Photos taken along the way to the tourist information centre.
When you are extremely satisfied, that is what you say
Bata even exists in Europe. We also saw them in Italy.
The main town square
At the town square we purchased bus tickets to Prague for 1pm the next day and after that we took a short walk to the shop that sold canoeing tickets. We also booked a night city tour including castle gardens for 8:30pm the same night.
Walking to the canoe shop. The building with the sgraffiti is now a 5 star hotel, it used to be a jesuit monastery.
People love their bread
12:30pm Started our canoeing on the vltava river with a guide. The canoeing was quite easy actually since there's hardly any current. I was probably taking more photos than actual paddling. It started to rain nearing the end of our canoeing adventure but the rain didn't last long.
Where we started canoeing
Getting the gear on
1pm Finished canoeing, it was fun and simple. Lauren wanted to go on a brewery and beer tasting tour so we did that shortly after. It was only a few minutes away from the canoeing stop. The name of the brewery is called Eggenberg brewery. We joined a group that had already started, there was probably about 10 of us in total. With the exception of the two of us, all of the people in the group was elderly. :) And there were even people from Australia, quite a few actually.
Where the beer is matured, it's wet and really cold in there. This was our second stop.
Where the beer is mixed and fermented, this was our first stop
The magic ingredients that go into the local beer
The bottling line
We had our beer tasting at 2pm which wasn't really beer tasting. You could only pick one of 2. Light or dark. I picked light. I'm not even a drinker to begin with. Anyway the amount of beer provided, it was more like drinking and not just "tasting". I sat opposite to a woman who married a man from denmark and she was recounting the times when she went travelling on her own around the world and working as well too. She said she's happy that she found someone like her who is young and doing what she did many years ago. She said that she did what she did because of the experience and saying how it makes you more tolerant and a better person. Anyway I shared with her my experience on moving alone to norway and the several months of past trauma and of course, she could relate to it so that was nice even though in terms of age we were probably a generation gap at least. She was saying how scandinavia has the small mind mentality. After many years nothing has changed. :) No offence to anybody, but coming from the outside it is quite obvious! I don't expect anybody to understand what I'm talking about, probably few people would agree with me. Or rather, you will say you agree with me but not do it anyway. :) Talking about something and doing it, is like night and day. Talk is cheap, doing something on the other hand requires that you actually do it and experience the actual feelings of pain/joy/frustration/elation/uncertainty/fear/doubt/what-the-heck-have-I-done. People often stay in one place forever thinking "Well, I've been here all my life, so I just plan on staying." I read something today about an author who meet other young people who often say that. He goes on to say that if you're 25 years old, you probably have time to live for 25 years in two more cities. And nobody truly lives in the same place forever. No place is the same for any substantial period of time. And he quotes an example saying the Baltimore of today will not be the same Baltimore 30 years from now. It will be completely different.
Anyway I am going off topic now. :)
3pm We said farewell to our little beer group and went to have lunch at Deli 99 which was a place mentioned on the travel wiki page. I had hot chocolate and a grilled chicken sandwich and Lauren had coffee, a butter,egg, pickles and salami sandwich and we shared an avocado salad. All the food was very well made and it tasted great.
Some random painting I took that was in a nearby restaurant
4pm We stopped by a shop called Bon Bon and bought chocolates. Also dropped by a jewellery shop where Lauren bought a piece of jewellery that had amber in it. We came back to the hotel after that.
6ish Left to find a place for dinner. Eventually we settled for Penzion POD RADNICÍ, other restaurants we looked at were booked out, so many Chinese tourists! I had potato with wild mushrooms soup and duck. Lauren had duck as well and a tomato salad.
8:30pm We met our tour guide, a woman by the name of Olly. That's her short name which I can remember. She was a great tour guide! Born in Cesky Krumlov and still living there. And we were the only two in the group so that was great it was like a personal tour. Told us about the history of the town and how it was from the 1500s. Oldest buildings will have to be the castle and church. Stories of how the place was flooded in 2002 but there was no damage, the haunted music school, drunken soldiers in the bear moat, psychotic king's children and there was also the story of a princess who drank wolves milk to get pregnant, I remember that story as being a basis of Dracula actually. There also used to be a lot more breweries and houses marked with the 5 leaved clover used to belong to the Rosenbergs which were a rich family. Oh we also found out that the filming done the day before was indeed for a bollywood film, it's the first time it's happened in Cesky Krumlov too. She also told us she had a crush on some Australian guy who was 11 years younger than she was but she initially thought they were the same age. Heh.
The Rosenberg flower indicating a building that was owned by them
It was lovely to walk through the streets at night in the dark, quite different from what I'm used to.
12:13am Blogger is currently down so I will have to post this tomorrow on Friday 13th. This entry is for May 12th.
Sounds like your eating habits are evolving. Now breakfast at 11!
ReplyDeleteYeah I'm having breakfast at 11 and lunch later and later. How can I ever go back to Norway?
ReplyDelete