urban bicycle journeys

We had slept in the town of Davle, maybe forty kilometers south of Prague. The only downside about our hotel, the Pizzeria Grado Penzion, was that it did not serve breakfast or even morning coffee. It turned out to be the only hotel on this entire trip that did not include breakfast. We packed up and started cycling south.

Coffee shops did not seem to be open in the small down of Davle so we cycled six or eight kilometers to a town called Stechovice where a coffee place showed on Google Maps. The highway along the river was lovely in the morning light.

Brother Alex had told me not to expect perfection with Czech baked goods but here at a bakery called Ella Ma Kava they offered delicious and obviously just-an-hour-or-two-old baked croissants, served on an actual plate. It wasn’t on the menu but a woman at another table was eating what looked like a ham and cheese sandwich; Lyman ordered one of those as well. I got my usual coffee, available even here in Czechia, oat milk latte with one pack sugar.

After breakfast we were finally able to leave the highway! On our route south the Mapy.cz app sent us on a tiny road following up an even tinier stream.

I have no idea why someone’s property on this remote road in Czechia was given the name Louisiana, or what kind of compound this is. Their gate had little pelican cutouts.

After about ten kilometers the road deteriorated to a less than smooth surface, then forded the stream. We preferred not to get our shoes soaked.

There was indeed a small bridge where we could walk the bikes across, carefully. This video by Lyman is only a few seconds long.

The pavement ended but a gravel road continued steeply over a ridge. The weather was perfect and the scenery was lovely but the cycling was challenging as we bumpily climbed uphill in the woods.

Eventually our route found paved roads, at least for a while. It was to be one of the delights of this trip that for the next eight days we hardly ever had to cycle on roads with significant car traffic. Czech country roads and paths do seem to connect with each other, unlike the Eastern US, which I know well, where such roads are usually dead ends. Nowhere here in Czechia did there seem to be concerns about crossing private property, another big issue in the US. Indeed, on remote American remote gravel roads one has to worry about being shot at!

Neither of us could identify what kind of animal this was that we found dead in the middle of the road.

By early afternoon we were ready for a break and went into the next substantial town on our route, somewhere called Kamyk Nad Vltavou.

There was one restaurant / bar with outdoor tables.

Over the past fifty years I have had success in learning Spanish and have expanded that facility into rudementary Portuguese, Italian, and French. The Czech language was totally incomprehensible to me. It might as well have been Japanese, or Swahili. This was our lunch menu.

Google Translate has improved and now gives an almost instant translation of a one page menu on one’s I-Phone. Food communication before Google Translate at remote restaurants was way more colorful. Note that like the Germans the Czechs like knowing exactly how much meat each dish contains, in this case 150 grams. The price of 150 Czech krona equals just under US$ 7.00.

I like a big lunch. This day it was a very Czech meal of meat and gravy. Rice was an unusual choice, the Czechs usually eat potatoes or dumplings. Lyman just got a soup. Beer was a must.

While eating lunch we scoped out possibilities where the day’s destination would be. There were no towns with hotels at our preferred distance but there was a resorty sounding place on the river maybe twenty kilometers further, in an area otherwise seeming to be in the middle of nowhere. They advertised a restaurant and the rooms were only about forty dollars each. It was so low cost that it gave me pause. The online reviews were not all that good but I made a reservation on my phone anyway for two rooms.

Our route that afternoon was again on gravel paths through the woods and paved country roads.

We had a lot of time to think about it that evening over beers and our joint conclusion, with no proof, was that our hotel Panorama Orlik was a 1960-70’s pre-Fall-of-the-Iron-Curtain socialist worker’s vacation spot. The vibe was partly nurtured by the dismissive and curt greeting we received on our arrival. We were told to sit and wait. I now realize that part of that impression is that Czechs do not implicitly smile in a commercial transaction and pretend they are your friend. That act is an American thing. The Panorama Orlik architecture sure looked East Block.

Between the “resort” and the river were several campgrounds and some abandoned looking RVs. It was indeed a beautiful day.

Befitting our Communist resort fantasy, the paperwork to check in was complex and time consuming. The forty dollar rooms were fine, really. They were as nice as most of the rooms we saw on this trip. When we later emerged and asked for beers on the terrace they were delivered promptly. Our impression of the place was starting to improve.

The staff was actually quite friendly once you started talking to them in sign language and broken English. There were only about ten or so other guests at the hotel. The scene on the terrace was fetching. One group of guys about our age looked very Czech.

There was another group, some long-hairs, who had been sitting at a certain table on the terrance when Lyman and I sat down at 6:00 PM and they were still sitting there, intensely talking, when we left at 8:30 or 9:00 PM.

The Panorama Orlik had dinner! No one else seemed to be eating. A fifty or sixty something guy came out about 7:00 PM with a free sample platter of stuffed dumplings, trying to encourage everyone to eat his cooking. I got the feeling he was the only cook. Of course we then ordered the stuffed dumplings, preceded by what I think was called cabbage soup. It was all quite good.

Breakfast the next morning at the Panorama Orlik was colorful, all set out for Lyman and me and our fellow diners in front of a dumb Czech TV game show. Unlike every hotel breakfast in America it was not a bunch of prepackaged junk food. The cook we had met the night before had gotten up that morning and made little crepes folded around strawberry jam. For the upcoming bike ride I needed calories! From the buffet table I selected what, to an American, looked like a foot-long hot dog, and Czech brown bread, with dijon mustard. Something different!

The night before the hotel had told me that we could not put our bicycles in our rooms but we had snuck them in there anyway, as the place they had told us to put the bicycles did not seem secure enough. That morning we wheeled the bicycles through the hallways and then outside and prepared to leave.

It was about fifty kilometers to the relatively large town of Pisek. The cycling that day was delightful, on country roads and the occasional dirt or gravel path, passing through farmland, woods, and small villages. There were occasional very steep hills.

On the final two or three kilometers into Pisek there was a separate bike path and on that path was a beer garden. We stopped for a beer and a late lunch. There were two friendly young women tending bar. We both ordered sausage, one of them sausage covered in bacon! Both of us later regretted eating that much grease but it seemed like a good idea at the time and it was all delicious.

We cycled into central Pisek.

We found two rooms at something called the Art Hotel.

We did not see any, or at least hardly any, other tourists or Americans in Pisek (population 31,000). It has a reputation as a college town. There is a famous bridge dating from the 1200’s, supposedly the oldest bridge in Czechia. We saw the results of a sand sculpture contest next to that bridge.

We both felt a little queasy about all the meat we have been eating and had dinner at an Italian restaurant in central Pisek. Brother Alex had warned me that the Czechs were generally unskilled in cooking vegetables, and here in Pisek the caesar salad and tomato sauced pasta were expensive and only just OK. The table next to us was four guys who looked like Japanese businessmen. I decided then that for the next week or so I could eat just meaty Czech.

Next to the restaurant was a lovely church that dates back to the year 1240, but altered constantly over the centuries.