Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic: BEAR PITS

On the way to Vienna, I did a one-night stopover in this adorable little town in the Czech Republic called Cesky Krumlov.  Well, my bible/guidebook also highly recommended it, so voila! I did.

You guys. It was seriously the most picturesque, charming little town ever. I swear, I could have written Cinderella first if I'd gone here, way back when.  That fairytale would have basically written itself.  And then I'd be rich.

Photo I took of the most magical sunset over Cesky Krumlov, complete with Instagram filters

What It's All About:

Cesky Krumlov is a small little town a couple hours south of Prague, kind of near the border of the Czech Republic/Germany/Austria. The town only has, like, 15,000 people and it's bordered by the turns of the Vltava River. It's also got a history that I'm going to regurgitate here because I find it so fascinating. Apparently its population was mostly all German during the Hitler era as Germany expanded its territories - but then after WWII, all the Germans were expelled (in a pretty vicious, violent way), and the land borders were re-drawn by the Allied forces into Czechoslovakia. For 50-some years,  the town kind of fell apart as the place had no sense of identity or culture for the Czechs and it was in a pretty bad state - until the 1990s (I was alive!), when tourists discovered it and all this money was infused into it and all the storefronts became vibrant and alive again. And it is truly, truly adorable in every way.

Cliffnotes of the Day:

• Arrived in the early evening by bus from Prague. My hotel, Pension Marie, is the first time I've had my own room, AND I HAD THE CUTEST ROOM EVER. Honestly, straight out of a fairy tale, complete with multiple flowerpot-lined windows that opened up onto the cobblestone streets, birds chirping everywhere, etc.  I seriously wanted to fling open the wooden shutters in the morning and sing to the people. Not sure the people would have wanted that, however.

Do we see how giant my room is?? At $45/night? Instant rumor: we can all live like kings in Eastern Europe

• Explored the city. As my guidebook says, "You're not here to see the sights of the city.  The city IS the sight."  It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and I can see why. Every corner I turned, there was a new amazing view that I wanted to pano on my phone. Insert photo dump here. 

Cesky Krumlov Castle, borderd by the Vlata River

On the right, NBD, just an enchanted forest wonderland

Take a left, oh nothing to see here except for a magical street

European royalty formula: find a landscape with a hill, build your castle on top, look down at your kingdom

• So now that I've learned castles are a dime a dozen bc every city has one, my castle standards have become quite high.  Cesky Krumlov's castle, however, wins in every way because THEY HAVE BEAR PITS. LIKE A BIG PIT. FILLED WITH BEARS.  I actually think there's only like 1-2 bears. But here I was thinking the "bear pits" reference was a figure of speech or just a name, and when I looked down the pit and saw a bear ambling around, I definitely gave an accidental small squeal of joy before pulling myself together. BEARS.

Seriously, it was like I'd never seen a bear before



• Took a tour of the inside of Cesky Krumlov's castle, which I loved because they had reconstructed the rooms based on all the different ruling families and eras, down to tiny little macarons in trays on the princesses' side tables. I love things like that. Fun fact, the servants' bedrooms were bigger than my room back in NYC. Whomp whomp.
• Kayaked the next morning down the Vltava River, which was so gorgeous - details below.

Moment of the Day:

My guidebook's top recommendation for the town was to kayak down the Vltava River, which hugs the city in an S-curve.  Well, fine. Twist my arm. 

The place I booked it at gave me an address to find down by the river, which was just some person's house. There, a man came out, looked at my papers, and dragged a mini-inflatable raft down to the river. He cheerfully put my purse into a waterproof bag, put it in the raft, handed me the paddle, and mimed that I should get in the boat, readying himself to shove it off.  Um what. I was given no instructions, no guidance on where to go, etc. 

All I could manage was a "Ummm....how do I know where to stop?" He stared at me blankly, then nodded quickly and ran into the house, returning with a laminated sheet of paper that showed a photo of a nondescript clearing surrounded by a bunch of trees with text that said "Stop when you get here." Should I have been worried that he had forgotten to tell me where to stop!? I would have floated down that river all the way to Austria, seriously.

Clearly the man didn't speak any English, so I just didn't ask anymore questions and got in the boat, which he pushed off and happily waved bye.

I had visions (and my guidebook gave no other indication) that it was going to be a leisurely canoe ride down the river, slowly floating through the town, etc.  Incorrect. Literally a minute later, I see a tiny TINY sign with an arrow pointing left.  I took the sign to indicate that I should veer left, which thank God I did, because if I had missed the world's smallest arrow sign, I would have gone over a small waterfall.  The left side had a small chute, which as I started going down, I kind of had a mild panic attack because the water was ROUGH and churning and super wild looking, and I had zero idea if I was supposed to be going down the chute or if the chute was a chute of death.  Well, I didn't die, but oh man did I get soaked. It was like "The River Wild." Except Kevin Bacon wasn't even there to try to kidnap and kill me.

