Hey there my Hive friends and followers!
My real life has been so busy lately (oh, did I tell you that we just got married? :D) that I sometimes even struggle to keep my regular weekly contests alive and while my material for posts keeps accumulating, my time to actually work on those posts has been constantly diminishing :( Le sigh. In just a few days, me and my wife will be going on a honeymoon to a really amazing place that we both wanted to visit for a long time and I already know that I will take tons of cool shots in there (even though we will only be there for a few days) and I will be super eager to share all of that with you guys here on my blog but I don´t want to further increase the "post backlog" that I already have so I pushed myself to find some extra time today and finish at least one of those posts that I have been weeks behind with...
Ok, enough with this weird intro, let´s take a look at what we have here. A castle! A very very old and big castle that looks as if it was just cut out from a fairy tale :) This majestic piece of Gothic architecture is called the Karlstejn Castle and it´s one of the most famous, visited, photographed and undoubtedly also most beautiful castles in my little Czech homeland.
Perched above a tiny village of the same name (Karlstejn), the castle is located just a short train ride (30 minutes) from the capital city of Prague. Me and my wife visited the castle a few weeks ago and I´m happy to finally share some of the pictures of it with you.
I hope you enjoyed the photos. As you have probably noticed, I arranged them randomly to make the collection a bit more interesting but if you take a closer look, you might be able to tell which pictures were taken first because the castle is actually visible from pretty much the very first meters after you pass the village sign reading "Karlstejn" and it only appears bigger and bigger as you keep walking towards it. Also, we had unexpectedly changeable weather that day, ranging from scorching sun to cloudy skies and even some showers, which is why some of the pictures appear to be literally sun-drenched while others are shady or even eerily dark.
As for the locations of the pictures, most of them were taken from the main village road leading towards the castle but those with more details are from the castle courtyard. That´s the closest you can actually get for free and without having to wait in the line. Guided tours of the castle interiors are also available but they are pretty expensive and crowded so we decided not to take any of them and just admire the beauty of the castle from the outside. Moreover, we also wanted to see some of the nearby flooded quarries so we couldn´t stay long...
Generally speaking, however, the Karlstejn Castle is an amazing place and definitely one of the must-visits if you are in Prague for more than a day or two. If you only want to see the castle, it can be a half-day trip from Prague (including the transport) and if you also want to see the quarries (you do, they are so cool!), it will probably be a full day-trip. Let me also tag my two Hive friends @evelynchacin and @gabrielatravels who are planning to visit the Czech Republic soon so that they can see this post and maybe include the Karlstejn Castle in their itineraries ;)
To find out the exact location of the Karlstejn Castle, feel free to check out the Pinmapple, I pinned it there ;)