September 26, 2022 to September 30, 2022
Four days in Cesky Krumlov, Czechia (Sept. 26 to Sept 30, 2022)
We had four fairly relaxing days off the bikes, our options driven by drizzly, cold weather and the location of our flat, which was about 2 k outside of the old town of Cesky Krumlov and up a big hill to boot. Our flat was large and beautiful, with an awesome view of the town. We rode our bikes into town everyday for some low key sight seeing, having coffee and then later on for dinner, because there weren’t any places to eat near our apartment.
Sightseeing: Cesky Krumlov is clearly a tourist town, with the good and bad that comes with that. During the day we saw/heard plenty of English speaking folks (and more Americans than we have seen all summer or fall). The restaurants were pretty quiet in the evenings and we think that most of the tourists come into Cesky Krumlov for the day from Prague (about a 100 miles). We saw no other cycle tourists. It’s probably a zoo in the peak season.
The primary site in the town is the Castle, and it’s a big site, both in terms of historical importance and size. The magnitude of the castle is demonstrated by the fact that after arriving at the castle and parking our bikes it took us 45 minutes to figure out where to buy tickets! There has been a castle of some sort on the site since 1240 and there were a number of families that had the castle as their seat until 1947 when first the Nazis and then the Communists confiscated it. The two families that dominated its history were the Rozmberks (1240 to 1600’s) and the Schwartzenbergs (1700’s to 1947) so it was during these two time frames where the castle was developed the most, i.e. the Renaissance (the Rozmberks) and the Baroque (the Schwarzenbergs). We did a tour of the imperial apartments and you really get an idea of the power of this region of the world when the Hapsburgs ruled (13th century to 1918). Now it seems like a bit of a side show but it definitely had its day.
The town itself is charming, and a pain in the neck to negotiate if you’re riding a bike. It lies in three bends of the Vltava river which makes it difficult to get around. There are lots of bridges, hills, cobblestones and stairs. It is supported primarily by the tourist industry: unlike pretty much everywhere else we have been on this trip, there were not very many regular folk going about their business. All the shops carried knickknacky stuff.
Czech food: We enjoyed it more than we expected, having been warned that it is meat-centric and heavy with not a lot of veggies. Those things are true - Dave described it as peasant food - but it is more nuanced than we expected and all four dinners we had were very good, albeit it would be hard to get a vegetarian meal here (we did manage to have grilled trout). Service and ambience are unpretentious - we noted the contrast between service here and in France.
| Heart | 3 | Comment | 0 | Link |
In any event, we take off on the last leg of our riding on Friday so we are packing up and looking closely at the weather report. It's looking ominous. ⛈️ ☔
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 4 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |