Divci Kamen - Castle Ruin and 5th Wedding Anniversary

[Editor's note: can't find my notes for this day either.]

We spent our 5th wedding anniversary at a castle ruin we expected to have mostly to ourselves. As previously noted, Mary came here with her parents in 1993 and it was not developed for tourism at all. In fact, we could hardly find the place.

We walked to the castle (now serviced by a well-marked trail) from Holubov.

From Divci Kamen

There was a ticket seller, but she explained to us that the castle was free today, though she did not have the English to explain to us why. There were a few field trip-looking groups of little kids and later on we started to see groups wearing life jackets.

From Divci Kamen

The castle was smaller than Mary remembered. With trails and well-kept grass, we were able to move about it much faster now than in 1993. Even so, it was still pretty lovely. After a while, it started to rain and we had it to ourselves for a while. Mary found this kind of amusing because the one day we had rain on the 1993 trip was right here at this castle too.

From Divci Kamen

It was pretty cool to see how they worked around the natural stone.

From Divci Kamen

And there was a nice little cairn garden in the courtyard. If you look closely, you will see an arch someone made too. It's atop the garbage can, or whatever that is.

From Divci Kamen

Mary enjoyed the dramatic natural landscape. She remembers searching for the castle in the woods and Dad pointing to this ridge (from a slightly different angle), and saying that he would have built his castle up there. This was right before we spotted the castle for the first time.

From Divci Kamen

In a clearing below the castle some sort of event was going on. There was a tent with children painting pictures, a little gyro vendor, and a giant bonfire where the adults appeared to be making charcoal. We greatly enjoyed warming ourselves at the fire, since it was so cold and wet.

From Divci Kamen

From Divci Kamen

Nearby we found a river full of kayakers, some of them disembarking to climb up to the castle. I guess that explains the life jackets we saw earlier. Cool, eh?

From Divci Kamen

After, we walked back to Holubov in time for a great early dinner where we had stayed the night before hopping on a train for Vienna.

Travel to the Czech Countryside

[Editor's note: Can't find my notes from this day or the next... will try to remember what happened.]

In the morning we fought the crowds at the Prague castle (which has like a whole town inside of it) and back across the famous bridge that would probably be really enchanting if one wasn't shoulder to shoulder with tourists and caricature artists. We picked up our luggage and dashed for the train station. Overall we weren't that pleased with Prague. Prague became a destination after the wall came down because it was such a nice unspoiled old world city. Unfortunately, it's not so unspoiled anymore. It's "the previous previous Ljubljana" and it shows.

From Prague

From Prague

A final note about Prague is how much we really liked the metro. See photos. Especially take a close look at the icons, particularly the girls' skirts and the other accessories depicted.

From Prague

From Prague

Mary wanted to return to an enchanting castle ruin in rural southern Czech Republic that she'd visited with her folks back in 1993. Back then, it wasn't developed for tourism at all. We found it through a person we were staying with, who directed us to bicycle to a particular path into the woods where we eventually found it. We also heard a cuckoo bird in the woods that day, which sounded just like my parent's old cuckoo clock from Germany.

Well, in our attempt to go back, we located the castle on Google maps and noted that there is a train station in the town just a kilometer away. Not so hard to get to as I remembered. Sweet. So we took two trains to get to the little town of Trisov in the evening around 6 or 7pm. Upon arrival, we discovered that there is no place to stay in Trisov. With some difficulty, we found the one restaurant (really more of a bar) in town and they confirmed that there was nowhere for us to stay, unless we had camping gear in which case we could camp near the castle. Oops.

The notes from Mary's parents suggested that there might be somewhere to stay in the town of Kremze, 4 km away from Trisov. So we set out on foot down the country road past field and forest. A little outside Holubov we started seeing signs for accommodations. Well, a sign for one 4 km away, and another an unspecified distance. In Holubov stopped to ask someone outdoors about accommodations. That person didn't speak much English, but soon we had attracted a bit of a crowd. They all thought that we should walk 2 km up the road (away from the railroad tracks, which we had been roughly following) to the nice cheap pension up there. But they did concede that there was a place to stay in Holubov, they just didn't think we should go there as it was really expensive. We pressed as to what they meant by "very expensive," and eventually were told that it was more than 200 Koruna, maybe a lot more than 200 Koruna. 200 Koruna is about $10 so we decided to give it a try. Apparently even though Prague is now almost as expensive as any other big city in Europe, people are still a lot poorer in the countryside. Not that this comes as any great surprise.

From Divci Kamen

From Divci Kamen

We found the pension on the other side of a lake with a slide and strange structure in it. Mary was reminded of swimming in the reservoir with the Czech kids when she was in the Czech Republic before. The room turned out to be a princely 700 Koruna per night, around $35, but we were mighty glad to have it. We had a splendid dinner, including a wonderful pasta dish with poppy seeds.

From Divci Kamen

It was a really good day. We definitely got well off the beaten track, but did not find ourselves feeling frightened. It helps that it was right around the Summer Solstice so the daylight lasted well into the evening as we hunted for a place to stay. And there is something profoundly cool about walking from town to town in Europe... it really feels like you are on some epic journey out of a fantasy book. Later in the evening we took a stroll down to the train station to check on the next day's schedule. It was lovely.

From Divci Kamen

Prague - Vsyehrad, National Gallery, Astronomical Clock

In the morning, we found ourselves lethargic. Eurotrip was on, so we lounged around until late morning watching that. Afterward, we headed down to Vsyehrad, the fortress that overlooks the Danube. We found a cute little spot to eat some lunch, and enjoyed walking around, but there wasn't a lot to see. The views were very nice, and someone was playing (practicing?) organ music in the church, so we stopped and listened for a while.

From Prague

From Prague

From Prague

We also saw about the cutest little playground ever.

From Prague

We descended the riverside of fortress, and hopped a tram along the water.

From Prague

Next up on the agenda was the National Gallery, which houses 14th-18th century artwork. Across the way were some nice buildings with some cool fake texture. We've seen a lot of art this trip, but Josh figured it'd be different farther North. It is, and the museum had some nice stuff. We especially liked the "Still Life With Monkeys." Because everything is better with monkeys, especially paintings of fruit.

From Prague

From Prague

We were right next to the Prague Castle, but it was late, so we headed home via the touristy old stone bridge. It's nice, and packed with people.

On our way back, we also stopped in at the Old Town Square, just missing the hourly clockworks. The clock was very nice, and the square was really busy. Looks to me like maybe some of the engineers escaped after building the astronomical clock we saw in Venice.

From Prague

From Prague

From Prague

Speaking of the square being a bit of a madhouse, catch a load of this bicycle bar!

From Prague

We ate homemade pasta for dinner, fusilli with eggplant, tomato, onion, and garlic -- Mary's turn this time. Kitchens are great.