Today we moved from Moravia, the eastern section of the Czech Republic, to Bohemia, the western section. A taxi arrived early in the morning to pick us up, bikes, luggage and all, at our fortress-hotel and dropped us off in Telc (pronounced "Telch"), the western edge of Moravia. The taxi then moved on to drop our luggage off in Trebon, our destination for the day. It was about an hour's drive to Telc.

Telc Main Square

'Sgraffiti

Telc is a beautiful town, currently a UNESCO heritage site. It's arcaded main square is surrounded by houses that were all built in Renaissance style between 1530 (when a fire had destroyed most of the town) and 1589, at the death of its main patron, Lord Zacharias, the governor of Moravia. The resulting uniformity in style, completely preserved, is a remarkable sight. There are some marvelous examples of sgraffiti. There is also a zamek and the ubiquitous Baroque plague column (although the column is from 1717).

Zamek

Plague Column

More information about Telc is available on the town's web site at www.telc-etc.cz.

Jindrichuv Main Square

Hrad (Castle)

Crossing into Bohemia, the next stop, was in Jindrichuv Hradec (the "J" is silent, the final "c" is "ch"). Another main square with painted houses, another Plague Column, another castle.

More 'Sgraffiti

More sgraffiti'd buildings. A sizable town that was once the seat of government for the region.

The town's main claim to fame is its huge mechanical Nativity Scene, but sad to say, we did not see it. We didn't really see much, because while we were having lunch the sky began to darken, and we decided that we would best be on our way.


From Jindrichuv Hradec we rode (in the rain) into what is sort of the Czech Republic's "lake district."

Trebon Ponds

Actually, it would be better described as a "pond district."

Our destination for the day was a town called Trebon, which was the seat of the Rozmberk family, the ruling clan of the area in the middle ages. Sometime in the 1500's the Baron decided he wanted more trout ponds in the area, so the serfs were put to the task - and they dug about 500 of them, all of which are huge and chock full of trout to boot. We rode through several lovely villages and in between pond after pond after pond. Sometimes the road would be a narrow causeway between two ponds. It really was pretty. And pretty much totally flat.

Trebon Main Square

Trebon Zamek (with painted-on bricks)

An interesting Fountain

We finally reached Trebon, checked into our pension, and explored the town. Most of its original defensive walls are still standing, which gives it a medieval feeling. The narrow main square was reminiscent of the two we had already seen that day -- the usual sgraffiti and plague columns, and of course a zamek (note, though, that what looks like brickwork on the zamek is actually painted on). The Regent Brewery, oldest working brewery in the Czech Republic (in operation since the 1200's), is also withhin the town walls. Most of the numerous restaurants served tasty fresh trout out of the surrounding ponds.

Day 4 -- Trebon Ponds and Forest Circle

In the forest

We headed out fairly early through the town square and out the other side of the walls, past the Regent Brewery and then onto a bike path that skirted the side of one of the larger lakes, called Svet Pond. By the time we were back on the roads, we were already out in the countryside and the traffic was almost non-existent. We probably saw more bikes than cars that day.

That house was the whole village!

The planned bike route for the day had been a short one, and given that the terrain was totally flat, we decided to do a longer trip. We worked out a route from the tiny map in a pamphlet that we had picked up in the Czech Tourist Bureau in New York. We really weren't sure where we would be going - it sort of didn't matter as the scenery was pretty similar throughout the region, and it was just a question of finding the smaller roads. We made good use of the large area maps posted in some of the villages, which were pretty close together, so it was easy to keep yourself oriented.

This area is really lovely - we alternated between forests and fields and ponds. The forests were fantastic. They were so deep and dense that when you looked into them, they seemed to go on forever; they looked as if fairy tale characters could be living there. These were the classic Bohemian Forests. We saw lots of people in the woods picking mushrooms, which is a national pastime, apparently.

Packing up the crystal

In the town of Chlum we stopped at a Bohemian Crystal Factory Outlet store. The quality of the crystal and the prices were amazing. Beautiful stuff, but we were limited by what we could carry on the bikes (unfortunately) -- we probably had another 20 miles or so to go. We settled on a set of six (heavy) tumblers. Mark divided the package in two, packed up three glasses apiece between cardboard and rolled up rain gear (it didn't look like we would be needing it the rest of the day) and then taped it all together with duct tape (that he happened to have with him). We each put one parcel in our panniers, and off we went. Have crystal, will travel. Fortunately, neither of us fell over that day, although I think the glasses were packed up so well they would have survived a fall.

Holiday Camp

We passed another interesting sight later that day -- a series of tiny huts behind a well-kept high fence. Deserted. The huts looked more like rabbit hutches that anything that would house people.We found out later that this was a classic Communist-era Czech holiday camp. It didn't look very appealing as a vacation spot to us.

Back in Trebon later, we had more trout at a different restaurant, and suffered our only disappointment in Czech cuisine -- the dumplings, supposedly one of the Czech national dishes. However, unlike any other dumplings we've had in other cuisines, these were not moist at all, and more like a rolled up piece of bread than a dumpling. We tried dumplings several other times on the trip, hoping for better, but it was always the same thing (so it wasn't just that restaurant). Stick with the trout and french fries/chips!