Day 32 – Tuesday 9 June

We had a terrible sleep last night, the room was hot even with the fan and no covers, and the bed was hard. The room is very small 18 sqm, so the cramped feeling made it feel worse. Oh well, we were parents so can dig deep and drink lots of coffee.

Breakfast was nice and varied, first time I have seen fish since I left home! Albeit pickled herring, but that is better than no fish. They also had a nice warm fruit compote which you could have with the porridge or torn pancakes and soft farmers curd cheese. There was prosecco in an ice bucket but I steered clear of that as I felt it would inhibit my ability to do the steep walking up and around the castle today.

The castle is literally 5 minutes up a slope from our hotel. We noticed that other than the regular group of tourists – mainly Asian, there are a lot less tourists here than in Prague. This is a pleasant relief as there were seriously too many people there to have a meaningful experience.

It is free to wander around the castle grounds and gardens, or you pay for two different guided tours and further separate fees for the Baroque theatre, tower – museum, and stables. You may think we are being a bit tight again, however, in justification we have seen a few palaces and castles and compared it to that and did not consider we would get value or interest out of the viewing the inside of this castle.

The research we have done describes the tours as generally underwhelming with the Baroque theatre being the best of the bunch. The price of the tours ranged from 270-400 (25-32 nzd) czk each, with the theatre being the most expensive. We decided to walk around and enjoy the bulk of it and then see if we wanted to do the theatre at the end.

The highlight of the walk around is the amazing views you get of the town and river below. The castle itself is very impressive in its size and structure – rising out of the rock. After two hours of wandering and giving my camera a workout, we felt that $64 to see one theatre room was not worth it and we were very happy with what we had seen.

On the way out we saw the bears in action playing in the pool and realised there was a mother and teenager in one area. What appeared to be the mother was teaching the offspring how to fight in the pool. It was so delightful to see them play and interact, but then I thought about it more and it was sad to think that the young one may never have the opportunity in the wild to practice what was being taught, indeed that any of the 3 bears would enjoy that right to freedom to be a bear. It then somehow did not feel right that they were there for the tourist’s entertainment.

We wandered some more and bought a replacement hat for Vern, a handmade traditional gingerbread and a taster shot of blackcurrant liqueur for .40 czk (20ml size). The liqueur was not bad, but a whole bottle would have been too tricky to carry on top of everything else.

As is our custom we stopped off for a cuppa and shared cake at a cafe, before heading home. The cake was house made and delicious – just like my grandmother would have made. There was a torte thickness sweet yeast base, topped with a mixture of plum/prune jammy conserve, poppy seeds, and sweet curd cheese. Lines of buttery streusel (crumble) intersected the torte filling. Of course we asked it to be served with cream!

We rested a while and then had dinner at an upmarket beer hall- restaurant called ‘Depot’ a couple of minutes walk around the corner. We chose the pork hock and the roasted sirloin in creamy vegetable sauce. Both were very pleasant and the beer was very complimentary and freshly poured from the ‘tank’ (different from normal draft). A fabulous end to a delightful stay in a beautiful medieval village.

We would recommend a visit to Cesky Krumlov – maybe no longer than one full day and a night or two like we have. The fresh air and small town environment has been refreshing. Tomorrow we move on to Vienna, Austria for a short transit stay before another scenic train trip to Slovenia.