The Czech Republic is such a beautiful country. The countryside is pristine and I think it was more beautiful than any other place we saw, with Austria coming really close behind! Anyway, we kept finding cool places to see in the Czech Republic. We stopped in the town of after we left church on Sunday. It was a tiny town, but had a really cute town square, and some good gelato (yes, gelato is everywhere in Europe, not just in Italy.)
We then drove to another town about 1 more hour south which we were told was a cool place to visit. Pete has gotten really good at spotting the off the beaten path little bed and breakfast places that are much cheaper and usually have a few more beds to cram the whole family into. We pulled into a huge old barn, and got a really large apartment: 2 bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen for really cheap. The kids were in heaven. There were cows, chickens, geese, cats, and ducks to chase all over the working farm. They smelled like animals when the day was done, but it was the best hotel ever in their opinion. And everyone had their own bed! So we ended up staying there for 2 nights instead of one. I liked checking into a hotel and getting a good nights sleep, and then spending the whole next day in one place and returning home, packing up, going to bed and leaving early in the morning for the next traveling day. It seemed like when we traveled every day, we spent half the time either packing up or trying to find the next hotel. Anyway, the town we visited was really cool because it was an old medieval castle town. A river in the shape of a great big horseshoe encircled almost the entire town. In addition, the town had an outer and inner wall for defense. We visited some interesting museums on our way to the castle. Some of you may gasp in horror at the following pictures, so I need to warn you in advance that we have now permanently traumatized the children by taking them to the medieval torture museum. Actually, we think it had some really helpful suggestions for our parenting methods. Haha! We clapped Paul in irons for not being able to keep up with the rest of the family on the tour. You can see how upset he was about this! I told the kids that our basement could easily be adjusted into a damp, dark, dungeon for misbehaving children. Actually, it is Mom and Dad that need a nice little white padded room in solitude after this long vacation! But seriously, no children were harmed in the making of this blogspot. Next we went to a wax museum which depicted scenes from the medieval village and then went on to represent some important people in history. Sadly, many of the Czech Republic’s history was unknown to us. One thing that we have seen throughout Europe is that the people really know their history. Europe seems to dwell a lot on their history, and has so many reminders of it, whereas America seems to really look forward into the future instead. Each place we went to had a different feel to it, its own culture, which was neat to experience. Ok, anyway, after the wax museum we went to a really cute marrionet museum. We saw a lot of puppets in Poland and even more in Prague, and they vary from each region. These puppets were really really cool! They also had a few stages with different stage props and scenery. It’s been a secret desire of mine to build something like this for my kids, but I thought that I had satisfied this desire somewhat when Emily and I built the beds with storage underneath for the girl’s room. However, seeing these cool stage sets just brought this desire back again. Maybe some day when I’m a grandma I can realize this dream. Anybody want to help? It would be so fun! The oldest of puppets in this collection were 90 years old. The green guy is the Czech water spirit, and the guy with one cloven hoof is a devil. The other devil is also obvious. There were a lot of traditional Czech characters, but also many others mixed in. They were all charming!
It’s a good thing the McCollaum kids are so well behaved! Mom is playing with dolls while Dad takes a nap. We moved on after this refreshing break. We were getting closer to the castle all the time and now had reached it’s entrance. The tower served many purposes. It was a bell tower, and a watch tower, They really did lock people up in this tower. It had a fantastic view of the city!

By the time we made it back down the tower and into the castle, the little ones were just plain tuckered out and their parents were in even worse shape. You can tell we were nearing the end of our vacation , because mom and dad decided at that point to skip the castle and to turn back to the river below so that the kids could play on it‘s banks. Jessica and Peter continued onward alone to take in the castle gardens and then met up with us down by the river. They got some good pictures on their own! In the meantime Paul was the focus of many Chinese women’s pictures. They just loved this cute blond half-naked cherub. He probably reminded them of a blond budda! J