Poppies

We followed Pavel's suggestion and detoured off-route to visit two walled cities dating back to the 13th century: Litomysl and Policka. It was worth the detour and to our eyes the two cities were equally impressive. Only later did we learn that Litomysl's 16th century renaissance castle complex is a World Heritage site.

Otherwise, we had great riding today through hilly farmland and national forest. Since entering the Czech Republic we've seen fields of a long-stemmed plant that has a bulb on top and a flower that looks like a poppy. We've jokingly called it opium. Susan decided to investigate and broke a bulb open. She found poppyseeds; the crop is a breadseed poppy. We did a little research and learned that opium poppies and breadseed poppies are the same species, but there are varietal differences. Who would of guessed?Read more