Czechia Road Trip, Part 7: Ostrava to Brno

Day 427 (August 29, 2019) – Brno, Czechia

We woke up early on our last day in Ostrava and drove all the way back towards Brno to drop the car off at the Brno airport. We were a little relieved to get rid of the car. The convenience was great, but it was also something we were always worried about. From the airport we took a bus back into town. We could have easily stayed longer in Brno, but we were only there for two nights. We had a really great Airbnb apartment too, which always makes things more enjoyable. The only problem was that it was located on the sixth floor, and the main part of town was located up on a giant hill behind us. So every time we went to downtown Brno we had to hike down the six flights of stairs in the apartment, walk across the street, and then climb six or so flights of stairs up to the center of town. But the views across town from both the apartment and downtown were very impressive.

We had a long drive from Ostrava to Brno so I entertained myself by taking some photos along the drive.

Brno is Czechia's second largest city after Prague. It’s not as stately as Prague, but it’s pretty close in the downtown area. There seemed to be a lot to explore across the city, but we were feeling a bit tired of running around the past two weeks so we stuck to walking around the downtown area and findings some good restaurants, which there seemed to be plenty of in Brno. It was a nice city with lots of people and activity happening in the town squares.

Some photos from around Brno.

The view of modern Brno, looking out from the hill that is the downtown area back to where our apartment was.

Just as we were about to walk out the apartment door to head to the train station on our last day, I decided to check Maps.me to make sure we knew where we were walking. I noticed that there were two train stations in Brno and mentioned this to Travis. He was only aware of one of them. Well, we looked into our train tickets and found out that they were for this second train station that we didn’t even know existed until a minute ago. We were about to walk to the completely wrong train station. We were getting sloppy! We’re normally quite obsessive about staying on top of these things. Perhaps we had been traveling for too long, and now that we had a definitive return date we were slacking on our travel homework! It was a bit of a wake up call that reminded us to stay focused. Thanks to a chance, casual glance at a map we managed to make it to the correct train station and catch our train to Vienna, Austria.

In the end, we were glad that we had rented a car in Czechia for a couple weeks. It gave us a chance to see so many places that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to get to. We also felt like we got a better glimpse of Czech life across different parts of the country. Including Prague, we spent over three weeks in Czechia. It was nice to spend so much time in one country. 

Our two week Czechia road trip took us all around the country. We put 1,250 km on our rental car and it cost us only $24 per day, including the rental price, the gas we put into it, and all the parking fees. Our trip started from (1) Prague, making a stop at (2) Karlštejn Castle, before ending in (3) Pilsen for two nights. From Pilsen we drove to (4) Písek for lunch and then spent a few days in (5) České Budějovice, where we made a day trip to the nearby (6) Český Krumlov. We continued on, stopping in (7) Třeboň for lunch and then in (8) Telč for a couple nights. We left Telč for (9) Třebíč and then spent three nights in (10) Mikulov, in Czechia's wine region. We worked our way north from Mikulov, stopping at (11) Valtice Castle, (12) Kroměříž, and then (13) Olomouc. From there we took our time and explored the towns of (14) Hranice, (15) Vlašské Meziříčí, and (16) Nový Jičín, before ending up in (17) Ostrava. From Ostrava we took a day trip to (18) Auschwitz in Poland before driving back to (19) Brno to drop the car off. The black lines connect our overnight stops.