We woke up to blue skies but cold temperatures. Once again I got up and turned on the heat at about 4am as the temperatures inside François had gotten uncomfortable.
We weren’t in a hurry to get going as the weather was supposed to be good all day and we didn’t have any particular plans. After a while we set out for the town along the river.
We began by heading to the castle gardens which are located on the same bluff as the castle. The gardens are actually higher than the castle so it involved a good climb to get up to them.
The gardens were nice but nothing special as castle gardens go. But on one end of the gardens was a modern theater built in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The theater can rotate 360 degrees. What this means is when they stage a play there; instead of changing sets they build multiple sets and rotate the crowd to the new set. It is an interesting if complicated concept. Cesky Krumlov is a well deserved UNESCO site, but they are butting heads with the World Heritage People who want them to take out the theater because it is not congruent with the rest of the city. It seems like a weird request to us as it is part of the cultural heritage of Cesky Krumlov even if more recent than other things.
We took a route off the beaten path to return to the city so had a quiet walk for about 30 minutes past rows of “Pensions” which is what the Czechs (and French) call bed and breakfasts. There are a lot of them and most of them looked quite charming.
We spent a lot of time looking up as many of the buildings are decorated with paintings or art on the facade of the building. There was a fascinating array of different decorations.
I kept losing track of Ton because another detail on a building caught her attention and needed to be studied and photographed. I could tell she was once again enjoying Cesky Krulov after her twenty year gap.
Unfortunately almost all of the museums were closed today as there were several we wanted to visit. We are considering if we want to extend another day to visit museums or move on for a second visit in François to Prague.
The town wasn’t as busy as yesterday, but for a Monday in May there were still a lot of tours from Asia walking around. Today we heard Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, and Thai being spoken by different groups of people.
It is not a large city so after a couple of hours you start to see the same people over again. We had run into our neighbors in the campground a couple of times, and in the church we struck up a conversation about traveling. After a few minutes we decided we needed to exit the church as we were getting a bit loud.
They had traveled by RV in Canada a couple of times and we exchanged stories about the Alaska Highway. They had done the Canadian part but ran out of time to do the US part. They asked us about our visit to Morocco, and in the end they remarked that they were learning about traveling in their region from Americans. Ton was proud as they were the second couple to make the same observation on this trip.
After another typical central European lunch we decided to take a couple of days off from eating out. The meals are hearty, but we need a break from pork and potatoes. Ton in particular needs some rice and vegetables.
After 5 or 6 thoroughly enjoyable hours we decided to head back to François for the evening. It is a much quieter and non-smokey campground than last night.
Cesky Krulov is one of the best preserved and maintained medieval walled cities we have seen. I think Ton was not let down by Cesky Krulov which is always a chance when you revisit a place that you have very fond memories of. For me it was a charming and interesting place and I understand why it is on all of the central Europe travel lists. We have been to many UNESCO sites now, but Cesky Krulov may be the best one for me as you really do feel the “culture” of the place.
