třeboň + april weekends

how odd it was to go from a full day of snow to sunny and 18°C in one week! from winter coat to bare legs and sandals.

but that’s april for you. (shrug) in case you haven’t yet guessed, we had to postpone our lovely little cabin trip ‘til august… ‘cause when the proprietor contacts you the day before to tell you “it’s like winter here!”, you listen. (we just took off for prague instead, which i’ll post about on tuesday)

so with the forecast looking wonderful this weekend, we spent the afternoon in třeboň, only about a half-hour away. třeboň is one of my sobo (south bohemia) happy places. i love to get away when the weather’s good and walk around the famous fish ponds.

this time around we took a walk near the ponds for an hour, enjoyed the first ice cream of the year, took in the magic of its sweet little masarykovo námesti (masaryk square), and ate lunch at our favorite restaurace myslivna, where you can feast on a variety of czech specalties and local fish specials. their daily menus are such a killer deal! (the green house to the very left, below)

what makes třeboň so dang great? so many reasons! it’s home to one of the best breweries (as far as i’m concerned) in the country, bohemia regent (ray-ghent… not the typical english pronunciation as i finally have learned) and you can tour the brewery (above). alex wasn’t interested and it doesn’t break my heart not to go, because tasting that sweet, sweet brew is the only thing that really matters after about ten years of taking brewery tours in various countries.
třeboň also has a very strong spa tradition. similar to karlovy vary, visitors come from all over europe just to bathe in the peat spa or stay at one of the famous spas, like berta’s or aurora. the town’s also got a medieval moat, inhabited by a pair of rams. move over, krumlov bear! you ain’t got nothing on the třeboň rams! 

but the main reason that always draws me is the beautiful nature and peaceful walks around the ponds. i would normally call it a lake, but the czechs are extremely insistent that a man-made water reservoir must be a pond, even though in the united states we would classify a lake vs. a pond by size and not if it is man-made or not. you know all of those christmas carp that gets brought to prague? this is where it comes from… good ol’ sobo carp.

gates like this brana are on every side of třeboň’s main square. this particular one (besides boasting a banner for the upcoming anifest, an international animated film festival) has a bilingual inscription, forever reminding us of the very germanic ties that south bohemia has. you can find remnants of its german past all over the region.

two delicious steins of regent, sitting on a terrace on a warm, spring day = perfect. (even though we didn’t complete a 3-4 hour hike around svět pond to earn it like we did two years ago) however just as we were finishing our beers, the weather totally turned on us and a thunderstorm rolled in (above). my fault for not bringing along an umbrella or hat! i put too much faith into you, april, and you went and got all “april-y” on us.

today, i planted some of the flowers i bought at the farmer’s market in a box on our balcony! i had been debating for literally years whether or not to start a “balcony” garden here in budějovice (are we staying or going? i guess we’ll never know), but as this is my third spring here, i was gosh-darned going to plant something out there. it gives the balcony such cheer and looks like we actually use it! (well we do… sometimes) it was a lovely morning of brunching on vegetable omelettes, drinking vanilka bourbon tea, sweeping and planting with all of the doors thrown upon for the first time all winter.
those first real spring days are always the times that give me such happy “i love living here” feelings, like i never want to leave. utter contentment. 

hope you had a happy spring weekend too & looking forward to many more like this in the near future… hopefully! next order of business: get the ol’ bike in riding shape.

linking up with the #sundaytraveler gang and week’s end