Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava (again...)

The next trip we took was a USAC organized one and thank god for that. It was so nice to have everything planned out for us, I am not one for a rigid plan but after the Amsterdam trip, I just wanted a little but of stability and to not have to worry about anything. We woke up early on Friday morning and went out to our classic big red bus to leave for our first stop which as Cesky Krumlov, probably one of my favorite places in the Czech Republic. It is a tiny charming town with a river that wraps around it and a legendary castle. On the drive, we were first taken to yet another castle which we had to go on a meadow hike to get to, it was beautiful and green (and COLD) up there.

I enjoyed myself immensely up there in the woods and took some good photos I think :)

And tried planking for the first time!

'The Professor' as we called him, told us alot about the castle.... but I missed it because I was taking pictures haha but we did see cool looking poisonous mushrooms and there was a tree whose nuts you could eat (brought to our attention by the mountainous hippy man that he is, Gieger, lol) so we sat under the tree collection tons of the little nuts to take on the bus :) 

We continued on about 15 minutes before we got to Cesky Krumlov and the area is absolutely beautiful, the Czech countryside is like no place I have ever seen, it was lush green, full of hills and little houses and farms everywhere. So pretty, I wish I could have taken pictures of that part because it was wonderful but I was on a bus so they are only places that I can remember now... 

We got to the hotel in Cesky Krumlov and were pleasantly surprised to have large rooms with private bathrooms, comfy beads and soft pillows. 

 

 We got settled in and then walked around the town for awhile and had lunch at a good pizza place before we met up with everyone to go on the castle tour. We we instructed to meet at the 'Bear Moat' and when we arrived, sure enough, there literall was amoat with 2 bears in it... Odd. We got into the castle and saw what these bears were kept there for....TONS of bear rugs, realy bear rugs lol. There was seriously at least 1 or 2 rugs in every room... Kind of creepy actually. 

bear fate.... haha

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Inside the church chapel

We ended up having a great tour guide, he was an American professor for many years then came to Czech 20 years go ended up loving it and moved here. He was very knowledgeable and told us so much, he was also the easiest person I have been able to understand in learning about Czech history so learned alot this time! The cool thing about this castle was that it was left furnished. I guess when the royal family moved to a different caste they left everything there and when military groups used it as a base later, they treated everything with respect and it stayed in tact. Now there are ropes around the stuff but it was really neat to be in a historic setting like that because it was so authentic.

In the Ballroom was the most amazing room, a man and his assistant lived in it for one year and painted the whole thing . It was covered in different scenes and the characters on the wall had relationships to different people around the room. It was really interesting. The scene on the back wall in the middle is of the queen up on the ledge looking down on the festivities and dancing take place below.Across the room there were stairs up to a balcony from which the which was where the musicians would sit and play. The chandeliers were also beautiful, they didn't have lights though, they had holders for candles; so you can imagine what it would look like in there filled with chandeliers full of candles...

The Ballroom, the whole thing was hand painted with different scenes covering the place from floor to ceiling

Later after the castle we walked around the village and shopped until dinner. The streets were small and filled with charming shops offering sweets, wine and other goodies. 

After we had dinner and approximately 2 glasses of wine, we went to another bar where there was live music playing. It was kind of hard rock but it was a neat underground bar with a motorcycle theme. Another round of wine... then the band comes out and starts to play, the drummer mind you, wasnt wearing anything but his fruit of the loom boxers... odd lol.  Included is a picture for your understanding haha.

 We noticed a bowling alley across the street from our hotel and decided that we would go drunk bowling. This was after we decided to go to the mini mart for more wine.... drunk bowling will be getting its own album on facebook though lol but here is a preview of the mischief that went down... We were the only group in there except some friends of the owners I think... We made it through 4 frames before we were too drunk to play, at which point we were falling down doing yoga poses and go knows what else.... needless to say this was the drunkest I have been in a long time.... as well as everyone else....

It was a long night.... So the next day we are off to Vienna, I wake up drunk and sleep on the bus the whole 3 hours there. Thank God for that, the rest of the day was my hangover.... Vienna was beautiful. They drove us up to the top of this hill so we could look out over the whole city and then the walk down the hill was through a vineyard, such a beautiful walk. I am so glad USAC plans these things for us, we walked down through the vineyard straight into the restaurant for lunch where we had a pumpkin soup that was delicious and then schnitzel, 2 giant pieces of veal fried and served with potato salad... not quite for me but it was ok, it just needed a lot of ketchup and the portion they gave you was literally enough for 4 people, it was crazy. the vegetarian option that a few people around us had though was to die for. It was a homemade macaroni with tons of cheese and onions, it was SO good.

The place we stayed in Vienna was kind of out of the way, we got a little lost trying to get there when we went exploring later. We did a city tour but it was just all museums it seemed like.... We went to the museum of crown jewels that had tons of royal stuff....

A piece of Jesus' loin cloth

John the Baptists tooth!! 

We went to Budapest the next day and that was my favorite part of the trip. Budapest is beautiful, our hotel was right on the river next to a bunch of beautiful bridges. The castle was up on the hill and Parliament was right along the river, it was stunning. Another great thing about Hungary was the fact that they are on their currency, finally somewhere not on the Euro! So we settled in that night and Esther and I went out exploring and found a touristy street to walk along then met up with everyone for dinner. Dinner was at a very nice small restaurant where they rented out the whole thing to us, we walked in and there were bottles of wine waiting on our tables and we were immediately brought bowls of soup. The dinner that followed was a goulash sort of meal that was great. For dessert, they surprised Richard with a cake for his birthday and we all sang and toasted to him. It was a great night. After dinner we walked up to the castle and it was freezing, actually the whole trip was freezing lol. But the castle was beautiful and looked out over the city. We sat up there and listened to Richard (who is Hungarian) tell us about his family history and a little bit of the history of Hungary which was very interesting.  Budapest was probably one of my favorite places, but I say that about everywhere :)