Czech Spa Towns and Castles
The last couple of days have been interesting, here is a run down of our activities since arriving at the Czech Spa town of Marianske Lazne.
we got here on Saturday afternoon and had a little walk around the town. at the ;centre is the spa taps where you can take a cup and try various different fresh spring waters, some of which come readily heated! a couple of them were really nice and even had bubbles au naturale. but there were a couple that were gross. they are apparently good for healing! yeh right. i think it's a good marketing ploy to make you buy the cups that you drink the water from. at the centre is a 'Singing Fountain' which is basically a decorative fountain with hundreds of well placed jets that propel water in time to classical music tracks piped from the fountain. each day, every 2 hours is another performance to a different classical track. quite amusing, really.
on Sunday we had a bit of rain, we went in the car to Tepla Monastary about 10km from our base, the monastary was taken over by the communists and the army where based there, the communists had a killing spree and murdered the monks that originally lived there. after the fall of communism the monastary was given back the the Order and today 12 monks still live there. The Monastary also houses the second largest library in the Czech Republic, and i must say it is pretty impressive. if you read a book a day you would have to spend 300 years there to get through all the books. in the afternoon we spent time back at Marianske Lazne with more friends having a walk and then went back to the car again to drive to Kynzvart Chateau where we had a tour of the rooms, it was very interesting, however, we forgot to get the english text for the tour so i hadn't the faintest idea what was going on, later we had some dinner back at Marianske Lazne.
Monday was a really good day, we drove to another spa town called Frantiskovy Lazne for some reason this gave me the feeling of entering a wild west cowboy town, although there were no cowboys. plenty of germans though. i had a great couple of hours here at the waterpark, it was basically a modern leisure centre with fantastic pools. All the systems were really hi-tec, firstly for 2 quid you get 1.5 hours in the pools, the receptionist gives you a wrist watch, this will allow you through the gate then lock and unlock your locker for you, they are individually coded. It has a kind of proximity chip in it. it will also give you further information when you hold it up to one of the information stands. clever eh! The pools where all stainless steel so they were easy to shape and form. and where incredibly clean, but the very best part about them was that they reflected the light from above far better than a normal pool so you could see clear as anything when you swam underwater or front crawl, probably an unexpected benefit in the design. The pools also had great edgings, moulded like 'W' so that you could sit back into them and relax, some parts had jacuzzi sections to. They also had a jacuzzi cave and superb outdoor water features, fountains, waterfalls, slides etc. From here we went to Seeberg Castle where we see some antique farm equipment the kitchens and the original 'hang mans noose' which i had to have a go of, of course! The views over the valleys were a pleasure. We spent the evening playing Yatzee with dumn rules that Petra made up and a game of Piggies, which i have never even seen before but i am told it is a traditional english game!
Today we visited 2 castles and another large spa town, Kralovy Vary. The first one was Becov nad Teplou, which was a beautiful castle, lovely gardens and views, but it was closed when we got there so we spent some time in the gardens then moved on to Kralovy Vary. This town has a large populatoin of Russians, Petra tells me as much as 50%, Also here you will find fountains of natural spring water and taps for tasting it. here the water came out of the ground very hot, it was infact 72 degrees which surprised me, naive as i am, it was bloody hot and i couldn't keep my hand under it. The other main feature that stayed in my mind was the river that ran right through the centre and split the town, it was very fast flowing and had the biggest carp in that i have ever seen, they were about 80cm long (2.5 ft) and that's no fishermans tale! it had so many too, and nobody was trying to catch them.
something else from today i must tell you about, on the drive to these wonderful places i had the fortune of seeing Eagles, hawkes and a Czech Stork all in their wild habitat, which i feel very lucky for as i have only seen these in Zoos or Falconry places before, the kind that are hand reared. Today i see them going about their business and looking magnificent in the process. They were literally sitting in fields on the hay bales, looking about for some food, i reckon i saw more than 10 in total.
