After leaving Sopron in Hungary (well we couldn't take it with us!), the next step on our journey was the Czech Republic. We made our way to the hotel we had booked in a little town called Frymburk, on Lake Lipno.
The main purpose of our visit here was to see the town of CESKY KRUMLOV but we didn't want to stay in the town itself. Frymburk was perfect for us; a beautiful little hotel, in a picturesque and peaceful little lakeside village only 20 minutes from CK.

After Prague, CESKY KRUMLOV is the best preserved historical town in Bohemia and is designated as one of UNESCO's World Monuments. All this despite being seriously neglected under communism (there's a surprise). Since the government changes in 1989, a lot of effort has been made to renovate the historic centre, and this has brought new life into the town.

We arrived there early in the morning and it was very pleasant wandering around while the streets were still relatively quiet. Our first port of call was the tourist office, which is in the main square, at the Town Hall. The staff were very helpful and supplied us with maps and info about the town. In the cellars below the Town Hall is the Museum of Torture where we spent a damp, chilly and only slightly spooky, thirty minutes before making our way to our next port of call, a bank.
One of the less intelligent members of our party (who, if brains were dynamite, wouldn't have enough to blow his nose, apparently), had inadvertently taken too much money out of an ATM in Hungary. Try as we might, we just couldn't spend it all. I had forgotten to change it at the Austrian border on leaving Hungary, and no-one at the Czech border would change it into Czech money. So it was that we handed over nearly £400 for exchange. This took quite a long time as every single note had to be checked under the UV light, cross-matched with charts and then double-checked by another member of staff. After finally consulting with, and getting approval from, the manager, we eventually got our Czech Crowns.
So, pockets stuffed with readies, we continued on our way.

Tourism may not have been a feature here under the communists, but they had lost no time in making up for it since. Not that it is tacky, in fact there were very few shops selling the usual, made in the Far East, type of rubbish. It was more noticeable in the number of bars and cafes, the amount of buildings turned over to tourist accommodation, and the types of shops. (I can't remember seeing any everyday shops selling groceries etc.) In fact the town did not have a lived-in feel at all.

There are quite a few museums in town but it was such a lovely day, and the streets and buildings were so beautiful in themselves that it seemed a shame not to be outdoors and so we were quite content to meander from shop to cafe to viewpoint and then start all over again.

By this time, half the tourists in Europe had descended on the town and it was, to say the least, extremely busy. So, in the late afternoon, we headed back to our hotel, showered, freshened up and returned for a second visit. A bit of a mistake really. We had decided to go up to the castle and by the time we got there, it was closed. Well, not exactly closed, you could still walk around the grounds and gardens, but the tours of the castle stop at 5pm. However, the views over the town and the surrounding countryside from the castle were spectacular and it was worth the climb up for that alone.