Konopiste Castle

Definition: Lazy, Lack of Motivation, Not Efficient. Yup that is precisely what happened to Gayle and I yesterday on our trip to Konopiste Castle. Linda decided to go to the Zoo instead. The one hour train trip deposited us at a nearby town and by following the red slash trail markers 2.5 km we arrived at a park extraordinaire. This park is so large, with so many paths that no matter how many people are visiting it would remain quiet and undisturbed.

Slow saunter gave us distant glimpses of wild pheasants and cottony eared red squirrels. We didn’t actually tour the castle instead chose a leisurely walk around the lake (they call it a pond) looking for Rick Steve’s bark enclosed picnic hideaway at the lake which simply did not exist. Personally, Rick Steve’s Prague book has been very skimpy on detail and sometime flat out wrong.

Finally, 2/3 away around, we found the perfect location with a great view of the castle, a flat spot for our picnic blanket, and a good resting spot for the bottle of wine we bought the day before. Because my picnic backpack was so heavy we decided to drink the whole bottle which fueled Gayle into a 45 minute squirrel nap.

Before we left we saw some fisherman walk by with huge fish in their nets. Apparently the lake has an abundance of carp reaching 26 pounds as well as pikes, pikeperch and trenches. The Czech people love to prepare freshly caught oily carp. Yuk.

We power walked back to the train station to catch a specific train. We got there with 5 minutes to spare which was probably a mistake. We should have waited 30 minutes for the next train so we could get a seat. Thus we stood the 60 plus minutes back to Praha, our car’s aisle packed with Prague boys and girls scouts and teen overnighters. About 15 minutes out of the station, the train abruptly stopped in a field and standing passengers started to hang out of the windows. This is the Czech version of air conditioning. This was repeated 30 minutes later in a dark, trash strewn tunnel just outside Praha.

“Where would you like to go for dinner?” After much thought, Gayle and I came up with the creative plan of picking up grilled sausages at the entrance to Kampa park and sit on park benches and Valtva and people watch. Next to the sausage stand was our good friend Linda who was planning to do the exact same thing. Here we are in Prague with a population of 1.2 million people, occupying 496 square kilometers, and we bump shoulders with a fellow Squimite.