Cesky Krumlov

The Vltava river bends back on itself creating a bit of a loop. In the middle of this loop is the beautiful, old town of Cesky Krumlov. It has been well preserved and even has a huge castle.

We started our morning with a visit to the castle. At the entrance of the castle, there is a bridge across a deep pit. The pit holds a few brown bears! Apparently bear keeping has been a castle tradition for many years. As we toured the castle we saw at least three bear skin rugs!


The castle tour was nice, but we’ve seen so many castles now that we weren’t terribly impressed. We also took a tour of the castle theatre. It is one of only two Baroque theatres in the world. There are others that have either the equipment or the building, but not both the theatre equipment and building. It was pretty cool to see how they would switch sets by using ropes and winches under the theatre stage. We also checked out the sound-making machines they used to create sounds of thunder, rain and wind.

We walked along some of the castle courtyards and found our way to a bridge with a nice view of the old town. We then strolled along some of the streets. We noticed some rafts on the river and wanted to go too, but the water is running too fast as there has been a lot of rain here, and they didn’t think it was wise to take children.

Instead of rafting we bought ice-cream cones and went to the Marionette Museum. The museum was pretty small, but at the end there was a little puppet stage and several marionettes that we could play with. We made the devil dance, the dragon roar, the princess give orders and the prince take them! Grand fun!

CM