The Wondrous World of Cesky Krumlov

I'm mostly writing this post for the pictures. Cesky Krumlov, a town about three hours south of Prague, close to Austria, is probably the most beautiful place I've ever been. My program went down there yesterday morning and came back this evening. During our 1 hour+ long lecture about the town (which was about 45 minutes too long) I did learn a few interesting things. It's special because it was never invaded or damaged by war, and because it is very well preserved. All but two of the buildings in the center of the city were built before 1800, although they were in pretty bad shape until the fall of Communism and were brought back to life by the late 90s.

The weather was horrible for most of the day yesterday, so it wasn't a great day to take pictures. But we went on a tour of the castle which, when occupied until the early 1800s, was the life of the city. My favorite thing about the castle's occupants is that two of the families that lived there during its centuries of activity were the Rosenbergs and Schwartzbergs, but neither of them were Jewish. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the castle, but the rooms were beautiful. But at one point, we were walking in a passage from one part of the castle to another, and I looked to my left, and this is what I saw.

The weather finally cleared up at night, and the sky was an unbelievable blue. I wish we'd been able to walk around more while the sun was setting, instead of listening to the neverending lecture, but oh well. We went to a brewery for dinner and a gypsy band played for us for several hours. Half liters of beer were $1.15, and I managed to get my first free drink of water in Europe. Paying for water here is probably my least favorite thing about this continent.

The town is a huge tourist attraction, but since it's winter and we were there on a Sunday-Monday, there were not many people. My program probably made up half of the tourists there on Sunday, and we were definitely the only ones walking around on Sunday night. It was really incredible to have such a beautiful place to ourselves.

This morning, the sun finally came out. We hadn't seen it in almost two weeks. We had about 4 hours to wander around the city. We started out by going to a puppet museum in a "fairytale house" which was entertaining for about 5 minutes. I wandered around with a small group and found a wonderful place for lunch on the edge of the city, with delicious hot chocolate. It took a few sips to get this shot, but it worked out.

We continued wandering, went to a chocolate shop, and stood on a sunny bridge for a while before heading to the bus. This reflection shot is the last picture I managed to take before my batteries died (I went through 4 during the trip).

Now I'm back in Prague and there are only 3 days til Italy!