South Bohemia

We had Easter Monday off, so we decided to use the long weekend to explore more of the Czech Republic. First we went to South Bohemia, which we hadn't seen much of, and stayed in the town of České Budĕjovice. It was a very nice, if quiet, town. It has a large centre square, and a big tower overlooking the square, the town and beyond. The big event in České Budĕjovice that night was a hockey playoff game; the local team, HC Mountfield, finished first in the regular season. We walked down to the arena but tickets were sold out, so we strolled along a nice path beside the Vltava river. With my dinner, I did have a Budweiser in Budweis. That's the original Budweiser, not the Anheuser-Busch product; Budweis is the German name for České Budĕjovice.
Sunday we took a bus to Telč, a small town we read about in Rick Steves' book. According to what we read, there wasn't much to the town except an impressive square, so we made it a lunch stop. The square was quite the sight; all the buildings, each at least 300 years old, are in the same style - apparently on the orders of the local ruler, who wanted the other buildings to match his castle. The uniformity of the buildings made it seem almost unreal, like Disney-style facades. We strolled around the square, stopped in some shops and took a peek at the lake which surrounds the old town on three sides. We then grabbed some lunch at a pizza place and were on our way again. Our book said that at the pizza place your meal was prepared with ketchup, no matter what you ordered (pasta, pizza, etc.). The Czech Republic has something of a bad reputation for serving "pizza" that's nothing more than bread and ketchup. Although this certainly hasn't been true of our experiences with Czech pizza, we've enjoyed everything we've tried. But we thought it might be kind of fun to taste the ketchup pizza. It was sweeter than a typical pizza but tasted better than it sounds.
Our final stop was Brno, the country's second-biggest city and the capital of the Moravian region. Advance reports suggested Brno was actually quite boring, but it turned out to be a little better than advertised. When we stepped off the train, I was immediately impressed by the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul looming above us. We walked up and explored the castle, as well as the old town. Top sights included the Hercules fountain in the centre of the market (fishermen apparently used to store their carp in the fountain until a customer was ready for it), and the famous "dragon" (actually an alligator) and the wagon wheel in the city hall. Monday morning we walked up to Spillberk Castle. It was interesting, if not overwhelming.
The disappointment was the lack of festivities for Easter. Everyone told us that Moravia celebrated the holidays much more than Prague did, so I was expecting some markets and general mayhem. Instead, the city centre was nearly deserted; there weren't even any Easter markets that I saw, which was in stark contrast to Prague. Other than a couple of pomluzka-wielding gangs on Monday morning, there was little indication it was Easter. Maybe it's only small-town Moravia?
There are more pictures on the Picasa site.
-Jason