I had managed to crush both of them. It will only cost about €15 to replace them and they are commonly available, but my stupid haste put me into a bad mood.
I was stewing over my stupidity when we arrived at Krumlov. Ton really wanted to tour the castle and unfortunately it is closed tomorrow so we needed to get the tour in today. The castle tours are guided and scheduled. I tried to schedule it on line but could not. So we headed to the ticket office. When I went to the ticket office the lady quite clearly said that she did not sell the guided tickets. Ton and I both heard it. So we were confused and went out to look for another ticket office that did sell them.
We didn’t see one in the castle so we headed to the tourist information office but it was closed when we got there for lunch. After a 30 minute wait for lunch to end the nice young guy at the tourist info office told us that they didn’t sell tickets that we would have to go to the ticket office in the castle. My day was getting worst and my bad mood was getting to Ton. We trudged back to the same ticket office, saw the same lady who said she did not sell tickets and bought two tickets for the 1:40 tour from her. I have no idea what the miscommunication was the first time.
The castle was very beautiful and having a guide added to the interest. The site has been a castle for about 800 years and passed thru several “owners” over the centuries. It has some wings in Gothic style, some in Baroque and one in Rococo.
When Ton visited 20 years ago the castle was open to the public and there was no guide. We guessed that as Cesky Krumlov has become more popular they have gone to the guided tours to keep the crowds down.
I appreciated being guided and since we are early in the season there were only about 15 of us on the tour so we had time to linger and enjoy the rooms. The castle was never fought over so it served primarily as a residence for very rich people of different eras.
The highlight of the tour was the ball room which was elaborately decorated with paintings of over 130 human figures from the late 1700’s. They varied from nobles to street urchins. The paintings were done by an artist and his assistant in 6 months and they included their self portraits.
The paintings were done based on real people from the era. The paintings strike me as being more humorous than serious. It is not high art and probably is not being studied by any serious art students.
The art is very well preserved and because it has not been damaged over time it has not had to undergo any major restoration. At the end of the tour I thought it was one of the more interesting palace tours because it was not the home of an Emperor, but a well preserved palace of a mid to high ranking noble. Rich but not luxurious.
After the bad start to the day, Cesky Krumlov had charmed me and gotten me out of my funk. We walked around the town for a while doing some recon work for tomorrow as well as people watching.
Cesky Krumlov is a day trip destination from Prague, so by 4 pm the streets were starting to thin out. With the lighter crowds we could take in the beauty of the town in a more relaxed way.
The other thing that makes Cesky Krumlov special is that there is almost no vehicle traffic. There are a very few taxi’s that deliver people to the hotels in the city, but other wise the streets are pedestrian only.
We ended our first day in Cesky Krumlov at the brewery. The beer was a smoked beer which we have not seen since Germany. We both really enjoyed it along with the pickled sausages we had as a snack. I can see more pickled appetizers in my future included pickled cheese which was on the menu.
When we got back to the campground it had gone from sleepy to hopping. A couple of groups had built campfires, and unfortunately one of the campfires is closer to François than I would like. Hopefully, they will be respectful of our sleep.
