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Since May this year I live in Czech Republic! Big big change. I am currently working at Kiwi.com (an online travel agency). While living here I found extremely difficult to find information online about what to visit (a part from Prague and Vienna) so slowly I had gather some information by asking coworkers and doing some fine research. Turn out Czech Republic has so much more than Prague! and a crazy amount of castle all over the country!
This a post to give you an idea of what day-trip you can do from Brno or what cities you can visit in the Czech Republic apart from Prague. I didn't dig deeper into what to do exactly in each city, is just an overview. I hope you like it! and if you happen to be local or Czech reading this post, extra comments/tips of these cities or others are more than welcome, this is just what I figure out with my non-existence Czech.
If you are newbie in Czech Republic (as me) I will tell you a surprising fact (or at least it was surprising for me): Czech Republic is great producer of white wine, their viticulture region is in the south of the country, this region is call Moravian and they produce around 96% of the wine of the country. I marked in yellow on the map along with the cities I will talk about:
Znojmo
Znojmo is a little town in the Moravian region and therefore is full of winery producers. On your way there you will see that is full of vineyards. When I say little, is really small and I recommend to go during summer so you can enjoy the nice views while drinking some local produce white wine. Is perfect for one-day trip and if you get bored you can take the bus back to Brno whenever you want.
The number one activity here seems to be doing the “wine trail”, basically renting a bike and go around different wineries. I didn't do this since we planned the trip little in advance. However, in the city you could see all around sign indicating the different trails. More info can be found here.
How to get from Brno to Znojmo?
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Mikulov and Lednice
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| View of Mikulov city from the hill |
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| View of Mikulov Hill from the Castle |
I would recommend coming here even if you are just visiting the Czech Republic.
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| Lednice Castle, Czech Republic |
Now let’s talk about Lednice. Lednice is 45 minutes away from Mikulov in a bus, so doing both towns in one-day is perfect. The most iconic thing about Lednice, is its amazing castle and its park (that is the biggest one in the country covering 200km2) both being part of UNESCO world heritage. If you take the bus 570 from Mikulov to Lednice, it will literally leave you 50 metres from the castle, which is free to enter.
My recommendation here, both cities are small but if you want to be chill, organize yourself to be around 10:30 - 11 in Mikulov. You will have lunch there, maybe an ice cream and then around 16-17 you can head to Lednice with a nice wine and wander around so at 20:00 you go back to Brno. (I didn't know this and I arrived to Lednice at 19hs so I was literally 1 hour in the castle and then went back, a reason to go back next summer… )
Here is why you should get back by 20:00:
IMPORTANT! keep in mind that if you want to go back from Lednice to Brno, the last train is around 21:00 and the last bus that gets you to the train station is at 20:00. So at 20:00 you should be heading back!
How to get from Mikulov from Lednice?
Take 570 bus, google maps have the schedule on it, so just follow the map! is only 45 minutes away.
How to get to Mikulov from Brno?
Same as Znojmo, there are city buses. You can take then 105 from Brno Zvonařka and in 1hr 30min you will be in Mikulov.
Valtice
This town is over the border with Austria and is only 7km from Lednice (actually one of the wine trail you can do is Mikulov - Lednice - Valtice all by bike). Valtice has, of course, another castle, which is really stunning and also part of UNESCO World Heritage. But the unique thing about this castle is that is home for one of the oldest and largest wine cellars in the Czech Republic. Here you can find the best 100 winning wines from Moravia Region.
The entry to the cellar was about 200 czk and you can stay there for 2 hours tasting all the wines you want. You can bring your own cheese and aperitifs to accompany your wine and of course you can buy the bottle of wine you liked the most.
I don't want to be hard on Valtice, but apart from this, there wasn't much to do in the town… In my case I went we a group of Brno Expat Center that organized a tour from Brno with a professional wine taster!
How to get to Valtice from Brno?
You can take a train to Breclav and make a combination there to Valtice. Is about 1 hour 30min (check the Czech train info here)
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Olomouc
This is the second biggest city in Moravia after Brno and is used to be the capital of Moravia. You will be soon impressed by the huge amount of fountains this city has, as well as 3 different “main squares” which make it kind of atypical for the size of the city and really beautiful.
