Karlovy Vary. Where to begin? Beautiful town, strange vibe. There is a lot of money in this town, mostly because of its roots as a spa town. In the Czech culture, you can be prescribed time at the spa by a doctor. Yeah, like, "Dr, I'm stressed, work sucks". "Ok, go spend 2 weeks at the spa, then call me in the morning". Crazy. So there are natural hot springs in Karlovy Vary, so it was an obvious choice for spas.

Unfortunately, the town is losing much of its Czech culture. The russians found out about the healing powers (aka money making possibilities) and are slowly buying everything out from the Czechs. We heard through some that members of the city counsel are being paid by the russians to approve sales to russians over other potential buyers. So it was weird. Most of the signs were in russian, not even Czech. It was very beautiful, but not my cup of tea.

Anyway, as for the springs. You're supposed to drink the water to cure your ills. So some are for good stomach, some for good head, etc. They all tasted nasty. And the minerals are so strong, you're not supposed to let the water touch your teeth. Crazy.

Again, beautiful buildings. Everywhere. Lots of money. Behold, the Grand Hotel Pupp:

Just one of the many completely gorgeous streets:

But the biggest reason we were there was the Becherovka factory. Becherovka is a medicinal herbal bitters that is made only in this town using only the water found here. It is a secret recipe and is a traditional Czech drink. We had quite a few bottles at our wedding.

The last time the whole family was in Karlovy Vary, Stan, Stephen, and Uncle John did the tour of the factory. But it was the Czech version and they didn't understand much. One thing there were pretty sure on was that there was a fire. Turns out Stan needs to work on his Czech a bit. No fire, and in fact we were asked to pray that that never happened because the whole place would explode due to all the alcohol on site. A tour, a tasting and a toast:

We also ate well. The girls (Michelle, Stephanie, and I) had facials one day and the guys got a little impatient waiting. Here's what happened:

We eventually caught up with them and had a nice meal.

From Karlovy Vary we went to Cesky Krumlov via Plsen. If Plsen sounds like Pilsner to you, it should. Its the town where the Pilsner style of beer was invented. And its the home to the original Pilsner beer, Pilsner Urquell (literally the original pilsner). This factory was nothing like Kozel, more like Disney does breweries. But it was still pretty cool. Come on, a beer vending machine. How could that not be cool?

Onto Cesky Krumlov, my favorite town of the trip. We did all kinds of cool outdoorsy stuff here. Took the kids horseback riding and rafting in the same day. The rafting was the #1 thing I wanted to do on this whole trip and it was totally worth it. There are dams across the river and channels were cut into the dams for rafting through. Kayaking competitions take place all along the river. It was awesome.

Cesky Krumlov is also cool in that the castle has a moat that is protected by bears. No water or crocodiles, bears. Bears that are fed old bagels and doughnuts, but still, bears.

We stayed at a most excellent pension, right on the river (the Vltava river). They fed us amazing breakfasts and we got to watch all the goofballs go by on the water. Great place. We were upstairs and downstairs was the daughter's confectionary. Awesome.

Cesky Krumlov was our last Czech town and it was by far my favorite. I'd move there in a heartbeat. Great vibe, very friendly people, and fantastic food. On to Austria!