a long walk

2612 so on our first weekend in Prague, we had a scheduled "genuine Czech weekend experience" it was, in all honesty, unpleasant. i really try to appreciate all the organized activities on these things, but this was really not all that great. we hopped on a train and rode out to the countryside, we made our way to another chateau. this bit was cool, the place was built during the 16th century by some German Protestant family in an Italian Renaissance style, and when the Thirty Years War came to an end, considering what side they fell on, they were forced to sell their property, it end up in the hands of the Lubkowics family ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobkowicz ). the place was pretty impressive, it had all kindsa art n curios in there, more than like 65,000 books, including 500+ year old books, one of which about astronomy was pretty cool, there was also a room dedicated to all the hunting that the princely family did over the years, with antlers and skins and bones of all kinds of exotic animals. unfortunately photos were strictly forbidden so i havent any. the chateau was pretty cool, much like all the others in the region but interesting in its own right. aaaaaaand then walked a bunch, and then walked more totaling to somewhere around 90 minutes of walking between rough country and small towns, till we got to a Biker rally-like thing, which we walked through to get to a scummy pond. this pond was absolutely brimming with tadpoles, there were areas that were black with them, it was kinda unsettling. after sitting around this pond/grassy area for 45 minutes, we walked another 60 minutes to another train station to get home. i would have really preferred to have a day in Prague, or at least a more directed day in the country. i think that morale would have been greatly improved had we been promised food, like on the Dialogues dime. i recognize the budget was kept low, but walking us around all day through country most of us werent to keen on anyways, and not really giving us time to get food/drink, meant we were rather grumpy by the end. again i appreciate the effort put forth for us by the program, and our guide, but i really did not like wandering around and doing nothing all day, there are 3-4 musuems in Prague i could have hit, and would have enjoyed so much more. i am likely to fall asleep soon, tomorrow is a free day, hopefully i stumble into something worthwhile.