Last night, we were offered three choices for our upcoming day. We could stay in Linz and walk the town, we could visit Salzburg, Austria or do Cesky Krumlov. We figured the odds were good that we would be visiting Salzburg some time in the future since there is so much to see there. The only thing we knew about Linz was the Linzer torte. So we decided to go see a castle in the Czech Republic.
The drive was incredible. We followed the Vtlava River from its beginnings as the river heads to Prague. At this point, it is a very small river. The road was one lane - not one lane in each direction, but one lane with two-way traffic. Our driver did hair-raising maneuvers to ensure our bus did not end up in Vltava. As we traveled along, the Tauck director put the music on of Bedrich Smetana's "Ma Vlast". Very cool listening to classical music that was composed by a Czech composer about the Vtlava as you are tooling along a heavyly-wooded country road in the Czech Republic next to that same river.
We arrived at 10:30AM at the castle. Tauck delivered us at the top of the hill where the castle sits so that all we had to do was walk comfortably down the hill. Most other excursions make you climb up to the castle.
Cescky Krumlov is one of the most visited places in the Czech Republic. In fact, I think the whole population was there today. The castle is a UNESCO Heritage site and is situated on the rocky banks of the meandering Vltava. It appears that one of the favorite pastimes is to take canoes or kayaks and navigate the man-made rapids as you pass the castle and town.
Our guide took us through the castle and its interior. The history of this huge palace castle is very complicated so I won't bore you with details. But the State owns and maintains the property ever since it was confiscated from the ruling family that once owned it.
Afterwards, our guide walked us through the town to a square where we were to meet our Tauck director once we had finished 3 hours on our own. We stopped in to a gingerbread bakery where Tauck gave us a gingerbread treat and some brandy to re-energize us. Coins were provided if we needed the toilets and we each got 20 euros to pay for lunch.
And then we were off on our own, to eat or shop or float in the river.
The area is a definite must see but I'm not sure you need to allow more than three quarters of a day to see it. We throughly enjoyed our time visiting but at 3:00PM we were heading back to Linz to reboard our boat to continue our journey.
Goodnight.
I have decided you have to blog every day, for ever. It becomes part of my evenings, sitting down for a few minutes to see what you have been up to and look at the photos. How is the food on board? How are the other passengers.....a good mix?
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