Category: Czech Republic

We are not spa people but decided to visit Karlovy Vary as Ton’s research indicated that it had a great number of 19th century hotels and villas that had survived both wars intact. Despite not being spa people we visited Vichy a couple of years ago and had really enjoyed it, so we wondered if our second spa visit here would be as fun.

The hot springs at Karlovy Vary got their start in the 1400’s when King Charles IV soaked his injured leg in a hot spring here and was pleased with how it healed. He then built a lodge near the spring so he could enjoy the soaks on a regular basis.

In the 1800’s spa treatments were the rage among the beautiful people of Europe and Karlovy Vary (then known as Karlsbad) went thru a boom period as one of the hot places to visit. As a result hundreds of hotels and pensions sprung up to pamper the rich and famous of that time, and they are spectacular buildings.

If you like 19th century architecture then you will be in heaven in Karlovy Vary. The promenade along the Tepia River, and the hills surrounding the town are full of gorgeous and large 19th century buildings.

After the fall of communism there has been a great deal of investment in the town and the buildings have been wonderfully restored to their original grandeur.

We decided to punch above our weight socially and dropped into the coffee shop at the Grand Hotel Pupp which is a gigantic complex at the end of the promenade. It has always been the grandest place in town since its founding. They have a walk of fame of previous guests and we got a kick out of two names side by side on the walk, John Malkovich who stayed there in 2009, and Sigmund Freud who stayed there in 1912. There was a brick available between the two of them and we wondered if we got a room whether we could claim the brick.

Ton was very interested in sampling the waters. There are 15 springs that are located in cool buildings that you can drink from as you walk along. To make it easier you can purchase a decorated ceramic mug whose handle acts as a straw. After some careful shopping and much discussion about the size, shape, and decoration on our mug we were on our way.

In our walk we found about 10 of the springs without trying too hard. The temperature and the strength of the minerals varied quite a bit from spring to spring.

Most of the springs were nondescript pipes in the middle of large buildings, and we were a little surprised more people weren’t trying it. We enjoyed it, though after a while we were getting a little waterlogged.

The promenade is over a mile long and with all of the buildings and springs it was great fun to walk. If you like 19th century architecture with a small dose of communist brutalist buildings mixed in for contrast you will be in heaven as we were.

We took a couple of turns up and down the promenade. There were enough people to make it interesting, but not enough that you felt crowded. Plus Ton was entranced, she said to me at one point, everywhere you point the camera there is a beautiful building.

We weren’t done walking after the colonnade. Ton wanted to check out the Orthodox Church here (a lot of the investment in Karlovy Vary after communism was Russian money) that is modeled on a famous cathedral in Moscow.

When I put it into google maps I asked Ton if she really wanted to go. Once again it was not how far it was, but how much we would have to climb. Karlovy Vary is built in a valley, and while the promenade follows the river, the town quickly climbs the hills.

The climb began by scaling about 120 steep steps, half way up Ton was questioning my routing. After the steps it was a steady climb for another 10 minutes. But when the church came into site Ton took off and left me in the dust. So in the end the climb was worth it.

In the last three days we have visited two of the prettiest cities I have seen. Both Ceske Krumlov, and Karlovy Vary were spectacular. The fact that I didn’t know either one of them existed even made it better for me. As we have traveled the last 6 weeks I have been thrilled to be exposed to several towns that were either vague places on the map, or places I didn’t know existed that have been wonderful.

Tomorrow we are going to leave Czechia behind as an airplane is now calling us. But I have to say that it has been a fantastic visit.

When we woke up this morning I proposed Prague to Ton, but she pointed out that we are running out of time. She had two more places she wants to visit so Prague was struck from the list.

Our first stop for the day was only about 40 minutes from Krumov and is another UNESCO site. Holasovice is a small farm village of about 30 homes and businesses built in the Gothic style that was common in the late 1800’s. The original villagers were German speaking, but today the village is Czech.

Driving to Holasovice had us mostly on small country roads that are impeccable . While the roads are not wide, the condition of the surface is the best we have seen anywhere. The first time we visited Czechia we swooped into Prague on a freeway from Germany, and swept out of Prague on a freeway to Wroclaw Poland so we did not experience Czech national and secondary roads.

This time we have spent quite a lot of time on national and secondary roads and Czech roads are the best we have driven on in Europe. They are not particularly wide, on par with Germany and Austria, but the condition and quality of the surface of the roads is exceptional, it makes driving very relaxing.

