Brno - Czech republics second city

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On Thursday we all got on the train to Brno. In the image is the cathedral on the top of the hill that you can see on a Czech 10kč coin. For a second city, with a country with the population of over 10 million I would have thought the city would be bigger. It put me in mind of Ireland. We have Dublin which is a sprawling metropolis of a city but all the other cities are quite small in comparison. Brno reminded of Galway, It has a Large town feel rather than the second largest city though I am sure Brno is bigger. Brno was nice enough, though I do prefer Prague as it is a more impressive city however Prague is a dirty city, not so much with rubbish on the streets though there is plenty of that too but with graffiti and by graffiti I do not mean art. Tagging is a scourge in Prague and pretty much every single inch of every building, wall, door is tagged with squiggly lines and it always makes me sad to see such a beautiful city ruined like this. Paris is the same though not so bad and there is some actual art every now and again too. Dublin has plenty of graffiti but not to anything near the extent of this, I would almost say there is more graffiti in a single block of Prague than there is in the whole of Dublin's city centre.
In the centre of Brno there is a nice plaza with the only traffic being the trams and people. It is very clean and pleasant to be in.

The Pegas Inn - This is the reason we came to Brno. Originally we were going to try and stay here but it was booked out along with most hotels because of some conference. Some people are so inconsiderate to book a conference right when we want to go drinking. The place is interesting as there is a beauty salon taking up the whole front of the building and it is not until you go in the back that you find the bar/restaurant.
It is a nice enough place, there are old metal plaques on the wall from various Czech breweries, some not even around any more.

Behind the bar are two large copper kettles used for brewing and that is a touch I love to see.










Here is an image from the menu showing all four beers. I had all of them.
I am not going to mention them all as I did not bring a notebook. All I will say is that the first three were lovely beers, especially the Dark Lager which was more porter or stout like. I liked this better than the Budvar dark as it was richer and more complex to me.



It was like a stout because of the coffee and cocoa that came off it. It was fabulous stuff and worth the visit to Brno alone in my opinion but that is not to detract from the other two beers.

The only disappointment (there is always one) was the Pegas Gold which interestingly was the only one that had its name in English on the menu. This is a 16 degree amber lager that was too sweet and syrupy for my taste.
The wheat beer was lovely but as Al commented, it came with lemon in it and that should be optional but to me it did not detract from the beer anyway so I did not mind. For more info on the beer go to Fuggled.net

The food at the Pegas inn was also pretty good. Again I opted for traditional Czech food which I developed a taste for. I just wish I did not get so many dumplings and Czech food seems to never come with proper veg, only pickled veg like sourkraut.

After this it was on the train again to Blansko a town we passed on the way in where we were to make our way to Skalní mlýn and our hotel.