Trip to Konopiste Castle

Saturday we decided to head to one more castle before Jerry's parents leave. We did some research and had heard good things about Konopiste Castle and decided to go for it. I had read online that there was a bus that could take you to the castle from the train station.....WRONG!!!! Nyet, ne, nilch! We searched around for bit and finally found a map and decided we could walk it. We had tried to ask and only seemed to find grumpy people unwilling to help. It was one of those "TINA" moments! That actually stands for "this is NOT America." Ha!
So, we started walking and I quickly realized that if I didn't get out of my own grumpy mood that it was only going to rub off on my kids and we'd all be miserable. As we got out of town and on our way we realized that we were going to have a beautiful country walk ahead of us. It was GORGEOUS!!!
This is seriously my favorite time of year, or I guess you could say "season." I love September to December. I get to decorate my home with scarecrows, pumpkins, indian corn and more and then switch it out for Christmas decor. I just love it!! And God's creation of yellows and reds and falling leaves!! Truly shows how awesome God is!!!
After walking about a mile and a half we finally made it to the castle and one of the first things we saw was one of the main residents!
A black bear! He was pretty cute!
We decided to take a tour through part of the castle. In preparing to do so we found MORE grumpy people who seemed unwilling to help the English speakers, us! Ugh!! They only had tours in Czech and they tried to talk us out of taking it!!! Argh!! We knew we could buy an audio guide in English to get a gist of it all. So, that's what we did. It was interesting, but it was not as good as I had expected. Oh well. We pumped the kids up with a chocolate ghost candy bar (in honor of Halloween) AND hot chocolate before trekking back to the train station.

I have to say that I think the beauty of the walk was more enjoyable & fun than the castle. It was extremely a bit cold or it would have been a perfect walk, which I think now we could have done in Prague! Oh well, Brennan got to ride a train and we now know not to go to Konopiste as they don't seem to like foreigners! Ha!