czech republic: a day trip to castle jablonna and around

 A week before my trip to Prague, my mom sent me a link to a castle in the Czech countryside and asked if I'd be interested in a tour. I said sure, why not? I knew the tour would be in Czech, which I don't understand, but I knew mom could translate important stuff for me.
Mom's friend from primary school and her son picked us up in Prague, taking us out of Prague. It was a really cloudy/foggy morning, which was a shame, as the trees had a rainbow of fall leaves. I wasn't able to see the trees very well, argh. The son of mom's friend is a tour guide, he was full of information about the area, I loved hearing all of it.

At one point we drive along a road many locals drive each weekend as they head out of the city to their weekend homes in the countryside. A two lane road, Carl said there are traffic problems each weekend. We didn't have much traffic, and the trees I could see along the way were beautiful. The road follows the river for a while, I saw a few people already out on kayaks :) If it hadn't been so foggy there were several places along this road that I think would've made for gorgeous photos. Next time.

Soon enough we came to our first stop. A dam, which is also a bridge. Nifty looking. Too bad the fog made photos rather difficult. The name of the dam is Slapy (pronounced sloppy.)
Our next stop should've been a viewpoint over a lake, but with the fog we couldn't see anything, so there was no stop. Argh.
At one point the road (I have no idea what roads we were on, I was just along for the ride:) went up a little, and we came out of the fog. Stunning to see the rolling countryside with the rainbow trees all around. Awesome.

Our next actual stop was when we came to the town of Jablonna. A small town. Carl parked the car, and we made our way to the castle gates. The gates were open, so we walked onto the property. Very pretty, very peaceful.
Instead of walking in the front door straightaway, (I think we were a bit early for our tour,) we walked around the castle. There was a small pond off to one side, I got really excited when I saw two black swans. I tried to get a little closer, which worked well until one of the swans didn't want me there. At all. It was funny, but scary at the same time.

The swan attacked me! It waddled toward me very quickly with the wings open a bit, and its beak trying to get me. I wasn't able to move back quickly enough, it got ahold of my pants at one point. Eeek! A bit scary, I'm glad the beak wasn't sharp.
As we continued walking around the castle, this swan followed us for a few meters. I got mom to take a selfie with me and the swan in the background, hee hee.
Behind the castle we found a statue with an inscription in German. Not super easy to read, due to the lighting, but mom, her friend, and Carl were able to translate once they figured out what was there.

We came around to the front of the castle and went through the front door. The lady who worked there greeted us, we paid the entry fee, and the tour started.
The guide explained some of the history of the castle as we walked. The original castle is several hundred years old, but has not always been in private hands.
According to the castle web site, the first mention of the castle is in 1318. There were several private owners, counts and the like. The castle was redone as a Baroque palace after count john kinsky became owner.

The history section that interested me most was during the communist years, when the Czech government used the castle as a retirement home for seniors. For around 60 years, old folks got to live in a beautiful setting. I'm not sure how many people lived in the castle when it was a retirement home, it could've been a dorm like setting, for all I know.
The current owners have done a good job of redoing the decoration in each room. They've chosen to be as authentic as possible. Each room of the castle was decorated differently. Some of the rooms are bedrooms, it is possible to stay the night in the castle as if it was a hotel. (I have no idea about prices.)
After the tour we walked down the street and found a local hole in the wall diner for lunch. I'm pretty sure everything on the menu was fried, or made of potatoes, or both. I liked my fried mushrooms :)

Back in the car, Carl driving again. Our next stop was a monastery. Not an old monastery, you could see it is new-ish just by looking at the architecture. Carl looked it up on his phone, I think it was only about ten years old. We stepped into the church and watched a couple minutes of the afternoon worship service. Lovely voices.
The views over the surrounding land from the monastery were pretty, especially with the rainbow trees. It must be awesome to go for a walk, regardless of the time of year.
From the monastery we sort of started to go back to Prague. I say sort of because we had an adventure on the way back.

Mom's friend was helping to organize a class reunion, and was trying to find members of the class to let them know about the reunion. She had a general idea of an address in a specific town and that was it. We got to that town, found the correct street, and drove slowly to look for the number. The fun part of this was that there were two systems of numbers used for addresses. One was a rural set, the other was using city incorporation. It's really confusing to drive down a street, see the numbers 4, 6, 8, and think great, the next one should be 10, and that's what we want. On this street the next number was something like 323, then 345, etc... By the time we got back to the lower numbers, it was at 14 or so; in other words, past where we wanted to be.
At one point we stopped the car and mom's friend asked people on the street where to find the number. Then she asked about the name of the lady she was looking for. The people on the street knew another family with the name, they lived on another street. The last name was very unique (an Arabic name in small town Czech Republic,) so the decision was made to drive to the other street and knock on the door of the other family, and find out if there was a connection. There was. This other family was a son and his wife, who were able to direct mom's friend back to the first street, with the correct address.
It turned out mom's friend had transposed the numbers. Ooops. Mom's friend knocked on the right door, and said hello to a lady she hadn't seen in 50 years. I can only imagine the shock I would feel if someone knocked on my door so many years later. Nevertheless, the afternoon ended with success, and the information about the reunion passed on.
Then we went back to Prague :)

