Daytrip to Brno, Czech Republic

Every trip you learn something and this one the lesson was- buy bus tickets early. We got to the bus station and the 7:30 bus we planed on taking was sold out and there was not another one until 9:00 with 3 seats but we had 7 people. We decided, after a little confusion that we should go to the train station and get tickets- because the train doesn’t sell out and we shouldn’t have problems. When we got to the ticket window she told us that the first train was around 9:30 but we knew about 8:30 train she didn’t mention. She sold us a ticket and explained in Czech that we had to go to the other train station (lucky I understood what she was trying to say and headed that way). When we got to the platform the lady said we needed to get reservations (even though we thought we already had them) because this was an intercity train and that makes it special (=more expensive). We only had 15 min to get to the ticket window and pay the difference and get reservations- but we made it on the train before it left.

We ended up paying a lot more to get to Brno, about $25 on the really nice train, and only $7 to return on the bus. It all turned out ok and we had a great time.

The point of visiting Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic, was to see the Villa Tugenhut. It is a very well know piece of architecture from the 1920’s designed by one of my favorite architects, Mies van der Rohe. The house was beautiful. It is modern architecture and on paper just looks like a few lines, but in person it’s amazing. Mies was known for his clean lines and details so I was sure to take photos of details so I could figure out how to incorporate some of his designs into my projects. There was an amazing glass wall with huge pieces of glass. Two of the 5 windows lowered into the floor, almost like a car window. It was so cool I took a video.

After the tour, we had lunch and saw some of the sites of the city before stopping for a hot chocolate. Brittany and I have wanted sandals that we can easily walk around town in and went into one store and found them! On sale!! In my size (10) and Brittany’s (6)!!! We found amazing since they are both hard to find sizes. YAY for new shoes!