If you can’t stand the touring heat, strategize. Today was the first day that heat (sunny, mid-eighties) made carefree touring more problematic. Happily, Mer and I have worked out some heat-related methods from our various travels.

1. Get some elevation. This was not so dramatic today, as I really wanted to go to the top of the nearby hill that has a church on it and promised good views of the town. We trudged up the hill first thing in the morning, and while the sun was still intense, there was some shade along the way. At the top, we did have commanding views of the town, as well as shade and a solid breeze. Also, it was such a pretty spot, we sat on a bench there for some time. Taking it easy is another good method of keeping cool.

2. Pace yourself. We walked into town after hiking down the hill and topping off our water at our B and B. We walked quite slowly, and paused to take a look into St. Vitus Church, which is the tall church in the middle of town. The inside is relatively plain, but the floor-to-ceiling windows are very impressive. Our walk was a fairly long one, over a mile, ending at…

3. Get underground. Since we did a medieval silver mine in Kutna Hora, I thought it would be fun to contrast it with a modern graphite mine that only closed in 2003. Plus, the inside of the mine is always fifty degrees. We put on mine clothes since graphite can stain easily, pulled on boots because of the water in the mine, put on our circa-1990 lead-acid battery hooked to our lights, and climbed aboard a little mine train that took us 1.2 kilometers into the mountain (.75 miles), where we were 250 feet under a hill. Our group all spoke Czech except for us and two others, but we had little papers telling us what we would be seeing. Also, our guide tried to translate the most important things into English, so it was a good experience.

We got to see how air came into the mines through chimneys to the surface, and how that air was blown around by powerful fans (she turned one on for us, and that thing moved some air). We got to see pneumatic drills that drilled holes for the blasting charges, and the equipment used to clean up the rubble, which was sent for cleaning and refining.  We saw a tunnel that was closed for too much radon gas, which made me wonder about how the radon just stayed in there, and we saw little dwarf statues the miners put around the mine in order to placate the real dwarves they thought might be there (even in the 1990s – miners are superstitious).

4. Find shade. A good place to do this is a garden, and Cesky Krumlov’s castle does have one, way up on the hill. It has a formal French garden, which still has some shade trees, and long hedgerows stretching back to a pond full of lilies, fish, and ducks. Along the way, we ran across a revolving outdoor theater – the entire seating area could rotate 360 degrees to face different areas, presumably used for different scenes. It would be interesting to see how that actually worked. We stayed for several minutes at the pond, watching the aquatic foul swimming about, and then walked back to the French garden, where we sat in the shade for a short while. We were handling the heat well.

5. Don’t take a longcut. Sometimes being whimsical on a hot day does not pan out. I could take the we-came-that-way path, or try the new one I saw. We walked down the new one, which went down and south of the old town, with a wall that separated us from it. By the time we got to the bottom, we were quite a ways south of where I had wanted to go, and I was out of water. We stopped at a bakery to get something to drink, and a snack, and made our way back to the B and B. I figured it took about twice as long as it should have.

6. Rest. We stayed in the B and B for about an hour, to cool off and to let the sun get lower so there would be more shade.

7. Find an amazing place to eat in the shade. Mer’s favorite spot in town was where a small canal joins the Vltava River; it looks as if it used to drive a water wheel, but now is just a lovely spot where the water flows together right in front of two of the town’s towers. And there happens to be a restaurant with a terrace right over the canal, and for some reason, we were the only ones on it for a whole hour. It was a pretty relaxing meal.

8. Cool your feet. After supper, we waded in the Vltava, which was cool, but not cold, and it is in the same lovely spot, except now we could see the main wooden bridge of the town. We lingered there for some time too. Oh, and a hot air balloon went by again, while we were standing there in the river.

And so we took a slow walk home, getting back after 8:00. We sat outside and had ice cream bars, and watched the evening light play with the landscape. It was a hot time in the old town tonight.