Czechia Road Trip, Part 5: Mikulov to Olomouc

Day 423 (August 25, 2019) – Olomouc, Czechia

We left Mikulov heading southeast, just skirting the Austrian border before making a pit stop in Valtice to visit the Valtice Castle. Valtice was a tiny little town with a single main street, a church, and a big castle with extensive grounds. 

After walking around for an hour, we continued to Lednice. Our intention was to visit Lednice Chateau, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the Czech Republic, but it was such a zoo that we left before even getting out of the car. We never ran into parking problems until we got to Lednice where we were directed to an overflow lot. Would could barely even make it to a parking space with dozens of cars trying to go in different directions and people walking everywhere. We parked the car and just looked at one another, already agreeing that we didn’t want to deal all of this, so we pulled out of our parking spot and continued on to Kroměříž.

The town of Valtice.

Valtice Castle.

We were kind of laughing at these statues at Valtice Castle. It wasn't uncommon for nude statues to be creatively covered up in certain areas of their body, but it just wasn't working for these ones. We kept thinking, what is that lion doing to that man? After closer inspection we realized that he was wearing a lion pelt and the front paw was wrapped around his hip to cover up his crotch. It would have been less distracting had he just been naked.

Part of the Valtice Castle grounds.

Kroměříž was much like all the other towns we had seen. We had a nice lunch at a Czech restaurant and then walked around the square, visited a few churches, and took a stroll through the Kroměříž castle grounds. The castle used to be the residence of the archbishop and is connected directly to the town’s large church. The most entertaining part of the castle grounds were the dozens of peacocks and chickens that seemed to wander around on their own among the estate’s trees, flowers, and ponds. 

The Kroměříž town square.

The inner courtyard of the archbishop's chateau.

One of the dozens of chickens running around the archbishop's residence grounds.

We also filled up the car in Kroměříž for the first time since leaving Prague. We were surprised to find that it only cost $44 to top it off, and even more surprised to learn that we had been getting 50 miles to the gallon from it. We couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t even electric, just a normal gasoline-powered car, but this tiny little thing got us around everywhere at 50 miles to the gallon. The car waiting for us at home gets something pathetic like 20 miles to the gallon, on a good day.

After a long day of driving we finally made it to Olomouc, one of the largest cities we had been to in a while. It still wasn’t a huge place, but it was big enough to have not one, but two spacious town squares. Both squares had a few fountains and plenty of outdoor cafes. There was a huge park filled with enormous trees that ran along a river next to the downtown area. It was a really nice city to walk around. The biggest attraction in town was probably Saint Wenceslas Cathedral, an enormous Gothic church on top of a hill. 

Driving past fields of hops on our way to Olomouc.

One of the Olomouc town squares.

Another excellent Czech dinner.

Saint Wenceslas Cathedral.

By chance, we happened to find ourselves at the Archdiocesan Museum next to the Saint Wenceslas Cathedral on a Sunday, when the museum has free entrance. The museum provided us with a tablet computer and we walked all around the museum clicking on different things on the tablet to hear explanations of the artifacts and pieces of artwork. Part of the museum was about the building itself while the other part was dedicated to collected artwork. They made us wear giant fuzzy slippers around our shoes to not scratch up the wood floors. It made for an unexpectedly interesting afternoon.

Inside the Archdiocesan Museum.

Checking out an old water well inside the inner courtyard of the Archdiocesan Museum.