After two full days in Prague we took a short overnight trip to a small town called Česky Krumlov. Like many small towns in Czechia, it has a castle - a really big castle. The Vltava River, which runs through Prague, wraps itself around this town so it was well fortified. To get here, we took a 2.5 hour train ride and now I’m spoiled for all future train travel because we went first class. Now…things are much cheaper in the Czech Republic (I just bought a dinosaur book for $1) so first class, for two people, cost us $36. It was definitely worth the splurge - you get a server to take your order and there’s a huge menu!
Arriving in Česky Krumlov we walked the 24 minutes from the train station to the hotel where we booked for the night. Some people try to do it as a day trip, but we wanted to not feel rushed. As we walked to the town you can see the castle looming above:
It really is the cutest little town - very medieval feeling with winding cobblestones, narrow alleys, and gorgeous old buildings.
We decided to have a more relaxed visit, plus apparently for English speaking tours of the castle you need to book ahead and they only run twice a day. So instead of getting to see the inside of the castle, we just wandered around the castle grounds for free. It really is a massive complex, and you can clearly see how successive generations built new sections.
We decided to grab our books and sit in a little park, which of course had a view of the castle from a different angle:
Dinner was a vegetarian restaurant with a very friendly and a bit eccentric owner. We got to eat next to the river, and enjoyed watching the rafts go by. Apparently other than touring the castle, the thing you do when you come to Česky Krumlov is go rafting. It was not a simple floating river so we decided against trying it ourselves.
Right now, Česky Krumlov has been my favorite part of the trip. Prague is lovely, but it didn’t have the same charm. I wonder if old Prague, before all the tourists, felt like this. Now I’m not saying that there weren’t tourists in Česky Krumlov because there are - the old town, the part wrapped on three sides by the river, in 2018 had only 300 residents who lived there - the rest are all hotels and pensions/bed and breakfasts. I’ll leave with one last picture:
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