A Trip to Karlovy Vary

What do you do, when you have a visitor who has by now seen more of your hometown than you?

You go out of town. For example to a nice little spa town in a neighboring country.

When we arrived in Karlovy Vary, it looked really cute.

First, we went to see the famous Moser glassworks.

They showed us how they produce some of their beautiful crystal glass.

 

After the glass gets its shape, it has to cool down slowly in a special oven. Glasses take about 2 hours, vases about 2 days.

There is also a museum that showcases products from different eras and the founders:

My personal favorite:

This is a glass model of the glass works:

And here are some famous people who have used the glasses:

It was quite interesting. There is also a shop, of course.

You can ask for prices, the question is whether it is wise. We didn’t. Also, the glasses have one major drawback: You should not toast with Moser glassware.

Then we moved on to a different museum. Have you heard of Becherovka?

Jan Becher was a pharmacist who developed a “healthy drink” made of an alcoholic extraction of various spices and herbs… the recommended daily intake? 40 ml.

It was also popular with German royalty and an amount of 50 liters per month was ordered for the court.

This illustrates the process. The recipe includes clove, cinnamon, and mugwort and is so secret only 2 people know it.

Of course there was a tasting. The Original was good, the Lemond was also really nice, but the Cordial too sweet. We also tried the other two products, Ice&Fire and KV40, both not as good as the original.

Slightly tipsy we went shopping for another Karlsbad specialty: Oblatky.

We also saw the famous and very pretty colonnades.

Park colonnade:

Mill colonnade:

They do have more, but we decides it was enough. The theater was my favorite house:

Then we walked around town some more.

 

By the way, to be a proper tourist here, you have to buy a cup and drink the healing water from all the 12 springs. The 13th is said to be Becherovka.

After a lovely dinner at this place,

…we took the bus home to Bayreuth. We had walked about 20 km that day and felt every meter of it.

Sad news: My nougat oblatky are already gone, but I still have some with coconut left.

And now to the really sad news: Anny is leaving today! Although, I cannot blame her, who wouldn’t want to go back to Italy? And the Lago Maggiore at that?