my mom's best friend from childhood picked us up at mom's flat at
10am, with her husband as the driver...they wanted to do a day trip
around prague to show me a bit more of the country...i am always keen
for day trips :)...they made me sit in the front passenger seat, so i
would be able to see everything...
we started by taking back roads to a castle called
konopiste...it's not far from prague, but not terribly well
known...if i understood correctly, the castle was owned by the
serbian family involved in the start of WWI...wow! The family liked
to hunt, and the castle is located in a wooded area, there are still
hunted animals in the area...behind one fence we could see a couple
deer with lovely antlers...who knows, one of them might've been
rudolph!
The only way to see the interior of the castle was to take one of
three tours, but they seemed rather expensive to me, so i said
no...especially because you had to take three different tours to see
the entire castle...i didn't have the time or desire for that...i
could see part of one interior, with a lot of trophy heads on the
walls...remember how i mentioned the family enjoyed hunting?
Instead of a tour, we all walked to the rear of the castle, to
check out the landscaped garden...there were at least three peacocks
wandering around freely!! after the garden we stopped for a drink
break at a small cafe...on the way back to the parkplatz i bought a
coffee mug that had no english...and postcards of course...
back in the car we drove for a while, the next stop was in the
small town of vrchotovy janovice...i had to repeat after mom at least
ten times to get the name right, it isn't easy to say for non slavic
language speakers...(i still have the accents wrong, i'm sure)...we
all took the tour of the castle, after stopping for a ridiculously
large lunch...(mine was six pieces of knedliky and goulash)...if i had known it was going to be such a big portion i would've had mom ask for a half portion...given how much i can eat, that's saying a lot!
the castle has been used by a number of people/groups over
history...it was used by a family, it was used as a military
barracks, and it was abandoned...the last inhabitant was a single
woman with a variety of 'friends'...it is now a museum exhibiting
items from the national museum...only one room has objects and photos
from the castle itself :(
after the tour i wandered with mom's friend through the
unlandscaped area around the castle...it must've been nice to have
land to wander on...there is a small pond with ducks, a few trees
too...
on the way back to prague we stopped twice...once was at an
overlook at a corner of a river...really pretty...apparently we
weren't the only ones who thought so, as there is a tiny little cafe
with tables set to take advantage of the view...we didn't eat, but i
loved looking out over the area...we also stopped by the cabin owned
by mom's friends...it was just as it would've been in the old days,
including the really old radio...the names of towns listed on the
radio for short wave tuning in were mostly in the old east bloc!!
a nice day exploring the area around prague :)
