Český Krumlov: Somewhere near Austria but still Czech
The town is basically one of those old European fairy tale town. With a castle at its highest point, tower, bridge, church, a small cute river (the same river that flows in Prague) flowing through the small town. Not to forget all the cute small houses filling the town, they added the uniqueness to the town's enchanted charm.
To go, we took the bus which ticket we bought online the night before. There's plenty of bus ride to go there actually, when I was searching for the tickets, I bought the one from Flixbus, as I'm familiar to this bright lime green bus (they have nice comfy seats :P), the trip cost us 24 euro for 2 people, round trip. However, there's a bus which provide cheaper ride. It's a few euro cheaper but it's more crowded though hehe. I was just familiar to the brand more, and therefore chose Flixbus. Since our bus ride is at 6 in the morning, we need to wake up at 4.30 to prep ourselves, took the public transport (kudos to the punctual public transport in Prague!!) to the bus station and wait for the bus there. The morning in Prague beginning of October was really coldddd, but knowing that it'll be really warm when the sun were already high, we didn't really want to pack too much clothing with us hahha.
The ride to Český Krumlov (I seriously don't know how to pronounce it correctly) took 3 hours. I mostly slept during the ride, occasionally I woke up to find that my traveling partner was shocked to see very dense cold morning fog outside the bus. (Welcome to Europe Fen!). When we arrived, it was still super cold! As we walked from the bus station to the town (the bus stop is a little bit outside the town center), freezingly and shaky, we walked trying to find a place for breakfast or enjoying some hot tea.
After having had our delicious breakfast by the river, we started walking high to the castle. Assuming since it's still early in the morning, not that many people will be there. We went inside the tower, and the little museum, before started walking to the main part of the castle, passing the bridge and to the castle garden. We then walked down a path trying to avoid the already crowded castle, trying to get back to the cute town houses, we ended up getting rather lost hahha. We then follow the tourist group, found the bridge, but this time we walked from underneath, crossing the little river bridge and went back to the town center. We walked and circled all the cute houses, climbing the steep hiking street that lead us to the church, an open square park on top, and the city square. All in all, while stepping on the foot-massage-cobble-stone street.
The town is cute and charming, surprisingly has a lot of places that sell organic skin products such as soap, lotions, cream and so on, but with a quite expensive price. While the restaurants, food are not that pricy and good, the prices outside that seemed to be aiming towards the tourist i.e. tourist price. After much walking and hiking around, we end the trip by having late lunch/afternoon food in a vegetarian restaurant also nearby the river. There we eat another potato dumpling but desert version! It's yummy, I kinda like it. Interesting thing happened in the vegetarian resto, one of the person who was serving us, turns out, he has been to Indonesia multiple times! Since I came from Makassar, an city in Indonesia that is not really that famous even to the Indonesian (though now getting more famous), knowing Indonesian areas outside of Bali is already pretty rare for a European, let alone knowing the city I came from. So, I was definitely impressed! (So was my friend), he could even speak very good Bahasa Indonesia! The guy has even traveled to parts of Indonesia which I haven't been there. Oh dear....
Anyhow, after the late lunch, we walked back to the bus station, get into our bus which left at 4 PM. I guess having been to a lot of European cities and towns, my prediction of being in that town for 6 hours was correct, we finished enjoying the cute town and ready to get back to Prague. While the town impressed my traveling friend more, it left me rather interested seeing why this Czech town was occupied by the German family. Hahha. It located quite near to Austria though, so apparently back in the days, there were a lot of Germans living in it. Not wanting to bother you a lot with the history, so if you want to know more, you can google/wiki it. :P
We arrived back in Prague at a different bus station, this time actually near to the train station. We found a Vietnamese restaurant and eat Pho there. Perfect comfort food for the cold temperature outside said my friend. :P (not to mention pretty affordable too hahha! #crazycheapasian)
