Stare-Boleslav

Aidrian informed us of a little town practically on the Prague public transit system that has a castle and such, so Megan and I got up Saturday and made our way to Stare Boleslav. This is actually two towns on either side of the Elbe (Czech Labem), that united as one town. One one side is a little "castle" that protected the river crossing and on the other are several very pretty churches. We went to the castle which is not fully renovated but very cute, and then crossed the river. The main church is very old and while the Romans were never in the town it's built in Romanesque style. Inside are some of the earliest frescoes in Europe. There was a wedding in the church so we moved on and explored the town a bit promising to return. When we got back the wedding was over so we went in. While we were looking about this young man came and said something in Czech I responded telling him that we didn't speak Czech. THen he fetched an older woman and said something to her. Finally in English he asked if we would like a tour. We said sure and we joined a group who was following the older woman and he basically translated for her to us. The church has a shrine that was an older church and is the place where Saint Winceslas was murdered. For many years his body was entombed here, but was later removed to Prague.
After the main tour, the young man took us out and showed us the fresoes, which had been locked up before. He offerred to take us to see the other church as well, but we declined, having accepted enough from the young man.
Afterwards we went to a late lunch in town, and then headed home. Pictures...

Karlstein

The nearest and most popular castle to Prague, besides Prague castle, is Karlstein. It's a fairy tale hilltop castle surrounded by woodlands and a quaint little town that has basically been renovated to serve the tourists. Curtis had been there before but had told me that he would want to return. So Megan and I grabed him for a daytrip out. The train trip is really quite short, and we were walking up the hill before we knew it. The castle is really everything everyone says it is, especially when you see it for the first time from afar. We toured around the castle, and then went for a trop on the wooded trails. I felt a little bad because we happened upon a mother deer in a clearing and scared her away form her baby, but we left the baby in peace, so hopefully all was well. What's worse is that on the way home I got hit with a huge allergy attack and was sick the rest of the weekend. Megan was very kind and took care of me, and even wandered around aimlessly trying to find a weekend pharmacy to buy drugs, but we failed. Pictures...