The inter-city buses are a little nicer than the ones used within Prague itself, but ours had seen some hard miles. I thought the tassels hanging from the sun visor were a nice touch.
Our ticket had assigned seats, but when we climbed aboard they were already taken. The bus was maybe half-full (at most), so after a bit of looking around we just sat in a couple open seats a little further forward. Every person who got on after us would walk down the aisle with their ticket in hand looking for their seat, peer left, right, up, down, and then just sit anywhere. Another couple climbed on board and started asking people to move their luggage so that they could see the seat numbers, realized that things were just "not right", and went up front to consult with the driver. He wouldn't even look at their ticket, made some exasperated comments, and pointed to the two empty seats right behind his. They sat down and we were off.
On the way out of town we passed a vehicle that appears to be a cross between a motorcycle, tricycle, and a kite.
The bus ride was just under three hours long and went through country that reminded me of Oregon's Willamette Valley -- mostly flat with some rolling hills, fields, pockets of trees, and an occasional small town. We even passed a John Deere dealership.
We had a 20 minute walk from Cesky Krumlov's bus station (actually, a gravel parking lot) to the pension, and our route overlooked the center of town. It looked nice enough that we decided to see if we could stay an extra day -- we'd only reserved two nights and we thought we could find at least two full days of things to do here. When we got to the pension they were able to give us the room for the third night.
We dropped off our gear and then went off to explore the town (our usual approach...). Along the way I noticed that they had personalized man-hole covers -- some of the nicest I've ever seen.
The old town itself was amazing. It is full of narrow cobblestone streets with lots of bridges over the river as it snakes its way through town. Like every other tourist town in Europe it has a shopping district with a zillion little stores, a museum of torture devices, and a wax museum starring Michael Jackson.
But the best part of the town was the castle -- it was everything that the Prague castle wasn't. It is the second largest castle in the Czech Republic (after Prague), but it is quite a bit smaller than Prague. The castle tour went through the living quarters, and they were still furnished with the original tapestries, frescoes, paintings, furniture, inlaid floors, and table settings (pewter, ceramic, and porcelain). You could actually get a feel for what it might have been like to live in the castle. Both Beth and I thought it was fabulous. No photos allowed.
After the tour we walked along the walls and then went up to the gardens above the castle. We were able to get a great view of the city.
We stopped off at a local restaurant recommended by our host on the way home, but realized that we didn't bring our Czech translation book. The restaurant didn't target the tourist trade, so they only had Czech menus. With a bit of guessing we were able to find the chicken and pork sections, and we each picked one item from each section. I asked about soup and the waiter said they had some, but he wasn't able to describe it in English. We ordered one serving and found that it was a wonderful vegetable beef -- probably the best soup we've had so far. Dinner was also excellent, so we asked if they had dessert. The waiter said "yes" and we said that we'd have some of that as well (whatever it might be...). It was little pancakes covered with caramelized cherry syrup, whipped cream, and cinnamon. Great stuff. Total cost for food, sodas, and tip was about $26 U.S.
In the map below Prague is near the top while Cesky Krumlov is at the bottom near the Austrian border.
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