Wander More Work Less

A late start to our first day of exploring Olomouc. The Warriors were playing, so I decided to watch that first. It was after 11 a.m. when we set off. We’re about 700m from the edge of the older part of town. While walking there, it was noticeably quiet with hardly any people about. We started to think it might be another public holiday, but being Saturday that made no sense. There was a threat of rain with big dark skies, but it wasn’t forecast until after dinner tonight. The first thing we came to was the Church of St Maurice. I noticed a couple of people going into a small side door of a circular tower. On closer inspection, it turned out to be the entrance to the tower. Sarah had seen it online along with other towers in town. This one only required a donation for entry. Up we went! The first staircase was a narrow, steep, stone spiral. Up we went—and up some more! Below is a picture of the spiral staircase but taken looking up from below at the bottom of it.  ...

It’s moving day again, but our train wasn’t until 10:55 a.m., so we had time to relax and pack up this morning. Visiting Bratislava has been well worth the side trip. Plenty to see and a good city for walking — also not very expensive. We had thought about going to Vienna from here, either as a day trip or a multi-night stop. But it’s much more expensive and doesn’t fit the MO of this trip. A day trip would have saved money but wouldn’t have done it justice. We’ll save Austria for a future trip when we can see it properly. Instead, we’re heading back into the Czech Republic to a smaller city called Olomouc. The “c” is pronounced like a “ts.” It’s less touristy, and some say it’s a mini Prague, so hopefully it’s worthy of a four-night visit. There’s no direct train option today, so we’re traveling to a place called Přerov and then switching to another train to Olomouc. Hopefully that’s simple enough. We decided not to turn up and wait an hour at the station, so we only left the apartmen...

The forecast was for rain today. After not experiencing any for 10 weeks, we were actually looking forward to it. It was supposed to come mainly after lunch, so we decided to head out for some geocaching around the city beforehand. We managed to find 10 caches on a 5.5 km walk — a mixture of physical caches (find the container) and virtual ones (take a photo). A couple were in places we couldn’t have searched yesterday because of the tour group crowds. But this morning, we were early enough that it wasn’t too busy. Below is a picture of me returning a physical container — the size of a film canister magnetised under a manhole cover — while posing for a photo as the tourists do. 😉 We came across another couple in a park who were very obviously looking for the cache we’d just found. They weren’t very stealthy, so I walked up to them without them noticing and gave them a bit of a fright. 😂 They were too focused on figuring out where the cache was hidden instead of looking ou...

An early alarm nudge for Sarah by me – I was under instructions to wake her at 6 am. The Blue Church is only open for viewing from 6:30 am until 7:30 am today, and not until 5:30 pm tomorrow. The preference was to visit it early with fewer people there. It was just a short walk away, and it certainly is blue. Quite different to any other church we’ve seen – and it feels like we’ve seen a lot of them. Welcome to Europe! Google was right, it was open. However, a service was starting at 7 am, just as we arrived, so we didn’t stay very long. Being an inner-city church surrounded by other buildings, it was hard to get good photos. Given we were up early and had time on our side, we decided to visit Bratislava Castle next, which was not near the church. We also didn’t take a direct route to it. Instead, we crossed the Danube River on a pedestrian-and-tram-only bridge called Starý Most. But it looked very new to us, so it must have been recently renovated. It did, howe...

I was awake this morning at 3:30 am and then struggled to get back to sleep after that. Maybe I was missing the sauna-like heat and pub noise of the Brno apartment? There’s a lot to see here in this city, so we started the morning with a good 7.3 km walk. First stop was the Presidential Palace, which had a really nice fountain in front of it. The palace had Secret Service–type agents positioned inside the gates and two armed guards. The guards performed a small marching routine, tapping their weapons on the ground and switching sides every so often. That must help them avoid both boredom and the pain of standing still for so long. Behind the palace there is a large garden open to the public. It too had a fountain, along with flower beds, a few sculptures, and some really nice large trees. Next on our tour list was Freedom Square, a park next door with a very large central fountain modelled on a flower. The fountain is called the Fountain of Union, which was only recently re...

A relaxed start to our moving day as the train to Bratislava doesn't leave until 10:20am. Breakfast then packing and out the door at 9:20am. We really should learn to leave later because it's only a 20 minute walk to the station.  We find a seat outside in the shade and wait to see which platform our train will board at. The platform number doesn't get updated until just 5 minutes before the train arrives but it turns out to be the one right in front of where we had been sitting so it was easy to find. A very similar train carriage to the one we took to Český Krumlov. Very modern and comfortable.  The journey to Bratislava is just over 1.5 hours. If we miss getting off we will end up in Budapest. Right back where we started! But we do make sure we get off at the right stop. We then need to find the local tram stop to get into the city centre. Initially that proves tricky as we get confused by the nearby bus stops but soon realised our mistake.  The tram we need is at the ...

Saturday night in the inner city of Brno is very loud and raucous! We had the windows open to keep things cooler, but the street outside was crazy. Why would people take their barking dogs out to the pub on a Saturday night? Around 3:30 a.m., the windows were shut again. This morning’s planned activity was a visit to the Brno Cathedral – St. Peter and Paul, with the intention of climbing the bell tower. It didn’t open until 12 p.m., so there was no hurry to head out. We started our walk just before 11 a.m. to see the Astronomical clock drop its ball. We videoed the four people waiting and managed to capture the man who was successful. He appeared to be an independent punter, not associated with the man we noticed in the blue shirt yesterday. Blue Shirt was here again today, still in the same shirt — yuck. He wasn’t trying to catch a ball; he was just hanging around. Perhaps he had a helper waiting to catch. After doing some Googling later, we learned these people are referred to as the...