Pania and Ka Pai Go on a Real Puppet Stage

Monday August 30th

This morning we woke up to rain again. Apparently it is like this all over Europe at the moment and summer is over! Certainly feels like it here. It is freezing. Mary said that two of us could come today as they were going to see puppets. So we were the two lucky ones that went to Cesky Krumlov today. Mind you we were glad to be hiding in the bags for most of the day. It was wet and cold.

Being a Monday there was not much open and not as many tourists as usual. But they did meet some people from the South Island of NZ so they stopped and had a chat to them. Alan had read that you could get a special parking ticket if you were a tourist so they made their way to the Info centre to inquire about this. It was worth doing as they were charging about $3 an hour for parking and the special ticket will mean this works out at about half of that. Although the instructions written in English were confusing, they worked out if they put this ticket in the machine and validated it they would be able to use it to exit the carpark and get the ticket back. This would mean they did not need the ticket they were given on entry. This worked, although it was not how it read in the instructions.

CK is described as one of the most exquisite towns in the Czech Republic. It is squeezed into the tight S bend of the Vltava river. The old town is divided into quarters by the twisting snake of the river so there are bridges everywhere. Rose brown houses tumble down steep slopes in narrow cobble stoned streets and it has largely been unchanged for 300 years. Under communism few foreign tourists ever made it here, but now it is a tourist Mecca. The whole town is an UNESCO designated site. Of course the residents have turned nearly every building into accommodation, restaurants or tourist shops and it is at risk of over development. A lot of tourist shops are owned and run by Aisans and the goods on sale reflect this. There are still lots of traditional glass, jewellery and wooden toys available if you are prepared to pay the prices. Some of the foodstalls open out onto the street with wooden shutters just as they have down over the centuries. One of the traditional food items is dough wound around a steel tube and cooked over an open fire. It is then rolled in cinnamon and sugar. Mary and Alan tried it and they said it was beautiful.

The marionette museum was open so they took us to see the collection from the National Marrionette Theatre. Some of these puppets were 300 years old. They had used the wooden rafters in the roof of the former church of Sv Joist to hang them rather gruesomely, although this was a good idea as it made them all easy to see. Many of them were sets from Operas or Shakespearian plays. There were also some actual puppet stages there and we got our photos taken on one of them. The detail on the faces and the costumes were amazing. It would be good to see an actual performance.





The Castle was not open for viewing but you could walk around all the precincts. At the entrance in the medieval prikop (bear moat) live two bears, yes real bears. Tomorrow Mary is going take Ber Lin to say hello to them. The castle is built right into the rocks up on the hillside and uses them as foundations.

We visited a church Sv Vit, where no photos or videos were allowed to be taken. It has patches of a medieval fresco and a rocco organ case and fabulously gilded pulpit.
It was still raining and getting increasingly colder so they decided to go back to Hemi and head for the camp. The turn to get out of the carpark was a nasty one so Mary turned right and ended up taking a quite a scenic tour through the outer village and eventually along a river and out of town. When she was able to turn around she followed the signs to a Tesco Hypermarket. They were expecting something big like Tesco Extra, but were sadly disappointed. Mary thought she might be able to buy a heater but they obviously haven’t got their winter stocks in yet and still selling fans! The fruit and vegetables were sparse and with little choice and would never have made it to the shelves in England. A lot of shelves were near empty. You could be excused for thinking you had stepped back to communist days. They had found the same at the Lidl they had visited the day before. They did manage to find some nice steak and a few manky potatoes, carrots and mushrooms and had a nice dinner.

It was so cold, 10 degrees, that they made the bed and watched a bit of TV but Mary went to sleep in front of it just like at home. They are hoping for some sunshine tomorrow!