When we got back we had another walk around the town and grabbed dinner, nice and cheap, chicken, with vegetables and rice, garlic and cheese soup, caprese with bread, and 2 beers and a coke for 7.50 and an icecream nearby the singing fountain which was dipped in chocolate and coconut. mmmmhhhhhhhh!
we got here on Saturday afternoon and had a little walk around the town. at the ;centre is the spa taps where you can take a cup and try various different fresh spring waters, some of which come readily heated! a couple of them were really nice and even had bubbles au naturale. but there were a couple that were gross. they are apparently good for healing! yeh right. i think it's a good marketing ploy to make you buy the cups that you drink the water from. at the centre is a 'Singing Fountain' which is basically a decorative fountain with hundreds of well placed jets that propel water in time to classical music tracks piped from the fountain. each day, every 2 hours is another performance to a different classical track. quite amusing, really.
on Sunday we had a bit of rain, we went in the car to Tepla Monastary about 10km from our base, the monastary was taken over by the communists and the army where based there, the communists had a killing spree and murdered the monks that originally lived there. after the fall of communism the monastary was given back the the Order and today 12 monks still live there. The Monastary also houses the second largest library in the Czech Republic, and i must say it is pretty impressive. if you read a book a day you would have to spend 300 years there to get through all the books. in the afternoon we spent time back at Marianske Lazne with more friends having a walk and then went back to the car again to drive to Kynzvart Chateau where we had a tour of the rooms, it was very interesting, however, we forgot to get the english text for the tour so i hadn't the faintest idea what was going on, later we had some dinner back at Marianske Lazne.
Monday was a really good day, we drove to another spa town called Frantiskovy Lazne for some reason this gave me the feeling of entering a wild west cowboy town, although there were no cowboys. plenty of germans though. i had a great couple of hours here at the waterpark, it was basically a modern leisure centre with fantastic pools. All the systems were really hi-tec, firstly for 2 quid you get 1.5 hours in the pools, the receptionist gives you a wrist watch, this will allow you through the gate then lock and unlock your locker for you, they are individually coded. It has a kind of proximity chip in it. it will also give you further information when you hold it up to one of the information stands. clever eh! The pools where all stainless steel so they were easy to shape and form. and where incredibly clean, but the very best part about them was that they reflected the light from above far better than a normal pool so you could see clear as anything when you swam underwater or front crawl, probably an unexpected benefit in the design. The pools also had great edgings, moulded like 'W' so that you could sit back into them and relax, some parts had jacuzzi sections to. They also had a jacuzzi cave and superb outdoor water features, fountains, waterfalls, slides etc. From here we went to Seeberg Castle where we see some antique farm equipment the kitchens and the original 'hang mans noose' which i had to have a go of, of course! The views over the valleys were a pleasure. We spent the evening playing Yatzee with dumn rules that Petra made up and a game of Piggies, which i have never even seen before but i am told it is a traditional english game!
Today we visited 2 castles and another large spa town, Kralovy Vary. The first one was Becov nad Teplou, which was a beautiful castle, lovely gardens and views, but it was closed when we got there so we spent some time in the gardens then moved on to Kralovy Vary. This town has a large populatoin of Russians, Petra tells me as much as 50%, Also here you will find fountains of natural spring water and taps for tasting it. here the water came out of the ground very hot, it was infact 72 degrees which surprised me, naive as i am, it was bloody hot and i couldn't keep my hand under it. The other main feature that stayed in my mind was the river that ran right through the centre and split the town, it was very fast flowing and had the biggest carp in that i have ever seen, they were about 80cm long (2.5 ft) and that's no fishermans tale! it had so many too, and nobody was trying to catch them.
something else from today i must tell you about, on the drive to these wonderful places i had the fortune of seeing Eagles, hawkes and a Czech Stork all in their wild habitat, which i feel very lucky for as i have only seen these in Zoos or Falconry places before, the kind that are hand reared. Today i see them going about their business and looking magnificent in the process. They were literally sitting in fields on the hay bales, looking about for some food, i reckon i saw more than 10 in total.
When we got back we had another walk around the town and grabbed dinner, nice and cheap, chicken, with vegetables and rice, garlic and cheese soup, caprese with bread, and 2 beers and a coke for 7.50 and an icecream nearby the singing fountain which was dipped in chocolate and coconut. mmmmhhhhhhhh!
posted by Tyler at 6:43 pm
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