The Adrspach Rocks
I woke up early Saturday morning, did my morning ritual and then heading over to the tennis courts to go play Jardo again in tennis. Again, Jardo provided me with a racquet and sneakers and we played two sets of tennis. I hadn’t played competitive tennis since early January and I can tell you that I really miss it. I was able to play hard, get a great workout and walk off the court. It’s funny, because I told Jardo that I have one objective every time I get on a tennis court these days. He asked what it was and I said, and I said that it’s to walk off without getting hurt! It was really fun to get my body moving, to get the competitive energy out and to sweat. I look forward to taking care of myself back in San Diego so I can play tennis regularly.
Upon my return Ilise and I were talking about what we might do for the day. There was a boat race that the local Rotary club was sponsoring, there was a women’s volleyball tournament that Noah and I had talked about going to, and we still have tickets to tour Prague Castle which we could do. About 5 minutes later Drew was pinged by someone on her Instagram account with a picture of some funky looking rocks and the person asked if we had gone to see these rocks in the Czech Republic? Well, we did some research and it seems like this rock town is about 2 plus hours by car from Prague. We had been cooped up in the apartment and in this area for close to a week, so we decided to take a road trip for the day. We piled in the car with some snacks and headed to The Adršpach-Teplice Rocks. We didn’t leave the apartment until about 12:30, so we arrived in Adrspach around 3 pm. The days here are long, with sunset happening around 9 pm, so we had plenty of time to tour the rock formations.
We purchased tickets to see these rocks, which was all of 170 cz (about $8) for the whole family. We entered the park and the rocks were pretty amazing. The walk through the park is a few miles so we started on our little journey. We took lots of pictures and eventually came to a place where they have a boat ride for another $8. We decided to take the boat ride at Noah’s request. To get to the little creek where the boat ride takes place you need to climb a pretty big set of stairs going up, and another equally as long going down the back side of some of the rocks. We arrived at the boat ride to find a large flat boat that seats approximately 30 people. The guide asks what language we speak and hands us the tour guides speech in English on a laminated piece of paper. The boat ride, if you can call it that, was all of 20 minutes and took us on a journey of about 500 yards. We arrived at the end of the little creek and there was a big log stopping the boat from going any further. The boat guide asked everyone to turn around in their seats as we were going to turn back and see everything we just saw from the other side of the creek.
You need to understand, this creek was only 50 – 75 feet across, so we weren’t seeing much we didn’t see the first time through. All the people on the boat who spoke Czech were laughing every time the guide spoke and there were these little man made items all around for him to make fun of. For example, the boat was called the Titanic II, and there was one area with a few fake arms coming out of the water and a steel drum with the name Titanic painted on it. The guide talked about the fact that the first Titanic sunk in the creek years ago, and there was more humor like that for the whole ride. So, in the end this was a little comedy show, only we got to read the material where everyone else got to hear it from the guide. I must confess, it seemed like the native speakers were laughing a lot more than Ilise and I.
We exited the boat, climbed back to the walking trail and started on our journey out of the rock formation. It was very cool with lots of wonderful pictures and it was good to get out of the city for a day. We still have 4 more days in Prague, so lots of time to see everything we want, including an Opera today and another show tomorrow evening. We will visit Prague Castle on Monday or Tuesday afternoon and then head to Berlin on Wednesday. So, we left Adrspach around 6 pm and started our drive back to Prague. We decided we would stop somewhere for dinner and about 45 minutes later found the first place that seemed like it had food and there were people inside eating!
When we got into this little restaurant the bar tender spoke English and I thought we had a chance for a decent meal. Over the next hour and a half we enjoyed one of the best meals we have had on our trip. We ordered a couple of small salads, which were absolutely delicious and extremely fresh. Then we got one beef dish, which we thought through our translator would be a grilled steak, but it was Veal Marsala. Noah had pork medallions and I had another pork dish that was just delicious. We sat enjoying our meals and Ilise had a few beers, which she enjoyed as well. We got the check and headed back to Prague.
I said that the sun doesn’t set here in Czech until about 9 pm, so we started to see an amazing sunset as we drove back. On our drive out, and since we entered the country, we have seen these huge fields of yellow flowers that are just beautiful. Ilise and I both noticed them on our drive out and now with the sunset happening, these fields were just a picture waiting to be taken. We ended up stopping twice, in front of different flower fields, while Drew and I got out and took some awesome pictures. I just love sunsets, and the drive home made me start thinking about all of the sunsets we are going to see from the new house in San Diego. All in all, it was a great day. Everyone got along (that really means that Drew and Noah had a good day together), we saw some beautiful rare creations of nature and were able to end the day with some amazing sunset photos.
To a life well lived!
Larry Kesslin 