The Castle Bears

I apologize for the delay in entries, but I like to be detailed and I get busy or tired, but I do what I can. Anyway, last Saturday was a day trip with Rudolph to Cesky Krumlov. We had to meet Rudolph and our bus at 7.45. Everyone had planned on napping, given the drive was going to take a couple hours, but my habit of keeping a deck of cards on me led to an insanely spirited game of "Asshole." It was one of the few games 7-9 of us could play, and surprisingly, everyone loves this game. That was all we played on the entire 4-5 hours we were on the bus. This game made possible by the conference table in the back of the bus.

We didn't go straight to our destination, we had two stops. First was a small town called Pisek that has a bridge even older than the Charles Bridge. It had to be restored after heavy flooding. We stopped to check out a museum. We also caught two separate wedding parties while in town. The other stop we made was for lunch. We ended up all ordering the same lunch, I assume it was a popular Czech dish. There were potato and bread dumplings, a ham steak, a pork steak, and saurkraut.

When we got to Cesky Krumlov, we walked up the windy, and significantly smaller, cobblestone streets to get to the castle gate. After passing through the castle gate, you have to walk up another considerable hill to get to the entrance. On either side of the entrance are two bear habitats. While I didn't get the history, I'm guessing the castle used to be guarded by bears? I assume they continue to keep bears due to tradition. Once we reached the first courtyard, Rudolph informed us that the tour wouldn't begin for a half hour. While everyone went to get coffee or a beer, I decided to write. Given my ability to become lost in thought, I missed the castle tour. I was told there were a lot of taxodermied (sp?) bears throughout the castle where they had the tour. I was also told the guides had to keep locking doors behind them as they pressed on, because tourists have gotten lost in the castle overnight.

While I missed the tour, I did get to see the castle gardens. On the walkway to the gardens, one can see more of Cesky Krumlov to the side of the castle. Had we had more time, I would have definitely liked to have explored the rest of the town. Anyhow, the gardens were lovely and luckily it was a beautiful day.

Day Trippin'