Evening at Loket

Our trip happened early December 2011. We got up early and traveled most of day to get there and we nearly missed opening hours at castle. We decided to arrive one day earlier to see the castle and little town with the same name. So in the worst case we could see it next day before ceremony.

BTW, it is only private castle in Czech Republic open to public if I remember correctly. Wedding ceremonies are allowed once a month, so there are not many of them and they have historical feel to them. Not only castle and dresses, but also speech and how people speak (like from fairy tales).

But back to our visit. When you first see the castle on your way from Karlovy Vary, it is sitting on small hill below you in the valley. Small river Ohře is flowing around it and looks unbelievable. Much better than we could imagine.

We accommodated and got about 30 minutes to see it before closing. It was getting dark slowly and exposures got longer quickly. Even worse when we went around the castle.

It does not look so, but it is panorama. There was not enough place to get further away to fit everything in, so I took 2 vertical shots and stitched them together.

Following 2 photos are taken from the bridge and below it.

We went around the town too. Historical part of it is really small, sitting on the same hill, or it is more like peninsula thanks to river.

Houses are typical for this region and all of them are heavily rebuilt and fixed, as we learned next day, because they were pretty deteriorated since WWII.

It lives from tourist business and as we could see there is not much of that in December. Really, after getting dark at 4:30 everything died out, we had problem to find open restaurant, so we eventually returned to our hotel and the meal was not like I hoped for. But we survived and that counts (now I am being nasty).

Magical morning at Loket

We knew that this region of Czech republic has problems with smog, pollution, mist and all during these days. I was afraid my photos will be terrible and we were lucky yesterday that apart from early shade thanks to surrounding hills everything was OK.

And we were lucky next morning, the fog was back. But it did not look like a lucky moment yet. Not even when we went out to north east to wait till we will see castle coming out of fog. Not after waiting and returning back to hotel thinking there is no chance. Luck happened at about 11:00 when we returned again and we could see silhouette of castle coming out of mist.

The 1st photo of mist where actual castle could be seen. I made some before, but castle was not there. We could see it with our eyes, but it was too hard task for camera (or my skills).

It was surprising how quickly the mist was gone. We continued by walking around the town on other bank of river promising to show us better views. Apart from 2 more misty photos everything else was fully lighted fairy tale town with castle on the top.