Olomouc, day 4

After the rain went through Monday afternoon, the temperature began to cool off a bit, and yesterday was just about perfect! Sunny, and a high of around 26C (79F). Perfect for our last day exploring the city of Olomouc.

First, I thought I'd give you a map just to show you where Olomouc is, and where we've come from since landing in Prague just over two weeks ago.

Czech Republic.

(A) Prague (B) Kutna Hora (C) Svitavy (D) Boskavice (E) Olomouc

It is about 250 kms (155 miles) from Prague to Olomouc, and if you took a direct train from Prague it will cost about $10 per person based on two people traveling together! There is no reason NOT to visit Olomouc!

Included in our Olomouc Region Card is a visit to the Olomouc car museum at Veteran Arena. This is a fairly expensive museum by Czech standards, with admission prices of 149 korunas ($7.45) per adult. However if you are an antique car buff, it is not to be missed. This is a very modern museum showcasing Czech vehicles from the manufacturers Tatra and Skoda.

Ruth, showcasing one of the beautifully restored cars.

Excellent restoration!

Two floors of antique cars.

The old Skoda 1000. This basic auto was mass produced for the lower middle class between 1964 and 1969. There were 419,540 of them made!

Next, we walked over to the Hradisko Monastery. This building was constructed in it's current form between 1659 and 1800, however there has been a monastery structure on these grounds since the year 1078. I guess it was not very safe being a monk back then! It was burned by the Tatars in 1241, raided in 1429, destroyed by Olomouc citizens in 1432 out of fear of being occupied by the Hussites, and seized and destroyed by Swedes in 1642!

The monastery was dissolved in 1784, and the building has served as a military hospital since 1802 as it is currently used today.

The Hradisko Monastery.

This is a hospital! You could have paid to have taken a tour, but we simply wandered around a bit.

Then we stopped for lunch. Meals out are very inexpensive, although we are still trying to do this less than an average of once per day. Yesterday, we stopped at a pub and picked out two meals. We weren't totally sure what we were ordering! But we figured that out of the two meals we would be able to share enough that Ruth would be able to eat enough and still be within her gluten free diet. It's not easy sometimes, but we seem to be able to make it work! Ruth ended up with a pasta salad, so that wasn't a good choice, and I had a breaded ham and cheese thing with potatoes. She picked the pasta out of her salad and I had it while she had my potatoes!

Two full lunch meals, a glass of beer, a glass of wine, and a tip...total cost 220 korunas ($11.00).

We went back to the flat and met up with our couchsurfing host Mirek. His wife Hanka is in Brno for the week, and their son Frantisek was with his parents for the day, so Mirek was on his own. He took us down to one of Olomouc's large parks and we walked around.

Lots of benches if you want to relax and watch the world go by.

They didn't have stuff like this when we were kids!

And a nice playground for the younger ones.

One last look at the beautiful central plaza of Olomouc!

I hope you enjoyed our tour of Olomouc as much as we did! Many thanks to the city, and the tourism department, and of course to our hosts Mirek and Hanka and their son Frantisek. We sure enjoyed him and his infectious laughter!

We wanted to be at the train station for 5:00pm, and Mirek went with us to see us off. Our train was leaving at 5:43pm and our ticket to the village of Zasova cost 181 korunas ($9.05) for the two of us to go the 83 km (51 mile) distance.

We had to change trains once, and there was only a four minute connection time! We made it, but we sure had to be fast! If we had missed the connection there would have been nearly two hours wait for the next train.

Our next couchsurfing hosts, Blanka, and her dog Miky were waiting for us when we got off the train in the village of Zasova! It was only a five minute walk to her place and we didn't take long to get acquainted. She took us for a short walk around the village.

Sunset in Zasova.

We are in the foothills of the Beskydy Mountains, only about 30 kms (18 miles) from the border of Slovakia. It looks like a beautiful area, and there are a lot of hiking trails. We purposely didn't make plans for our next destination because I had a feeling we might want to stay in this area for a while. It looks like my feeling was correct!