There were THREE OF THESE during my ride.  At some points, I did encounter some other boaters, but they all seemed to be in groups and have a guide (and they were all in plastic canoes/kayaks, vs. my baller mini-raft), and they'd quickly disappear. I did see a couple of them totally flip and eat it at one of the particularly rough waterfalls. I've never loved my mini-raft so much before; suck it plastic kayaks.

Other than being given no direction, or warning, or instruction, the river itself was incredibly nice - it took you through some gorgeous city-views, and then you would turn and it would be pure forest again. 

Anyway, after an hour or so, right as I was analyzing my laminated photo of nondescript trees trying to figure out where I was supposed to pull off, I saw the man from earlier wildly waving from the side of the river near a clearing that vaguely resembled the photo. I pulled over, and he drove me and my raft back to town. Check. Successfully avoided floating to Austria.  On a side note, the man had two other guys in the car and though they were speaking Czech, they kept looking at me and the raft and sounding impressed. So I'm telling myself they were impressed with me.  

At the end of the day, it was an amazing, ridiculous adventure. 

My adorable single-person mini-raft! Clearly no idea what's in store

This is not the way the man showed me how to sit, but I live for danger

One of the chutes. This was a small baby one; the scary ones I didn't get a photo of because I was busy trying not to drown

A small waterfall

View of the castle

Uhh.....are you the set of trees I'm looking for?

On another side note, my waterproof iPhone bag seems to work splendidly, which is good news because I may have failed to test it out before I used it.


Meal of the Day:
After my river trip, I went and had a trdelnik and a latte for lunch, because I am an adult.

Hose-shaped, sugar pasty + milk with a dash of coffee

Bye, Cesky Krumlov - big fan of you. Next stop, Vienna!

Prague, Part 2: This place is Czech-cellent

Witty puns, man. Czech me out.


Cliffnotes of the Day:

• I took one of those free walking tours today - I took one with the same company in Dublin, and I'm beginning to love them. We walked through Old Town and the Jewish Quarter and our guide was massively entertaining.  Our tour was huge, it was like 50 people, but everyone was super nice, and history FTW.
• On the tour, I met Amy - another girl traveling the world solo, from Atlanta. It's so refreshing to kind of meet someone in the same boat. Most travelers I've met so far are from England or Australia (really....only those two) who are on an extended holiday or doing a gap year, and to them, it's totally normal to take a year off to travel (they're all also like, 20 years old, but that's a separate issue). So to meet someone who I could relate to (the backpacking thing, the not-working thing, the solo female traveling thing, etc.) was awesome.  She's blogging her own travels on her website here.
• After our tour, Amy and I explored Prague Castle together. It's apparently the largest ancient castle in the world. And it's awesome because different parts were built at different times, so it looks like all these totally different buildings cobbled together - there doesn't seem to be any kind of unifying theme with any of the buildings. 

Prague Castle!

The cathedral in Prague Castle

Tiny adorable houses in Prague Castle. I am appropriately-sized for a Czech person circa 1400

Enjoying the view from the top. It feels good to look down at the plebes

• Don't ask, but I had people encourage me to do one of those pub crawls that every city has. It's something I probably wouldn't have done before, but apparently it's a good thing to do if you're traveling alone. I seriously thought I could just go and have a drink. Lesson #1 is is that there is no such thing as a pub crawl in moderation - every bar had these platters of shots that they'd have you drink before you went inside. The last couple bars, I was cheers-ing and then secretly dumping my shot on the floor. My apologies to the bars that discovered random puddles of vodka all over the room. It was fun, though, and I got to see a gorgeous nighttime view of the castle and Charles Bridge:

This looked much prettier in person, I swear

Meal of the Day:

We tried a Czech pastry called Trdelník.  It's a huge sugar-covered pastry shaped like a hose: the kind firemen use to extinguish large fires, not those wimpy garden hoses. And then they coat the inside in Nutella. This may or may not have been my dinner.

