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  • Day 23

    Brno Day 2 Spilberk Castle

    October 3, 2023 in Czech Republic ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C

    Eversince a suggestion was made after lunch at the Kutna Hora tour, I have been on a quest for good ice cream. Firstly we don't come across many ice-cream vendors, when we do, either they don't have the flavours I like or they are brightly coloured, with multi flavours, which we have learnt in the past, is not genuine gelato. Today will be another day, in search of ice-cream.

    We started our morning looking at which art gallery to visit so the first stop was to find the Information Centre. There are 5 galleries in Brno, and we settled for the Spilberk Castle Museum because it housed, some 18 century paintings and sculptures through to 1920s, an armory, archeological sites and historic documents of the prison, prison torture and political prisoners that were once held there. On the way to the Castle we found a bronze sculpture of Mozart with one wing with a child's body on a piano. This was to commemorate his performance at the Reduta Concert Hall when he was 11 years old and the one wing was to signify his tragic death.

    Whilst winding through the streets we ended up at the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul. A beautiful Gothic church with spires that seemed to touch the sky. A little boy was so taken to Ruby, invited her to dance with him and his grandma. We got free use of the toilet after the dance. A Brno quirk is that the longest church bell chime is at 11am, because Brno shortened the seige by the Swedish army by an hour, by moving the clock forward and since then it has become a tradition here to ring the noon bells at 11am.

    After the Castle, we were famished. We headed straight for a local Czech pub that served "the best pork knuckle". There were 3 men in three next table tucking into one knuckle each. The serve was humungous. Even though we were famished, we decided to share one knuckle and still had to take a third of the knuckle to take back to the accomadation. Too full even for dinner, we will have to have it with scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow.

    The quest for icecream is still to no avail.

    Distance walked 13.5km
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