Eva arranged for a driver to take us to Křivoklát Castle. It is an hour's drive from the center of Prague.
The first thing you need to know is that the name of the castle is impossible to pronounce. It's not as simple as phonetically sounding out the letters. That "ř" is not even close to "r." Apparently there are a lot of Czechs who can't pronounce it. George from our food tour told us his name is really Jiři, but that was too complicated so he uses George. When he was a child he couldn't pronounce his own name. When he started school he had to go to speech therapy to work on it.
We drove through some pleasant gently rolling hills, farms and forests to reach the village of Křivoklát. We stopped there and had lunch at a restaurant/tavern in the small village. We had a meal that I was starting to recognize as typical - meat and starch, nothing else.
Cars are not allowed at the castle, so we parked a short distance away and followed a little trail to the castle.
The tour of the castle was given in Czech. It was too late in the season for an English tour. Eva came along to tell us the important things. We also bought little folders that explained the rooms we saw in English. There was only one other couple on the tour, and they were Czech.
Eva told us there are over 2,000 castles in the Czech Republic and Czechs like to go and visit them whenever they can.
My first thought upon seeing the castle was "Wow, that is definitely a castle!"
I'm not sure it was worth the trip to Křivoklát. Between not being allowed to take photos, the emptiness of most of the rooms, the small number of rooms open to the public, and the tour being in Czech, there might be better ways to use your time. As I mentioned, there are a lot of castles in the Czech Republic. Another possible day trip would be Terezin Concentration Camp. Grim, but important to see.
We were not allowed to take photos inside the buildings. The first thing you see after entering the castle is a very large courtyard area surrounded by various buildings. It looked like a small village inside the castle. It could be self-sufficient if necessary. There were a couple of wells in the courtyard, too.
There has been a royal hunting lodge or a castle on this site for a long time, but over the centuries it burned down several times, so the current castle is not that old. King Charles IV was sent here as a child and spent about 10 years here. Charles IV is the king you always hear about in the Czech Republic. He seems to have been the one who got a lot done.
We saw various rooms, including a chapel, a dungeon, a great hall, a reception room, and a library. These rooms were mostly unfurnished and unfinished and there wasn't all that much to see, other than in the library. The library was interesting and very beautiful. It seemed as though there was a lot more to the castle that we didn't see.
There was a brewery right next to the castle and underneath the castle was a naturally cool room where they kept ice for the beer.
The tower was the most interesting and had more to see than the other buildings. In the bottom there was a room with a hole in the ceiling called the "starvation room." It did not originaly have a door. Prisoners would be lowered down through the ceiling on a rope and given some water and left there until they died.
Higher up were rooms related to hunting. There were guns, trophies, and so on.
In the evening we wandered around the Old Town and I almost succumbed to Tourist-itis. I felt an almost irresistible urge to buy something. I was particularly attracted to Czech glass. There were some beautiful pieces. I saw other desirable souvenirs, also. But I knew that if I bought anything I would get home and slap myself on the side of the head and say "What was I thinking?" So I told myself "Step away from the store."
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