After spending about 45 minutes walking thru Holasovice we set off for our final destination of the day. Melnik is located about 30 kilometers north of Prague so I was dreading driving thru Prague. It turned out to be not that bad. Part of the reason is in the 2010’s the Czechs completed a 3 mile tunnel under the center of Prague. As a result thru traffic is kept off the surface freeways. It worked really well today for us.

When we arrived at the campground in Melnik there was no one in the reception, just a phone number to call. This is becoming more common. You call a phone number and they tell you what to do, and give you a window in the morning when you can go pay them. We debated whether to move on from Melnik, but our next destination was too far to tackle so we decided to stay.

After setting up we decided to walk to the center of the city. I checked google and it said it was about 1400 meters which we usually cover in about 20 minutes. I noticed that google also called out a 120 meter change in altitude which is steep. What google didn’t make clear is that 110 meters of that climb were in the last 800 meters, it was very steep and had Ton asking me why we didn’t call a taxi.

Our first stop once we successfully scaled the hill to the town center was the city museum which featured a wine shop serving local wines. The person serving us didn’t speak English, only Czech and German. She decided to speak to us in German. Instead I asked her to speak to us in Czech since we weren’t German and it would be a good chance to learn Czech. I could see she appreciated that, and while I didn’t learn much Czech (one word) it made for a fun experience.

We enjoyed the wine and one of them impressed Ton so much that we bought a bottle of it. But we had come here to see the place where the Vltava River enters the Elbe River. Melnik was originally established as a Castle to guard that critical point.

We walked around Melnik for nearly an hour and Ton was enjoying taking a lot of pictures which is a sign she is enjoying herself. At the end she said she was glad we stayed in Melnik and that the climb was not that bad.

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.

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.

It poured rain all day so today ended up being a day of rest. Luckily the campground here has exceptional Wi-Fi so we spent the day relaxing and streaming movies on the internet. The only problem is it was quite cold so I fired up the heater a couple of times to make it bearable inside François.

We headed into the restaurant at the campground for dinner. I had carp and Ton had another fish called Zander that is similar to Walleye. Ton said the carp reminded her of catfish but not as good. I agree with her carp is adequate but now that I have had it I will not be seeking it out.

The weather is going to break tomorrow and we will be off to a place that Ton has been looking forward to since we began the trip.

We had a debate about what to do today. We were still discussing it in the morning with three possible course of actions. It was supposed to rain today and the rain is supposed to be worst tomorrow. It is also supposed to be cold with lows in the low 40’s. So our debate was go to Ceske Krumlov the next place on our list and wait for the weather to get better. Go to Prague and get a hotel room for a couple of days. Or, move to a town about 20 kilometers away that is supposed to be pretty and wait out the weather.

The winner was going to be decided on where we could get our laundry done. Czech campgrounds don’t feature washers and dryers like we are used to. Also, it appears for some reason Czechs have not embraced laundromats so they are rare even in larger cities. We are getting low on clothes and in another couple of days we would be getting desperate. None of the three campgrounds at Ceske Krumlov had washers and dryers. All of the hotels in Prague were really expensive so it didn’t matter if they had washers and dryers. The campground in Trebon didn’t have a washer and dryer, but when I googled laundromats near me one came up in a shopping center on the way out of town.

So the decision was swing by and check out the laundromat and then head to the campground in Trebon which was about 30 minutes away. We pulled into a small shopping mall and sure enough in the mall they had a slightly expensive laundromat. An hour later with enough clothes to get us to the end of the trip we headed out to Trebon.

It had rained overnight but as we were driving we noticed that the weather today was better than yesterday. After we set up in a nice campground by a lake I checked the weather, and it looked like we had a few hour break in the rain so we headed into Trebon.

Trebon is a center for aquaculture in Czech. As we walked into town we walked by a large pond, and a commercial fish farm. They have been producing fish in this area since the middle ages. Interestingly the fresh water fish of choice in central Europe is Carp.

Ton and I have noticed that Carp is the most common fish featured in menus since we arrived in Central Europe. Neither of us have ever tasted Carp as Americans don’t eat it, and neither do the Thai. But in Central Europe it is a staple and part of the Christmas Eve meal. The campground has it on its menu so we decided we would give it a chance tomorrow.

After an hour walking thru the town we saw the skies darkening and decided to head back to the campground. We tried to hitch a ride on the tourist train which stops at our campground, but we didn’t have a ticket, and they didn’t offer one stop prices even for old people.

