Cesky Krumlov

The photos above are from a smallish Czech town called Cesky Krumlov, about 3 hours train ride south west of Prague. As a rule of thumb, you can measure how big a town is, geographically and economically by its train station. One thing about most European rail stations I've seen so far, the platforms are usually really low, and you need to climb some stairs to get on board. So having no platform, like Cesky Krumlov is not a big deal, but the place looked really isolated.

We walked for a couple of kilometres through a suburb that could have been any suburb in Sydney. Someone told me that it was a beautiful little town. Not quite sure what they meant yet, until we crossed a bridge and encountered the entry to the "quaint little town" that is Cesky Krumlov. The picture up top is the entry to the town. It looks like a prop from Robin Hood - Men in Tights. And that's the flavour of the whole little town. It's as if, in order to attract tourists, the council had decided that Cesky Krumlov should have a certain Mel Brooks-esque feel about it. The streets were narrow, and made of cobble stone. Tourists were EVERYWHERE, there was a nice river running throught the town, and a nice bridge.

Most of the shops were selling jewellery, mostly amber type stuff. We didn't buy anything. There is a castle too, but I'll show you a picture of that later. It started raining while we were looking around. I left the umbrella back in the hostel room (which was a REALLY NICE hostel room by the way). The rain was really heavy, and many tourist caught out like us took refuge in shops or their doorways. We didn't want to make a run for it, it was REALLY slippery. The rain eased eventually, and we safely made the 200 metre trip back to the hostel.

Apparently there is a nice old building built into a cliff wall. The second picture is of it at night time while we were having dinner. We only stayed for one night, and the place was so small, I think that's all that we needed. The place is nice, and I wouldn't go back there myself, but I would certainly recommend that anyone who can be bothered to make it to Prague should be also bothered to visit this nice quaint little town.