The Castle Tour was really interesting. The guide showed us around the castle grounds, explaining the history of the castle and the town along the way. We had the same guide as our walking tour the previous day, and once again she was just excellent. Since she is from the Czech Republic she was able to add a personal touch to the tours which makes them that much better. The Prague Castle is the biggest castle in Europe, and it is incredibly beautiful. The arcitecture is just amazing. My favourite part of the castle is the gothic cathederal in the centre.
It's absolutely amazing. All of the windows inside are stained glass and the ceilings are arched and tall. It was so beautiful.
Our guide took us to this point in one of the gardens that if you stand in the centre of this perfect circle, your voice reverberates off the stairs and amplifies it and makes it sound super weird! We also went to a place of the castle grounds called the Golden Lane. This is where the people working at the castle would stay. It was a lane of tiny old houses on a cobbled road. It was really cool to see!
We were able to climb the stairs and go into one of the old houses; there were also gift shops in some of the houses so we got to go in those too.
From the castle walls you get the most incredible view of Prague. You can just see for miles.
The skyline of Prague is truly unique, and magically beautiful. I am so glad we got the opportunity to see the castle and the amazing view.
We finished up the tour around 6pm and wandered back down through the town and made our way back home.
The next day we were off to a little town called Cesky Krumlov! Cesky Krumlov is about 3 hours away from Prague, still in the Czech Repuic. It is a beautiful old medieval style town that has been incredibly well looked after. All of the buildings look as though they are the originals, and in many cases they are! There is a beautiful old castle on top of a hill, towering over the town. On our first day we wandered around the town for a little bit. It is not a very big town, you can walk from one side to the other in about 15 minutes. But it takes so much loner than that, because there are so many distractions along the way! There are so many quirky shops and incredible smelling food stalls and cafés. We found a small pub on the river near our hostel, so we decided to have a drink.
It was really nice! We sat by the river and watched people float by on rafts and canoes, and children playing in the water, people eating dinner. The weather had begun to turn kind of bad so we headed back to the hostel after doing some grocery shopping. Our roommates at this hostel were really nice guys! We got a long with them pretty well, and chatted to them for a while. That night we had dinner, then ventured out into the town for a while to explore a bit more. After a little while of walking around, we made our way back to the hostel.
On our second day is Cesky Krumlov, the weather wasn't the best. We decided to try and visit the castle before the rain started. We didn't go on a tour of this castle, we just wandered around on our own. I think that Cesky Krumlov's castle is much nicer than Pragues. It's not as large and grand, but the details on the walls and whatnot are just breathtaking. The first thing you will notice walking up to the castle is a bridge over what was a large moat. If you peer down into this moat, you will see that it holds no water. However what it does hold, are two huge brown bears!
Apparently in the old days many bears used to roam the moat, deterring enemies from attempting to breach the castle. Now there are only two, and they live there in the moat in a nice large fake forested area, with a waterfall and lots of bushes and trees.
As we wandered further into the castle grounds, I became more and more amazed by the buildings, bridges and squares. They were incredible! We were told about a Czech artist who has an exhibition going in what were once the dungeons of the castle. We managed to find the exhibition and paid to go inside. At first we only really wanted to go in to see the dungeons, but once we were inside we were both blown away by this artists work. There were incredibly thought provoking and interesting pieces. It was also amazing to get the see the dungeons. You walk down the stairs into the dungeons and the temperature drops almost instantly. There's a damp smell, and the lights cast eeire shadows on the walls.
It's easy to imagine prisoners of the castle going mad in the dungeons, as without the lights it would be completely dark, damp and even colder. We spent a long time meandering through the dungeons, taking in both the artworks and the dungeons themselves.
Once we were done looking at the exhibition, we continued on our way through the castle grounds. We crossed over this incredibly high and magnificent bridge, that has the most beautiful view of the town.
We made it to the bottom of the castle gardens, and the highest point of the actual castle grounds. At the top there was a viewpoint and a place to get some drinks.
We both got a beer (yes dad, I drank a beer!) and found a place to sit down, watch the people go by and take in the view. When we were finished with our drinks we made our way into the castle gardens. They were just beautiful! All manicured bushes and grass, and beautiful trees and flowers. We walked to the end of the garden where there was a lovely pond/small lake, with ducks swimming around and lilypads floating on the surface.
We wandered around the gardens for a while, before the weather once again turned bad and we had to head home.
It rained for most of the afternoon, so we were pretty much confined to the hostel. It wasn't so bad though, this hostel is very small and cosy so it was kind of nice to just sit around and drink tea. Once the rain stopped some of our roommates suggested we go out for dinner and drinks. We went to a small pub in the old town square, and all tried different traditional meals. Harrison really loved his meal, but I wasn't too happy with mine. We moved to another bar once that one had closed, and had a few more drinks before heading home.
Today we had planned on visiting the Budweiser brewery in the next town over. The lovely owner of our hostel helped us look at bus timetables and how to get to the bus stop and then to the brewery. We headed up to the bus station, and we waited. And waited, and waited, and waited. The bus never showed up! We were pretty disappointed as we were looking forward to seeing the brewery. It was also a bit annoying as we had wasted our morning finding the bus station and waiting for a bus that never came. We made our way back into town and looked for somewhere to have some lunch. We walked around for a while before settling on somewhere. We found this vegetarian resturant right on the river. I think it was the best meal both of us have had since we have been away! The food was absolutely delicious, and the location couldn't have been better. It was a great afternoon.
We are hoping that the weather is good tomorrow so that we can hire a canoe and explore the river!
No comments:
Post a Comment