We got back just as the rain started again. We had a light supper and then sat back and watched the lake and the other campers from inside François as the temperatures fell into the 40’s.

For the first time on this trip we are having to plan on dealing with wet weather. Today wasn’t supposed to rain, but we ended up with some spotty rain. On top of being wet the temperatures have fallen into the 50’s again during the day, and into the high 30’s at night.

We started the day by heading into the city to check out the town square. It was another nice town square with a good representation of Baroque and Renaissance buildings that are well preserved.

We gave the square a look from all 4 quarters, and since this is not a town focused on tourism did some real shopping in the stores lining the square. Instead of the normal tourism stores and restaurants the stores here were clothes and shoe stores. Ton has been casually looking for a jacket and a pair of shoes to take home. She didn’t find anything, but enjoyed looking.

While she was shopping I popped into a bank and got a couple thousand Czech Crowns, just in case we need to pay for something in cash. Most of central Europe has not joined the Euro and having to deal with Crowns, Forints, and Zloty’s every time you change countries is a pain.

But we didn’t come to Ceske Budojovic to shop or because of its beautiful town center. We came to visit Budvar Brewery which produces a beer called Budvar Budweiser and they claim they are the true Budweiser, but a little American company called Anheuser-Busch disputes that.

Like all of these kind of things it is complicated. Ceske Budojovic has been a beer brewing town since the 1200’s, and brewing has been a mainstay of the economy here since then. The town always had a mix of Czech and German inhabitants, the Germans called the town Budweis.

In 1795 a group of German residents formed a brewery called Budweiser Burgerbrau and were successful. In a trip to Europe in the mid 1800’s Augie Busch discovered it and decided to brew a beer of a similar style in St. Louis calling it Budweiser. That business worked out well for him as all of us Americans know.

In 1897 a group of Czechs got together and formed a competitor to Budweiser Burgerbrau called Budweiser Budvar Brewery. Since then there has been a great deal of jousting in courts around the world, and in the court of public opinion over the use of the name Budweiser. To make things even more fun Anheuser-Busch acquired the former Budweiser Burgerbrau brewery in 2012 and produces a beer there called Samson. Budweiser Budvar cannot use that name in North and South America and is marketed as Czechvar in the Americas. But in Europe you will see both the American Budweiser and the Czech Budweiser Budvar on the same shelf.

While the story was complicated, the beer tour was fun and the beer is very good. We took the English language tour with a couple from Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, and a daughter and father from Hungary. So of the 10 people on the English language tour I was the only native English speaker!

When we came out of the brewery it was raining steadily so we splurged and took a Bolt (Uber equivalent) back to François to settle in for the night. Tomorrow and Saturday are supposed to rain all day so we will see how hardy we are feeling.

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.

It was time to move on from Hungary so today we shifted north to the Czech Republic, or as it is now officially called Czechia. It seems that many Czech’s are still calling it the Czech Republic, so it appears that both names are acceptable.

Our last chore in Hungary was to spend our last Hungarian Forints. We thought we had 21,000 forints which is about $70 so the plan was to put it in the gas tank. But when I pulled the money out of my wallet at the gas station there were two 20,000 notes instead of one so we had 41,000. François could only hold a little over 37,000 so we went inside, luckily they had a bottle of wine that took most of the remainder and the cashier got to keep the change.

Brno is the second largest city in Czechia and continuing our new quest to visit second largest cities in countries-we added it to our list of places to visit here. I was feeling bad about my lack of knowledge about second cities and was confessing this to a Dutch couple referencing Brno, Plovdiv, and Kosice (Czechia, Bulgaria, and Slovakia), when they both laughed and said they had never heard of any of them either, so Ton and I felt better.

The first thing we needed to figure out was how to say Brno as there appears to be at least one vowel missing for an English speaker. Ton went online and said it was Bur-NO with the emphasis on the No. That mystery solved we headed to the center to check it out.

Brno is a University town with 10 Universities and over 100,000 students. We were struck with how busy the center was, but it felt like a working city not a pretty city. An active city center with people who look like they are going to meetings or classes feels different than an active city center full of tourists looking at things. There is a different flow to the pace that we enjoy.

We decided that the difference reflected in the statues. The statues are not made to be photographed by tourists, but to reflect something about the character of Brno. It is winning the award for unusual works of art that you may have to be from Brno to appreciate or even understand.

I decided to embrace that practicality with our choice for lunch. After weeks of sampling various central European meals I told Ton I wanted something familiar, I was leaning towards a hamburger, but Ton wanted something warm so we went for Italian pasta.

Brno does have a good beer scene so we popped into a quirky pub that made us feel at home. The place had a nice after work vibe full of co-workers and friends having a beer before heading home. We were the only tourists in the place.

I thought the cold weather was over but the low tonight is supposed to be in the high 30’s again, worst after tomorrow we are supposed to get 4 or 5 days of rain in the region. Bummer for us, but they have had a dry spring and probably need the rain.

Despite the terrible weather we are enjoying Prague. It rained almost all night last night. When we woke up in the morning it was both cold and wet so we were in no hurry to get going. Finally about 9:30 we decided to head out, and just as we were about to leave François another downpour came. So we settled back down and finished our morning coffee. About 11 the rain let up, so we hustled down to the dock to take our pedestrian ferry to the right bank of the river.

The river bank had been converted into a weekend market, and despite the weather there were quite a few people there. Today because of the weather the big sellers seemed to be anything that was served hot, including sausage sandwiches and mulled wine. There was a microbrewery selling beer, and we were impressed that they were offering it in proper glass. No plastic cups in Czechia. You took the glass full of beer and consumed it while shopping in the market and when you were done, you returned the glass to the brewery tent, all very civilized.

Our primary destination for today was the Mucha Museum. Alphonse Mucha is a famous Czech artist, and one of Ton’s favorites. The last time she visited Prague she was unable to visit the museum, so she had set aside one day for the museum in our three day itinerary.

Mucha was born in Czechia in 1860. He studied art and architecture and in the 1890’s a rich patron payed for him to study in Munich and Paris. In Paris he began to make a name for himself as an Art Nouveau artist.

He became famous when he was commissioned at the last minute to provide a poster for a new play by the most famous actress in France, Sandra Bernhardt. His poster when displayed caused a sensation and she signed him to a contract to produce posters for her for six years.

He parlayed this fame into a great deal of advertising work. He also designed furniture, jewelry, and even cookie tins during this time. He made a lot of money, and eventually he decided to return to Czechia as he was very patriotic.

During the early 1900’s he visited the US for a couple of years to lobby for Czech interests, and for commercial reasons. His work was very popular in the US in the early 1900’s.

After the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. Mucha designed the currency, stamps, and the medals for the army as his contribution to the independence of the Czech and Slovak people from the Hapsburg Empire.

After independence he dedicated himself to art. He began working on his grand masterpiece called the Slav Epic, which is a series of over 20 very large paintings showing the history of the Slavic peoples. He worked on it until his death. Yesterday one of the stained glass windows at the cathedral really caught our attention. We really liked it, and thought it was one fo the most interesting stained glass windows we had seen. It turns out it was designed by Mucha.

When the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939 Mucha was arrested. He was only held for a few days, but the arrest broke him, and he died a few days later at age 78.

We really enjoyed the Mucha museum. It is not a large museum, but we spent a great deal of time there. Ton then asked me to check on a restaurant she had read about to see if it was close. It turns out it was just down the street. The restaurant is a modern take on local food. They serve Czech food in Tapas sized portions. This allowed us to sample a bunch of different Czech dishes. It was quite delicious.

To keep up with the culinary tour, Ton had picked out a coffee shop in the Municipal Symphony House. It was built in the early 1900’s, and Mucha contributed much of the art in the building. When we got there it was packed, but we got the only empty table. The room was beautiful, and the desserts were superb.

Prague has been a great experience. I see why it is one of the must see places in Europe. Normally after three days in one place we are ready to move on. In the case of Prague I think there may be more to see, and while we are moving on, I am not in a hurry to do so.

Yesterday we spent most of our day in the old town of Prague which is located on the east bank of the Vitava River, today we spent the day in the interestingly named Lesser Town on the west bank of the river.

Despite having the diminutive name of Lesser Town the west bank of the river has the Palace and main Cathedral for the city. They are located on a major hill that looks down on the river and the rest of the city.

The climb up the hill is very steep. As we were beginning the climb an Irish Pub (Ton and I believe that it is a EU law that every city must have at least one Irish Pub.) had a great sign, “Look at how steep that hill is, you are going to need a Guinness to make it up there.” Despite the warning we took on the hill without a Guinness.

