My Travel Adventures

My last trip before departing for Oxford took me to the north of Central Bohemia again. Our first destination was the mountain Říp, though our first stop was the side of a road about ten kilometres away from it. The dog, who had apparently not been walked very thoroughly in the morning, began to prepare for a bowel movement inside the car, which necessitated an immediate emergency stop.

This weekend was presumably the year’s last warm and sunny weekend. Our family used the occasion to pay a visit to a relation near the northern city Liberec, where we gathered blueberries and mushrooms and made merry. The hills in the borderlands are very peaceful, and much of our visits consist of sitting on a terrace talking about how quiet it is.

Autumn is usually very grey in the Czech Republic and one is lucky when more than one weekend during the entirety of November and December turn out to be sunny. The good weather allotted for this gloomy period fell on Saturday, which is why my sister Naty, our dad, and I made a long trip around the sights just to the west (and northwest) of Prague.   We made our first stop at the castle Oko ř , whose golden walls above frosty fields we saw in the warm glow of the rising sun. The castle was founded in the latter half of the thirteenth century, but it is unclear by whom. It switched hands numerous times and was heavily damaged during the Thirty Years’ War, but it’s final transformation into a ruin was caused by the dissolution of the Jesuit order, who had been the castle’s last owners.   We continued north-westward for a little over half an hour to stop by the unfinished Cathedral of Our Lady in Panenský Týnec. We were the first people there, much to the annoyance, it a...