The Czech Republic in Photos

Prague: October 4 - 8

Cesky Krumlov: October 8 - 11

Prague is a great city. Wonderful architecture, exciting history, and delicious food, all of which are affordable.

We got into Prague after midnight. When a taxi driver told us it would be the equivalent of $50 for a 2 km taxi ride, we decided to brave the public transit (metro and bus) to find our hostel. When we finally reached the hostel, all the lights were out and reception was closed. After tapping on the window for a few minutes, we were sure all was lost. Then the the lights flickered on and a guest came to the door and we were saved. We called the receptionist (using his phone), who was at the hostel within minutes. We had booked two beds in an 8 bed room and got the entire room to ourselves. It was a great introduction to the city.

The mighty St. Vitus Cathedral in the Prague Castle complex. Max commented "I would obey the Catholic church if that was looming over me every day," and I think that was their plan in building such a scary looking building. It is by far the most impressive building in the castle complex, and builders and architects have been working on the castle's exterior for 600 years, adding more flying buttresses and gargoyles and so on. It was completed in 1920, and those 6 centuries of construction were really worth it.

Charles Bridge. King Charles IV constructed it in 1357. Parts of the bridge are actually made of eggshells, as in eggs from chickens. The bridge is lined with beautiful black statues. Rick Steves says that Prague's statues are actually "time blackened" which I think is pretty neat. We haven't seen that anywhere else in Europe.

We spent our first day lazily strolling around the city, and our second day we took a tour of the city with a company called New Europe. They have free tours in many major cities in Europe, and you tip the guide at the end of the tour whatever you thought it was worth. We had a fantastic guide who must have been some sort of theater major in college. He was really entertaining and told us lots of stories about the history of the Czech Republic and the sights of Prague. One of his stories was of the Russian invasion in 1968 after the Prague Spring. President Dubcek was trying to reform the communist regime in Czechoslovakia and the Russians were not happy about it. In order to delay their arrival in Prague, Dubcek told every town and city to paint over it's town sign (like "Entering Prague") and change it's name to Dubcek. The Russians had no navigation system and were really confused by the name change, so it took 3 DAYS for them to find Prague! Other stories included a grenade kleptomaniac who helped drive the Nazis out of the city, and a sea lion who escaped the Prague zoo during the 2002 flood and swam all the way to Dresden. The tour was 4 hours long, but entertaining for its entirety.

During the break, the tour guide advertised a pub crawl and made it sound like this was a really great one that he was going on of his own volition. He got everyone on the tour really excited about it. When we arrived at the meeting point later that night, it turned out that he was really the owner of the pub crawl and was also leading it, not just going out for fun like he had told us on the tour. He had been using his free tour to advertise the pub crawl, which is really where all the money is anyway. We felt a little betrayed, but it was still pretty fun.

After a long day of walking around, Max was pretty excited to get some McDonald's.

The view in sunnier weather.

Statue of King Charles IV leading up to Charles Bridge.

Street performers on Charles Bridge.

Beautiful streets leading up to the castle (full of tourists).

The view from the castle.

Max and the view from the castle.

Close-up of St. Vitus Cathedral with its scary gargoyles and Gothic spikes.

Interior of St. Vitus.

Exquisite stained glass inside of St. Vitus Cathedral in the Prague Castle complex. I overheard a Spanish tour guide telling her group that this is the only piece of stained glass in the Art Nouveau style in Central Europe (really meaning the Czech Republic). Relieved to hear a language we understood after weeks of French, Dutch, German, and most recently Czech, we were thrilled to latch on to the tour to get some information about the cathedral.

The tomb of "Good King Wenceslas" (like from the song). Wenceslas was actually a Bohemian duke, and the first to spread Christianity in what is now the Czech Republic. He was widely adored by the Bohemian people, but was murdered by his brother who wanted his power. Again, we were listening to the tour in Spanish, so I may not have interpreted the information completely accurately, but I think the Czech crown is in the walls of this section of the cathedral.

Max trying to blend into the cathedral wall.

The cathedral's exterior.

The castle complex is a mysterious juxtaposition of styles. These buildings are right next to the cathedral. The castle looks like administrative government buildings, not like a castle at all.

The non-castle side of Charles Bridge.

Old Town Square is the most delicious square we have discovered yet. It is full of food stands selling everything from potato pancakes, to sausages, to chicken skewers, to Czech fried dough. It is also really centrally located so we just kept coming back for more.

