Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from August 7, 2022

Czech Trip Day 5 - FOOD

We arrived to Znojmo, Czech Republic (Karel's hometown) on Thursday August 4th and his first meal request from his mom was SVÍČKOVÁ. Karel's dish (pictured above) was the classic version whereas mine was made vegetarian. Until now (when I looked it up for this article), I had no idea how this meal was made. "Svíčková is a famous sauce from Czech cuisine, made from root vegetables and heavy cream. It’s thickened with roux. Svíčková sauce is eaten warm poured over a beef slice, accompanied with bread dumplings. You can also garnish the final dish with lemon, cranberries, and a scoop of whipped cream." I love this meal (vegetarian version) because it's so incredibly tasteful. It's also very comforting for Karel - it brings him a lot of great memories. Mindfullness has many definitions but one that speaks to me is from this article that states "being aware of what is happening both inside your body, heart and mind - and outside in your environment, without

Czech Trip - Day 3 MTB

  I was so excited for Sunday. A long ride on our mountain bikes.  After checking out of Airbnb #1 (to check in to Airbnb #2 in the afternoon - I wasn't able to book one for our entire 7-day stay in Znojmo) we drove just outside of town to Karel's friends house - Jirka. We enjoy seeing Jirka everytime we visit Znojmo for two reasons 1) I get to see Visty (Italian Greyhound) and her baby Bianca 2) Karel gets to talk bikes with Jirka. Karel and Jirka share a similar love of Colnago bicycles. They used to race together when Karel was a teenager.  Another friend joined us (Stephen) and we set out for a long ride around 9:30am. Although Karel is somewhat familiar with the roads, it was great to have Jirka as our tour guide as we were able to see so many great sights and several beautiful look-out points. I've seen a few of these spots in past trips, but never by mountain bike. I am used to riding on very technical single-track courses so it was a nice change to be on different o

Czech Trip Day 2: Brno

  On Saturday morning, we woke up to light rain - which was refreshing since Friday was incredibly hot outside. The air was cool and the sky was cloudy. We started the morning with a run around the town - which was more like sightseeing for me. We ran for ~45 minutes and included several stops for pictures of gardens (and one longer stop to look at the cutest kitten and momma).  After we cleaned up, we drove ~60 minutes to the city of Brno to meet Karel's niece Lenka and her husband and son. If you'd like to read more about Brno, here's an article.  After meeting Lenka at the parking lot by the train/bus station, we walked through town to a restaurant for lunch. We had lunch at Forky's - a 100% plant based bistro. It was so great to be able to choose any option from the menu. I had a power plate w/ quinoa protein bites and Karel had a tofu curry. We shared fries.  After lunch, we walked up to the top of a hill to tour the  Špilberk Castle . We first took a tour of the m