Lady turning trdelniks on their spit

Please ignore that in addition to a giant trdelnik, we are also clutching ice cream cones #vacationdiet

Fun Facts of the Day:

• Prague is one of the few cities in Europe that's managed to be preserved through all the wars, bombings, etc. (partly due to Hitler wanting to preserve it, but whatever).  That's why it looks so pretty, and you can see so many different examples of buildings/architecture from all the time periods.  Most other European cities have been super reconstructed.
• There are people in the Czech Republic that have lived through the area changing countries 7 different times. Can you believe that?? You're just living there, minding your own business, and BOOM suddenly your country changes to an entirely different country, with different government, currency, etc. Also, I find it mind-blowing that I remember when it was Czechoslovakia (it was on Carmen Sandiego when I was a kid). Am I the only one who finds it super, super fascinating when big historical things happened while I was alive??! 
• Czech people drink the most beer, on average, compared to every other country in the world. Even Ireland. Way higher than Ireland.  I've never had so much Pilsner in my life.
• "Hello" in Czech is "Dobry den!" The only reason I can remember this is because it kind of sounds like "Dobby den", a la Harry Potter's house-elf, and I imagine Dobby (not dead, of course) in a small den-like cave filled with socks. 
• Czech escalators are ridiculously fast. I was staring at one in the metro station today, debating whether I should try and video the up/down escalators zooming at breakneck speed. I didn't in the end, but take my word for it - it's borderline theme park ride. Take a Scottish double-decker bus (front row) and a Czech escalator, and you've got yourself a day.

Prague: Kind of freakishly gorgeous

I've been accused of overusing phrases/descriptors like "the best", "my favorite", "amazing", "life-changing", "cutest", etc., etc. So I'm trying to dial it back, or at least give the smallest indication as to what is actually great and what isn't.

That being said, PRAGUE IS THE BEST. It is seriously one of the prettiest places ever; I spent the entire afternoon just wandering aimlessly through the cobbled city streets and getting lost in all the tiny nooks and corners.

Old Town Square. Is it possible to look prettier.

What It's All About:
Prague is a fairytale-looking, gorgeously-appointed, Disney-like town with that Eastern European flair.


Cliffnotes of the Day:

• Wandered the city streets around Old Town Square
• Climbed the clocktower, which has a famous astronomical clock which still works and apparently tells time due to science/physics/astrology/wizardry.  I could barely understand any of the plaques explaining how it works; I could only understand that the fact it works is a big complex deal, so my conclusion is that it's magic.  It strikes every hour, which people come to watch - basically, on the hour, the skeleton of Death rings a bell and the 12 apostles come out to say hi - none of which I would have understood if I hadn't read it in my guidebook. 

View of Old Town Square from the top of the clocktower

Asian tourist level = high

View of the crowd that gathers in front of the clocktower, on the hour

The famous/magic/sorcerous astronomical clock 

Walked along the famous Charles Bridge at sunset.

A romantic sunset photo with myself

*heart-eyed emoji*

Meal of the Day:
Rick Steves' guidebook sent me to this ridic Czech restaurant named after a legend about a rope-maker who strangled his wife (charming!). The guidebook also recommended I get the pork leg with mustard, which I did and it was GIANT. The kindly French couple sitting next to me even politely asked me what the hell I ordered.

This menu was out of control and I loved it

The largest meat slab ever for dinner

The restaurant's legend. I couldn't find the rope-maker's wife's photo in the pub. Is this a problem

MVP of the Day:

On the train from Berlin to Prague, I hadn’t booked a reserved seat (bc it was 5 Euros extra, and people assured me I’d be ok without one), and I was slightly late because a choco croissaint was calling my name.  Well, it wasn’t ok.

It was single-handedly the most chaotic, crowded, out-of-control train I’ve ever been on in my life.  People were jammed in every single hallway, in between the cars, outside the bathrooms, etc. And not having a reserved seat, I got stuck standing with my giant awkward backpack while people all tried to squeeze by me.  It’s a 4-hour train ride, and I was kind of panicking about having to stand the whole way. 

However, I met a German man who was incredibly nice to me and tried to help me find a seat (albeit unsuccessfully). But then, during a quick train stopover in Dresden (2.5 hours in), he came and found me and told me to follow him. I’m not kidding, he led me and my giant unwieldy backpack through 3 or 4 train cars, asking every single person if they had a free seat next to them. When he finally found a woman sitting next to a free seat being occupied by her GIANT suitcase, he single-handedly rearranged all the luggage in the overhead compartment, hauled this woman’s T-rex-sized suitcase up there, and then offered me the seat.  It was the nicest thing ever, and I could have cried. Later on, he bought a large beer for himself, came over and poured me a cup, and cheers'd me. We chatted a little throughout the entire ordeal; his name is Michael, he's German, and lives in Kazakhstan working as a lawyer.  

When we got off the train, he looked at me and went, "Connie - best of luck to you in all your adventures", and then walked away. Ugh. THE. NICEST. Bless you, German lawyer angel.