Olomouc has one of the 6 astronomical clocks found in the Czech Republic (nop, the one in Prague is not the only one). Unfortunately when I visited it was being remodeled… so maybe when you visit it will be even nicer!
Here I just rent a Rekola bike and went around the city and the different parks.
How to get to Olomouc from Brno?
Train, Flixbus or Regiojet.
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Cesky Krumlov
Cesky Krumlov along with Karlovy Vary are probably the most known cities in Czech Republic apart from Prague. I went to Cesky Krumlov from Brno with Flixbus, was there for a day and then went to Prague to sleep that night. Next day I took the bus to Karlovy Vary from Prague and that night I went back to Brno from Karlovy Vary. I won't lie to you, it was quite a lot of time in the bus but it was the way I fit both cities in a weekend without an extremely expensive accommodation in Cesky or Karlovy Vary.
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| View from Cesky Krumlov Castle |
Cesky Krumlov was a little dreamy town, extremely beautiful. But oh boy, it was overcrowded by tourist, impressively it would roughly estimate that 90% were Asian tourists, so I don't know what is going on between Cesky Krumlov and Asia but they are bringing most of the tourism. And I point this because in all the cities I mention above you will hardly see any tourist so this is not Moravia game.
Main activities to do in Cesky Krumlov is rent a kayak and go around the river that border the city. I went during the summer and even the river was with high-traffic kayak. And the rest you will figure it out, or follow the crowd, is super small so basically, in 1 day you can walk the whole city.
Karlovy Vary
Even though all the cities I mentioned above I think they have their own beauty, Karlovy Vary is not only beautiful but it has a sharp personality. Mansions everywhere, rivers with thermals waters, fountains with thermal waters and fresh fluffy Czech wafers.
Karlovy Vary served as inspiration to Wes Anderson in the movie “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. Part of the inspiring building to Wes was the Grandhotel Pupp and the Deer Leap Lookup. I highly recommend to read this article that explains more about it and by the end, you will understand why Wes Anderson was so inspired by Karlovy Vary.
The city is just stunning, there is a classical musical playing around, each building is incredibly amazing. The city is as well full of Spas and fancy hotels so you can prolong your stay for more days. The number one activity that you will see, is buying one cup (they are quite unique shaped) and go around the fountains drinking spring water
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Btw, if you don’t know the Honest Guide channel yet, they have amazing tips of Prague and in this case also of Karlovy Vary. I highly recommend watching their videos, they have super good content and insider tips!
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| One of the galleries in Karlovy Vary full of spring water fountains |
The way I found was:
- Saturday morning: take the flixbus from Brno to Cesky Krumlov
- Saturday evening: take the flixbus from Cesky Krumlov to Prague. Sleep in Prague
- Sunday morning: take the flixbus from Prague to Karlovy Vary
- Sunday evening: take the flixbus from Karlovy Vary to Brno
General Tips
- Check the Honest Guide Youtube channel
- Download Rekola App: this is an app to rent bikes, is available in most of the cities I mentioned in this post. The bikes are pink so you will notice them and the price is like 1usd per hour.
- Flixbus vs. Regiojet: if you are in doubt I found Regiojet far better than Flixbus in terms of service, they have free cancellation until 15min of departure, most of the time is even cheaper than flixbus, they even have trains, super easy to change your ticket if you need. I highly recommend Regiojet over Flixbus!
Other cities to explore
I had been in Czech Republic for 7 month so I still have a lot to explore! this are some cities that are still in my bucket list:
- Ceske Budejovice
- Trebon or Telc
- High Tatras, Slovakia
- Bohemian Paradise
And I guess there are much more so let me know if you have another secret city to add to the list :)
If you like this post feel free to pin it and share it! For more adventures, you can follow me in Instagram
Other Europe Travel Guides:
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Excelente crónica de viaje, felicitaciones
ReplyDeleteAmazing. Czechia is beautiful. We have been here for a spa stay https://www.honourandgrace.com/ and the nature was soo beautiful.
ReplyDeleteAmazing. Czechia is beautiful. We have been here for a spa stay https://www.honourandgrace.com/ and the nature was soo beautiful.
ReplyDelete