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 :)