The Cathedral and the Prague Castle are part of the same grounds, with the Castle and Government buildings surrounding the Cathedral on all sides. There was very little historical commercial activity in the vicinity of the Cathedral which is unique to what we have seen in most cities. In this case the Cathedral was integrated with the center of government, not commerce.

The Cathedral is considered Gothic, and there has been a church on site here since the region was converted to Christianity around 1000 AD, construction of the current Cathedral was begun in 1340, but building ebbed and flowed over the next 500 years and the building was not completed until the 1870’s. For this reason it has elements of Renaissance and Baroque architecture also.

When we got to the entrance there was quite a line to get in, but we decided to buy a ticket because it looked interesting, and also because we were cold, and it looked warmer than outside. It was quite crowded inside, but the building is immense and could handle the crowd.

We both really enjoyed the stained glass windows. They also seemed to be from many different eras which was interesting to compare.

The Cathedral was undergoing repair in the center, so parts of it was roped off. Most of these giant buildings require constant maintenance, so it is rare to visit one that does not have part of the building closed off or covered in scaffolding.

After the Cathedral we moved to Prague Castle. Prague Castle was begun in 970 AD and is the largest castle in the world at 750,000 square feet. Part of it is the official home of the President of the Czech Republic. It was originally built as the home of the King of Bohemia, and has also served as the residence of the Holy Roman Emperors.

Only a small part of it is open to the public, but the scale of the rooms, especially the coronation room is very impressive. The public areas are sparsely furnished, but given the crowds that makes sense.

There is a small street next to the palace that is supposed to represent typical merchant shops from the middle ages. Mostly it looked like an excuse to capture some money from the tourists visiting the Castle. But one of the buildings had a collection of armor from the era which was interesting.

The walk back down the hill was much easier than the walk up the hill, so we decided to reward yourselves with a Pilsner (after all we are in Czechia, not Ireland), and some Goulash. We picked a restaurant at random, and had a nice warm meal. When we ordered our beers the waitress asked a large for the gentleman and a medium for the lady? We said sure, my large beer turned out to be a full liter, which was twice as much as I expected, but I managed to finish it.

After lunch we decided to head back as the forecast called for heavy rain in the late afternoon. It was a good call as a few minutes after reaching François and firing up his heater the rain hit. We spent the rest of the afternoon staying cozy and dry.

We made a short shift up the freeway to Prague. Before we left Pilsen we went into a Lidl near the campground to stock up on some food, and stopped for some fuel. Parking at the Lidl was tricky as the lot was very small and parking was awkward. But in the end we have a full refrigerator and some interesting Czech foods to try. The drive over to Prague was busy, and near Prague the right lane came to a complete halt with trucks backed up for several miles. We never figured out what caused the back up.

I had picked out a campground on an island near the center of the city. After having a campground to ourselves for the last two days, I did not think to call ahead. When we arrived at the campground, the lady at the reception said they could not accommodate us for the three days we plan to stay in Prague. Fortunately there is another campground on the same island, and they had no problem accommodating us, and the manager had lived in the US and visited Oregon so we felt at home. After we settled in we headed over to the water taxi to get us across the Vitava River to the tram stop to get us down to old town. We are really enjoying Prague already because if you are over 65 all public transport is free.

Our first stop was the Charles Bridge that is a medieval bridge that is now used for pedestrian traffic, and is one of the main tourist stops in town. Despite it being April, and the temperatures in the low 40’s, the bridge was buzzing both with foreign tourists, and Czechs out for the day. Despite the crowds we enjoyed our walk across the bridge.

After the bridge we headed to the main square to check out the astronomical clock which is one of the other main tourist attractions in Prague. When we got to the clock I overheard an English speaking guide saying that the clock here is considered the second most disappointing tourist attraction in Europe. (The first is the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.)

We hung around with a bunch of tour groups until the top of the hour to watch the parade of faces that are part of the hourly chime of the clock. Since I did not have high expectations I was not disappointed.

We based a lot of our agenda for today on a blog from a local guide. We enjoyed her takes on places to go, and also places to avoid. We got a kick out of her description of a popular treat that is sold near the bridge, and around the market. It is called Trdelnik, and consists of sweet dough with cinnamon on a stick with a bunch of cream. She said in her blog that it is not a traditional Czech desert, that in fact no Czechs eat it, but use it as a sure fire way to spot tourists. Whoever invented it for the tourist trade had a sense of humor as Trdelnik in Czech means “dullard”.

