Back again with a post from the trip! There’s just one more after this for Prague and then it’s back to our regularly scheduled programming from Spain (at least for now :P).
After packing up from Vienna and our really fun night at the Travel Shack, we boarded the bus for a stop in Krems, a small town in the north of Austria. It’s known for its wine and universities. The town itself is small, but has about ~35k students per year. We had a walking tour of the wineries and the town center with an adorable guide named Christine. I was a little sad to hear that wine isn’t in season now, so all of the winery vines had been cut for regrowth – they don’t look cute in photos, but I’ve included a picture below. Our guide told us that the soil, which is essentially sand, is perfect for growing wine and also for building houses in the side of. Christine took us to the church, which had beautiful stained glass and ceilings. She told us that Krems was forced to become Catholic during one of the King’s reigns (the name of the king escapes me, sorry). They built this ornate church, but the people secretly refused to convert and only built the church as a façade!
Our walking tour ended at the winery shop, where there were snacks and bottles of wine waiting for us! Alex also bought us all pizza because we were starving after three hours of walking around. The man who owns the winery had five wines for us to try – a sparkling Sauvignon Blanc (my favorite and I bought a bottle!), a Moscato (hated it), a Chardonnay type, a Rosé, and a sweet red (which I also hated). He kept popping bottles and I was happy to keep “trying” them! It was a really fun and perfect little afternoon because of the beautiful weather, my friends, and of course, plenty of wine. We boarded the bus to our next destination and thankfully I slept the entire three hour ride!
We arrived at Ceský Krumlov a little after 6 and after check in, Alex took us on a walk through the town. Ceský Krumlov is a UNESCO World Heritage site and as a result, no changes are allowed to be made to the town. It’s straight out of a storybook fairytale. We walked up by the castle and took tons of photos before heading to dinner. We went to a restaurant by the river for some traditional Bohemian cuisine. I had chicken (of course) with potatoes (double of course), and I thought the food was deliciously seasoned and cooked. It was so peaceful next to the river! At the end of dinner, we wanted a relaxing evening, so we found a café with crepes and hot chocolate. It was a great night!
We woke up bright and early Thursday because we had two hours to explore the town before boarding the bus to Prague. We went straight to the castle to climb the tower for the views of the town. It was kind of sketchy getting up top (very narrow), but we made it and the views were breathtaking. I felt like Rapunzel (after she gets her hair chopped off in Tangled of course, my hair is way too short to actually be Rapunzel). After a precarious climb down, we went to the market in the main square that they had set up for Easter week. I had a delicious pastry and admired the hand crafted items at the stands. Before we knew it, it was time to make a stop in the grocery store for lunch items and hop on the bus to Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic.
The famous Sedlec Ossuary, also known as the Bone Church, is a small Roman Catholic chapel with bones as decorations. There’s bones of approximately 60,000 people within the church, all real!! In the middle, there’s an enormous chandelier that contains one of every bone in the human body. There’s also a coat of arms made out of bones! Before the bones were in the church, they were in mass graves for people who died from the Black Death (aka the Plague). Since so many people were dying, they needed to exhume the bones to make room for more. A monk created the designs within the church using the bones of the people he exhumed. I can’t imagine digging up graves and creating artwork out of the bones, but here we are! It was a little creepy, but overall really cool to see. I lit a candle just to be safe 😛
After the church, we boarded the bus for the last time to Prague! I couldn’t believe the trip was ending so soon but I was glad we still had a few days in Prague!
aventuras de alyssa 