Farms, Forest, and Radyne Castle

Saturday morning we packed up the kids and went to this little farm outside of Plzen. It was like the Colonial Willamsburg of farms. There were booths with people dressed in old style farming clothes and there were all sorts of activities for the kids to do, like make bread out of mashed up potatoes, beat hay with this crazy wooden thing (not sure what the purpose of this was), ride horses and ponies, milk a fake cow whose udders looked exactly like hot dogs, and make paper and hay horse heads. Pretty amazing right? The girls seemed to love it. I thought this was the extent of our outing and left my camera at home, a mistake I will not make again.

On the way back home there is a small Castle, Radyne Castle and we decided to stop off and explore. One of the many benefits of nannying, when you on outings with the family you don't have to pay to see the tourist attractions, awesome!   The Castle is very small but beautifully situated. It sits in the middle of the forest on top of a hill and from the the top of the Castle you can see Plzen and a couple other small villages. The orange rooftops against the varying shades of green in the surrounding hills and forests is just so picturesque. 

Entrance to the Castle-found on Flickr

Radyne from a distance- found on Panarimo

Inside the Castle there is not much, but Tomas (the father) explained some of the history of the Castle and the surrounding area as this is where he grew up. On the main floor of the Castle there were all these crazy puppet looking things, hanging from the ceiling and on the walls, and there was some spooky music playing. Magda, who is 6, was terrified and could not wait to get out of there, which was actually kind of funny. I had no idea what the deal was until we were on our way out and Anna, who is 8 and speaks good english, read the czech signs and told me the story of a Queen who had a son who had donkey ears, big teeth and goat legs (I think the queen said something about if she couldn't have a son then she would rather have a donkey? no sure, Annas translation was kinda sketchy, or maybe its the story thats sketchy...) anyway this King grows up and has a son but the son is just like him- donkey ears etc., so he kills his wife and son and throws the bodies in this pit in the castle (where people now throw change and make a wish), he remarries and the same thing happens so he keeps killing and throwing the bodies in the pit. Then the story gets confusing, something about a magic medallion and a big dog guarding treasure and a black hen. All I know is that the King ends up dying in the pit where all the bodies he had thrown were. Talk about karma. After hearing the crazy story, some of the puppets in the room made sense but I was still confused.

After the Castle we went on a walk through the surrounding forest. The sun was shining through the trees and there was no one around so it was nice and peaceful, until the girls got into a pinecone war. All in all a very good day.