Since May this year I live in Czech Republic! Big big change. I am currently working at Kiwi.com (an online travel agency). While living here I found extremely difficult to find information online about what to visit (a part from Prague and Vienna) so slowly I had gather some information by asking coworkers and doing some fine research. Turn out Czech Republic has so much more than Prague! and a crazy amount of castle all over the country!
This a post to give you an idea of what day-trip you can do from Brno or what cities you can visit in the Czech Republic apart from Prague. I didn't dig deeper into what to do exactly in each city, is just an overview. I hope you like it! and if you happen to be local or Czech reading this post, extra comments/tips of these cities or others are more than welcome, this is just what I figure out with my non-existence Czech.
If you are newbie in Czech Republic (as me) I will tell you a surprising fact (or at least it was surprising for me): Czech Republic is great producer of white wine, their viticulture region is in the south of the country, this region is call Moravian and they produce around 96% of the wine of the country. I marked in yellow on the map along with the cities I will talk about:
Znojmo
Znojmo is a little town in the Moravian region and therefore is full of winery producers. On your way there you will see that is full of vineyards. When I say little, is really small and I recommend to go during summer so you can enjoy the nice views while drinking some local produce white wine. Is perfect for one-day trip and if you get bored you can take the bus back to Brno whenever you want.
The number one activity here seems to be doing the “wine trail”, basically renting a bike and go around different wineries. I didn't do this since we planned the trip little in advance. However, in the city you could see all around sign indicating the different trails. More info can be found
here.
How to get from Brno to Znojmo?
It is really really simple because is a internal bus, so you just pay when you get in the bus like any other city bus. At the time I went it was the bus 108 leaving from Brno Dolní Nádraží, check the schedule because on weekends usually have a frequency of 1 hour.
Mikulov and Lednice
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| View of Mikulov city from the hill |
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| View of Mikulov Hill from the Castle |
Have you heard of Mikulov before? Me neither… and yet this my FAVORITE towns from this list. I was extremely impressed by the beauty of Mikulov. I believe is even smaller than Znojmo, but OMG, so so beautiful. There is a small hill in the city where you can admire Mikulov from above, but the city itself it feels like a little Italy and is really well take care of. The gardens of the castle were carefully trimmed and immaculate perfect. The city is so small that you can see people going around with their glass of white wine around the castle, the center, is like an open bar.. but is a town.
I would recommend coming here even if you are just visiting the Czech Republic.
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| Lednice Castle, Czech Republic |
Now let’s talk about Lednice. Lednice is 45 minutes away from Mikulov in a bus, so doing both towns in one-day is perfect. The most iconic thing about Lednice, is its amazing castle and its park (that is the biggest one in the country covering 200km2) both being part of UNESCO world heritage.
If you take the bus 570 from Mikulov to Lednice, it will literally leave you 50 metres from the castle, which is free to enter.
My recommendation here, both cities are small but if you want to be chill, organize yourself to be around 10:30 - 11 in Mikulov. You will have lunch there, maybe an ice cream and then around 16-17 you can head to Lednice with a nice wine and wander around so at 20:00 you go back to Brno. (I didn't know this and I arrived to Lednice at 19hs so I was literally 1 hour in the castle and then went back, a reason to go back next summer… )
Here is why you should get back by 20:00:
IMPORTANT! keep in mind that if you want to go back from Lednice to Brno, the last train is around 21:00 and the last bus that gets you to the train station is at 20:00. So at 20:00 you should be heading back!
How to get from Mikulov from Lednice?
Take 570 bus, google maps have the schedule on it, so just follow the map! is only 45 minutes away.
How to get to Mikulov from Brno?
Same as Znojmo, there are city buses. You can take then 105 from Brno Zvonařka and in 1hr 30min you will be in Mikulov.
Valtice
This town is over the border with Austria and is only 7km from Lednice (actually one of the wine trail you can do is Mikulov - Lednice - Valtice all by bike). Valtice has, of course, another castle, which is really stunning and also part of UNESCO World Heritage. But the unique thing about this castle is that is home for one of the oldest and largest wine cellars in the Czech Republic. Here you can find the best 100 winning wines from Moravia Region.
The entry to the cellar was about 200 czk and you can stay there for 2 hours tasting all the wines you want. You can bring your own cheese and aperitifs to accompany your wine and of course you can buy the bottle of wine you liked the most.
I don't want to be hard on Valtice, but apart from this, there wasn't much to do in the town… In my case I went we a group of
Brno Expat Center that organized a tour from Brno with a professional wine taster!
How to get to Valtice from Brno?
You can take a train to Breclav and make a combination there to Valtice. Is about 1 hour 30min (check the Czech train info
here)
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