Wet Feet

It was not my best idea to wear my new cloth shoes to Karlstejn Castle today. Though they are lovely, and comfortable, in the rain they get soaked. So we got up today at 8am or so, left the dorms by 9:15 and took a train at 10:12. The train station was so cool, it looked like a fancy airport terminal and had food places and a giant bookstore and a Sephora.

It was raining the entire walk to the train station, and it was raining from the train station to the castle. I was in a group of 4, and on the way to the castle (we had a while until our tour, from about 11am til 1pm) we stopped at 2 different places to eat. First, we went to a tiny bakery that smelled amazing; the lady working spoke enough English for us to understand when she was pointing out the different pastries, I got a "Karlstejn" gingerbread cookie that was fantastic, and an espresso with milk. While we were eating our snacks, the lady brought out 2 new things that just came out of the oven and asked if we were interested; 2 croissants, one with ham and cheese baked in, the other with ham and cabbage. Ham and cheese = yum.

We then walked a bit and I got some video of a parrot singing in the rain. Then we stopped at another place and I got a hot chocolate in a fancy glass with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. Ohmygoodnessamazing.
We walked the rest of the way to the castle and waited around a bit to start our tour. This place was beautiful and super green with all the rain. My feet are icicles at this point, and I'm just trying to ignore them. We start the tour, and go through the castle, it's super cool and old. It was finished in 1365, took around 17 years to build although there aren't records of exactly when it started. Charles IV (the guy I talked about earlier) wanted the castle so he could be his stuff somewhere, like jewels and things like that. He only visited the castle several times.

The castle was then reconstructed, and then later there was a purist movement to bring the castle back to what was thought the original design (even though it was wrong). The coolest part was the Chapel of Holy Cross; I got a post card of it because we couldn't take any pictures. The ceiling was gold and arched and there were 120 pictures of Saints on wood boards on the walls. One was missing though, so there were only 119.
This is the key ring of our tour guide:

After, we got more hot chocolate. My feet are still really cold, and my roommate and I decided there should be a hot tub in the back yard. Not sure what we are doing this afternoon, but tonight I think I want to go around and take pictures.