But we did take her advice on a good local beer place to go to try out Czech beers. Pult was located near the old town hall, and had a small but well chosen menu of Pilsners from all over the Czech Republic. The service was excellent and the guy behind the bar did a great job of matching up our taste with the appropriate beer. We really enjoyed ourselves.

After a few hours downtown we decided to head back before it got too cold. Despite it being closer to the end of April than the beginning the overnight temperatures are still in the mid-30’s with a frost warning for Saturday. We are going thru a lot of propane keeping François warm.

The most common type of beer in the world is Pilsner, and today we visited the brewery that originated the beer. Pilsner Urquell Brewery has been brewing beer in Pilsen since 1842 when all of the people with brewing licenses in town decided to consolidate beer brewing in one location. They hired a German brewer from Munich to start up the new brewery and cold brewed Pilsner style beer was founded here.

Today the brewery is a major industrial site capable of producing 880,000 bottles of beer per day. We have toured breweries before, but they were microbreweries. This is the first time we had visited a modern macro brewery.

We had signed up for a tour at 12:30 and decided to drive over. The weather is still unstable, and it rained overnight, and once in the morning. Today was a little better than yesterday, as there was more periods of sun than rain and the high was around 45 degrees.

The tour was led by a local medical student who does these tours to work his way thru college. He was very knowledgeable and had a good sense of humor. Besides providing us with the history of the brewery, he was full of facts about the capacities of the brewery, and their worldwide distribution.

They have 9 kilometers of tunnels under the brewery which in the past were used for production of the beer, as pilsner requires periods of cold storage as part of the process. Some of the tunnels were used for the cold production, and some was used for storage. Today the cold production is done using modern refrigerated equipment to control the temperature exactly, so the caves are empty.

It was an extensive and interesting tour and we enjoyed ourselves. It ended as all good brewery tours do with a sample of unfiltered, and unpasteurized beer. The beer was quite good. While all of the beer sold as Pilsner Urquell in the world is produced here, the company is now owned by Asahi Brewery in Japan, so they do bottle other products at the plant.

After we finished the tour we headed to the town center for a visit. Our target was the synagogue which is the third largest in Europe. We have seen other synagogues in Europe and they are usually understated because of the complicated history of Christian/Jewish relationships. This synagogue is one of the most prominent buildings in Pilsen.

The synagogue in Pilsen was built in the 1890’s. It is a beautiful building inside and out. We were the only visitors while we were inside so we were able to enjoy the interior and look at architectural details.

Unfortunately, Czechoslovakia was the first country conquered by the Nazi’s in WWII so the Jewish population of Pilsen was decimated. Less than 100 Jews from Pilsen returned to the city after WWII so the synagogue fell into disrepair during the communist era.

In the late 1990’s funds were provided to restore the synagogue to its past glory. The restoration was beautifully done and the interior of the synagogue is striking. Unfortunately the Jewish community in Pilsen is still quite small so services are held in a smaller building. Today the main synagogue is also used to host concerts as well as being preserved as a memorial to the past.

While we were touring the synagogue it had rained pretty hard, but the rain let up just as we left. We decided it was time to head back, we wanted to stop at a Lidl near the campground, but when we got there we could not find a place to park François, so we decided to try again tomorrow.

We were up early so that we could join Dang and Jeap for breakfast. They skipped the tour groups morning walk thru town so that they could join us for coffee and another long conversation. Ton speaks to them frequently on the phone, but nothing beats a face to face conversation. Finally they had to depart at 9am for Frankfurt and then Thailand.

We had decided yesterday afternoon to head over to the Czech Republic for a few days. We selected Pilsen as our first stop as it is the originator of Pilsner Beer. Tomorrow we will head into town to check out a brewery and take a look at the town.

On our drive over the weather continued to be unsettled. On the drive we saw hail, rain, and at one point I saw snow mixed in with the rain, though Ton refuses to confirm my observation. The temperature on the drive was around 40 degrees the whole wayand at one point dropped down to 36 degrees. Not the spring weather we were hoping for. Despite the weather we made good time and pulled into Pilsen around 2pm. We found the campground without any issue, but when we pulled up the gate was closed and no one was inside. There was a note to go to the restaurant down the road 50 meters, and since this is the only campground in Pilsen I was hoping for the best. It all worked out and we are now the only guest at a large lake side campground, hunkered down in the rain with the heater going in François as the over night low is supposed to be around freezing.