Czech Republic: August 24, 2009

Our first order of the day was a visit to the Zlin Zoo and Chateau Lesna. It was originally set up as a private zoo and gardens by a local family in the late 1800s. There are many walking trails which lead to the various exhibits. The rainforest exibit was exceptional as everything happened in a greenhouse, with misters etc. You then walked on three levels, one to get you into the upper trees, the second at ground level and a section which essentially put you under the river to look at the fish (piranhas and the like). The monkeys were a bit disinterested in the onlookers, but were generally running around in the trees around us. There were several other walk through aviaries as well.

One of the great things we have found in the Czech Republic is that they create a lot of areas for the kids. In shopping malls they have play areas where you can dump the kids with a minder and go shopping uninhibited. At the zoo for instance, there was a play area with camel and donkey rides and a really cool treehouse with ropes and ladders and a zip line. In fact, we were thinking of trying to bribe the person in charge into letting us have a go.

The tiger was as usual it’s lazy self. In fact, this one even had CCTV in its home, so I guess it has a history of not getting out much. All we saw was 2 hind legs and a tail on the monitor. The lion was a bit more lively and put on a show by roaring the place down. One of the last areas was the lemur exhibit. This was quite interesting as they had an area enclosed by an electric fence and the lemurs ran about amongst the visitors. Even the mother with three babies didn’t seem to have a problem darting in and out of peoples’ feet .

The Chateau Lesna was a beautifully appointed building and with its surrounding gardens makes a superb complement to the zoo. We plan to go back to take a closer look at the Chateau.

Following the zoo visit we decided to take a drive to the spa town of Luhacovice. The underground wells produce mineralized water which is supposed to good for treating diseases of the digestive tract, diabetes and the respiratory system. Can’t say it did anything for us, but it was a very pretty town. We had lunch at a café, in fact lunch for two, which probably should have been billed as lunch for about 7. When it came out, it consisted of two sword skewers containing (each) ½ tomato, ½ red pepper, 2 chicken breasts (each marinated differently), a piece of steak, a pork cut and a slice of gammon. On top of this was a 9-10” platter of salad and a similar size of mixed vegetables, complete with 3 hash brown patties and a mountain of fried potato pieces. Needless to say, we packed one of the skewers in a Ziploc bag and it is presently in our fridge.

We then drove out to Uhersky Brod, before heading back to Zlin. I tested a route which I hope will serve as an alternative route to Vienna (and probably quicker too) as it leads to a major highway in Slovakia.

We had another quiet evening. Didn’t need to have dinner after that lunch. We caught up on emails and then watched a few more episodes of True Blood.