Coyans in the Czech Republic

Byli Jsme v Brne...We were in Brno

We had a great time in Moravia. We visited Telc on the way, which is a really beautiful town and a protected UNESCO heritage site. Then we visited our friend Terezka in Brno - we had coffee with her in a big shopping mall there. I thought I made reservations for a small Penzion (like a bed and breakfast) in Vyskov, where our friend Katerina and her family live. But when we arrived at about 8PM, they informed me that they were full, and they didn't have my reservation. So we drove to the only other hotel in town, and I asked them if they had any rooms. The woman there said all of the hotels in Brno (about 400,000 people) and Vyskov (about 30,000 people) were full, because there was a big convention in Brno that week. She said she had two rooms left next to each other, because one man had never arrived, and to drive around to the gated parking. However, when I got there, she said the man had just arrived and so she had only one room with two beds for the four of us. So I took out my tour book and found another city about 15 miles north (away from Brno). Krista called them, and they said they had plenty of rooms. It was a great place - the Grand Hotel Prostejov. It is in an out-of-the-way city of about 25,000 that gets few visitors. It was really a top-class place. Unfortunately, it also had top-class prices. I told Krista and the girls we could only stay one night at these prices and would go home the next night, but they begged to have a second night so I relented. I figured since we are not going back to America this summer, we could afford two nights, and it did include a nice breakfast. Also we had dinner there Thursday night and we were the only ones in the restaurant and they treated us and the girls like royalty. On Thursday, we visited our friends in Vyskov and sat in on a 4th grade class being taught by Katerina's mom, then we all went to see Katerina's house, which she and her boyfriend of 10 years had built. It was really beautiful, and is in a small village under a castle. Katerina had a nice lunch for us, and we all talked while the girls played outside in their huge garden. We met Katerina a few years back and now she works all over Europe as a model for the Italian motorcycle company Ducatti. We saw her again Friday, and Friday night she drove back to Italy, and next week she flies to Spain for a Ducatti show. Quite the jet-setter... We also visited some remarkable caves (jeskyne Mucocha) near Vyskov. We took a cable car into a deep gorge, and from there had a private tour of the caves, since we were the only tourists there. The man was quite friendly when he heard we were Americans living in CZ. We walked all through the caves, and the tour guide would turn on lights in different rooms and describe them. Near the end, there is an underground river and we had a private boat ride through the caves with another guide, again all to ourselves. Really it was a great experience, and quite cheap too. However, after the tour we spent a long time talking to the woman in the gift shop - again she was fascinated about Americans who speak czech, and by the time we returned to the cable car it had closed for the day. So we were kind of trapped in the bottom of this canyon. Fortunately I found a map showing a trail back up to the car, so we had a nice walk back out of the canyon.