Hi everyone! sorry for taking so long for this post, ive been busy and ive also been putting it off, just because I'm a bit lazy. In this post I'll be writing about two weekends that I spend out of Prague. The first weekend was from the 27th of September to the 30th. In the Czech Republic they had a statutory holiday on the 28th, so I only missed one day of school.That weekend I went to southern Moravia, it's a region south of Brno which is known for its ideal wine growing conditions. The next weekend(October 6th to 7th) I visited the cottage of one of the rotarians in my club, it's near Karlovy Vary(Carlsbad), right next to a small town called Bozi Dar. South MoraviaDay 1 On thursday I left in the middle of the day for Brno, with Ludvik, a local rotarian and his father, in Brno we picked up his daughter, Brno looks like a really nice city and I hope that I'll be able to visit it while I'm here. After we picked up his daughter we drove to a wine cellary place for a wine festival. It was very interesting to learn about how the wine was made. The place we were at used the modern way of making wine, and was pretty small. Day 2 today we visited an old windmill and learnt about the geology of the area. this region of maroavia is called the "Moravian Karst" and it has really cool rocks, as well as the second longest cave system in Czechia(I think). After the windmill we went on a bit of a hike in the forest. It was amazing, and it was the first time I had gone on a hike for over a month! That's got to be a reccord for me(albeit a bit of a sad one)! After the hike we went to a really nice church, and then on to another cave. This one however was special because it was used by the millitary in the past. It was so interesting to learn about the history there. There were beds inside the cave, and they could live there, unassisted(but probably very uncomforable) for two weeks. They also had a whole intellegence station there, for communicating with planes as well as millitary units. How they disguised it so as not to draw suspicion from satelite images was they made a volley ball court and a pool along with some(unused) bungalows and said it was a place for tourists. Day 3 On the 29th we visited another wine cellar, though this one I think is one of the biggest ones in South Moravia, the tunnels were made big enough that a horse with a rider on it could ride in them. The cellars were constructed 1230, when the Kinghts of Templar arrived. They built the cellars as well as stronghold. Walking through those tunnels was so cool, and it has the second biggest(in use) wine barrel in the Czech Republic. After that we went on a walk up to the top of a hill were there was a lookout tower, all around were feilds of grapes, it was very pretty. Once we got back to the town at the bottom of the hill we had lunch and then went on to the town that had our hotel. Once we had put all our things in the rooms we went on another hike to the top of a hill, at the top there were castle ruins and a beautiful view Day 4 Today was my last day in south moravia and I was quite sad to go, the scenery is very pretty and learning about wine was very interesting. We first went to the center of the town to see a few of the pumpkins that some of the children had made, they were placed in front of the church along with a scarecrow, they were already getting into the Halloween spirit. After that we started the drive home, but on the way we stopped at Lednice castle. The Lednice and Valtice area is cultural-natural landscape complex of 283.1 square kilometers. It is a registered UNESCO World heritage site. Both the Lednice and the Valtice castles were owned by the Lichtenstein family but were annexed in the second world war. After World War II the family made sevral legal attermpts to regain their property. But the area still remains the property of teh Czech republic. After that we headed back to Brno and then continued on back to Prague. Overall it was a great long weekend and I learnt lots about history and how wine is made. Karlovy Vary and Bozi DarThis weekend I visited Carlsbad(Karlovy Vary) and Bozi Dar. I arrived in the early afternoon of the 6th and had lunch and then went to explore Carlsbad with a niece of Ludvik(I was staying at his fathers cottage) and one of her friends. I was picked up by her mom and we drove to a small town and got some cake(yummmm) and then continued on to their appartment in Carlsbad where we ate our cake and talked a bit. I got to show the three of them on a map where in Canada I'm from as well as where my extended family lives and other places in Canada that are important to me. After cake we got to explore Carlsbad for the rest of the day. Carlsbad is known for it's many spas, as well as the mineral water you can drink. The water is said to have healing powers, but it tasted pretty bad so I'm not sure ;). Below you can see some pictures from that weekend, including the little hike I took.
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AuthorHi! I'm Emma, I will be going on a yearlong exchange to the Czech Republic and I'm using this blog to catalogue my experiences during my exchange. Archives
January 2019
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