argentina: salta

our bus from resistencia to salta arrived in salta in the early morning...in another sign of being viewed as a human atm, the luggage guy on the bus was asking for tips...but he was only asking foreigners, argh...
since salta is in the north, it was colder than we'd dealt with...not super cold, but cold enough...we figured out which way to walk from the bus station, and set about trying to find a place to stay...the first place we checked must've moved, as there was no way it was a hostel of any kind...eventually, we found a place with a double room available already...they even let us eat breakfast straightaway!!!
salta (the area of interest to tourists/travelers) is known for it's colonial architecture, especially in the city centre...after getting a map and information from the guys in our hostel, we walked around, taking photos of course, enjoying the atmosphere...

there are a couple pedestrian streets which were jam packed with other folks out walking, selling popcorn, etc...
now seems as good a time as any to mention my frustration with popcorn in argentina...almost all that is sold on the streets is sweet popcorn!! i really like salty popcorn, we only found it in a couple places in the whole country...it was disappointing to find place after place that only had sweet popcorn...anywho...
the centre of salta is built around the plaza 9 de julio, which of course has a statue of a guy on a horse in the middle...(there are other people in this statue as well)...it's a nice little park area...

one of the churches mentioned in the guidebook is on this plaza, but it was closed when we got there...there are a few awesome churches around the city with specific opening hours, of course we had to wait until later in the day to get into any of them...
lunch was at a tiny place across the street from one of these churches...awesome empanadas, totally local clientele...the best part was when one of the owners/managers/i don't know started singing...AWESOME...we decided straightaway we were going back to that place for another meal at some point during our time in salta...the view, the food, and the man, what's not to love?

while continuing to wander around salta that afternoon we saw beautiful tiling inside a building, and went inside...it turned out to be a federal police station, ooops...they kindly told us to get out :)
we found a yummy alfajores shop in another area of town, the only question was "how many do we buy?"
after the alfajores shop it was finally time to go inside the churches i mentioned earlier...we visited two...both were nifty, but i definitely liked one more than the other...(church decoration and atmosphere are very subjective, i'm not going to bore anyone with names...the churches are close to each other, and if you make it to salta you should visit both anywho)...

i found shops with heaps of pretty postcards, which was good to know...salta is the jumping off point for the area known as the quebrada de humahuaca, so there are touristy goods for each place in that area...
dinner that night was a huge steak...soooo good...i was (and still am) bound and determined to get bo eating steak more often :)...we ate so much that our tummies felt uncomfortably large, so we added a bit more distance to the walk back to our hostel...this extra distance included walking by an old convent, lit up nicely at night...a simple lighting scheme, but it was nice and peaceful...i wondered if we could go inside the next day...

the next morning dawned cloudy...booo...we asked the guys in charge of our hostel where to find someone to change money for bo...argentina has both legal and illegal ways of changing money, travelers almost always use the illegal ways since you get a lot more in your conversion...
the guidebook listed an artisan market a couple kilometres out one of the city streets, and it sounded interesting, so we started walking...the street took us through regular neighborhoods and areas; the areas of the city where people live and work, those who are not associated with tourism...as much as i love seeing tourist sights (they are tourist sights for a reason) i also love seeing 'normal' areas of each city/town/village...we didn't know exactly where the market was, the guidebook only listed a final address...

we ended up not thinking too much of the market...it wasn't bad, but it was clearly mostly for people on package tours who wanted to bring home items made specifically for tourists...some of the artistry was amazing, but i had no desire to spend that money...
on the way back to the city centre we stopped for food at a couple local shacks...YUM...fried empanadas first...eaten off a tin plate!! i also had a 'proper' meal of 1/4 chicken and french fries...(i really wanted the chicken, i didn't care one way or the other about the fries)...bo had a lentil stew, which was super tasty...after the empanadas we didn't really need this meal, but hey, why not?

we walked to the bus station to get tickets for one of the next parts of our journey after figuring out specific details...the tickets ended up being cheaper than we were quoted, maybe there was a cash discount? we never figured it out, oh well...
after the tickets we decided we wanted to see a monument, and hike up a hill to look out over the city...we hiked up a way, but not the entire way...branches were in our view the entire time, while all we wanted was a clear view...at that point the sun was starting to go down, and it was on the wrong side for us anywho...we probably should've done this little hike in the morning...ooops...as we hiked we walked past a number of people carrying portable music players, which annoyed me to no end...i'm all for people bringing music, but why not earphones? argh...

dinner that night was nothing special...bo chose a specialty of the region, a stew called locro...it even has intestines in there...the taste was good, but i wouldn't be able to handle an entire bowl of the consistency of the intestines...
the next morning we were up super early to walk to the bus station for our bus...too bad breakfast didn't start that early at the hostel :)