We liked Prague so much - interesting history, delicious food, incredible architecture, and the thing that separates it most from Western Europe (besides a recent communist regime), affordable prices - that we decided to spend a little a few more days in the Czech Republic. An Australian we met during our stay in Paris had told us about a little town in the south of Czech Republic near the Austrian border called Cesky Krumlov. He said that he loved it so much that what was originally an afternoon excursion turned into a 3 day stay, so we decided to check it out.

We arrived in the afternoon having taken the train from Prague and got totally confused and ended up meandering around for a an hour trying to find the hostel. A river runs right through the town which makes navigating the city a little more complicated, but the amount of time it took us to get there (after 3 weeks of traveling now??) was embarrassing. We even got separated as we were trying to get there - Max wandered off while I was looking at the map. Guess who found the hostel first.

Exhausted after the long walk. This hostel was really neat. It was an old bakery that some backpackers from New Zealand had converted into a hostel. The place had really cool character, lots of hand drawings and woodcuts. That is a mural of Jesus above our bed (we weren't sure who the other guy was).

The outside of the hostel.

The dragon door!

I think the bathroom is a good example of the character and quirkiness of the hostel. Maybe the space used to be a bakery oven? Who knows?

The Cesky Krumlov castle at night.

The next morning, we set out to explore the city. The first place we went was the castle. The castle is actually guarded by bears who live in a moat.

The scary bear. I would definitely be more hesitant to cross a moat filled with bears than water. Max kept telling me thast my bear pictures were bad, so he took this picture himself.

The castle tower. The entire exterior of the Cesky Krumlov castle was painted to make it look like it was made out of stone or brick, but the surface was actually flat. They even painted the shadows of the stone onto the building so the shadows were the same regardless of the time of day.

We walked up to the top of the tower. The dungeon was a stop on the way and they had a real skull and bones to give people an idea of what went on in there.

View of the city from the top of the tower.

Me and the castle.

Our next day, we wanted to get out of town a bit and explore the countryside, so we visited a horseback riding stable a few kilometers away. I was very excited to ride. Two things told me that this should be a good experience. 1) I had taken a trail ride in the US just a few weeks earlier, and it was great – I had an awesome horse who was really easy to steer and really ready to run (in a good way), and the guide let us trot and canter all over the place. 2) My only other riding experience abroad was when I studied abroad in Chile and I went riding there twice. The first time was with my family, and we went to a farm and rode with a real Chilean cowboy who let us do whatever we wanted. The second time, I was with friends and we rented horses with no guide and rode to a beach and cantered up and down the beach. With these experiences, and the beautiful Czech countryside ahead of us, I was convinced that riding here had to be just as good if not better than those.

The woman asked us what level we were and I replied that I was an intermediate and had had some riding experience, which is true. On trail rides in the US, saying you’re a beginner means you get a slow horse, and won’t get to run at all. Intermediates get good horses and you get to run.

They brought out Max’s horse and he got on, and then they brought out another horse that looked like it was for me. As they were checking its hooves, they noticed a loose shoe. They quickly exchanged words in Czech, returned the horse to the barn, and came back with a different one, motioning for me to get on.

We started out into the fields beside the stables behind a girl who couldn’t have been more than 13 years old. My horse was slow and I had to kick him a bunch of times to get him to move, and we still weren’t keeping up. We walked through the field, and then through a forest until we came to a clearing. A loud lawnmower was roaring away and it spooked my horse, causing him to wheel around towards Max’s horse. Nothing really happened, but he got a little nervous.

We walked through the forest a bit more and then went out into the field again. When we came out, there was a plane flying low in the sky, roaring over the fields, and it spooked my horse even more.

After that, he kept cantering sporadically. It was hard to stop him, and he veered close to Max’s horse several times.

The cantering was annoying, but what really aggravated me was how much this horse wanted to eat. He was the hungriest horse I have ever ridden! He tried to nibble at every leaf and blade of grass he passed, and pulling on his head did nothing. Not only that, he would canter, and then jerk his head down, almost sending me over his neck every time. Our guide couldn’t do much more than say “Kick him, missus” (the only English she knew), and hand me a stick. My hands were rope burned by the time the ride ended. It was definitely the most exciting horseback riding I’ve done in a while.

We left town later that night (we took a taxi this time so we didn't get lost) for Budapest, backtracking through Prague.