As fans of visiting breweries all over the world, of course Chris and I had to stop in Pilsen, Czech Republic on the way to Prague from Munich. Home to the Pilsner Urquell brewery, Pilsen is about 90 kilometers (56 miles) outside of Prague, so it’s certainly possible as an easy day trip from the capital, too.
A note for anyone driving through from Germany though – you’ll need to stop into a gas station before crossing the border to purchase a toll sticker that allows you to drive on the expressways. We stopped for gas along Rt. 6 before entering CR and asked for the decal at the counter. I even learned how to ask for it in German just in case, but the attendant understood what I meant when I first asked in simple English. Our decal was good for 10 days and it was around 310 CZK ($12-ish USD). I filled it out, placed it on the inside bottom right-hand corner of the windshield, and we were good to go.
We started out that morning thinking we would stop in Pilsen for both lunch and a visit to the brewery, but getting out of Munich took a little lot longer than we anticipated due to a misunderstanding we had with our GPS, so lunch ended up being at a McDonald’s (gasp) somewhere along the road. We only ended up with enough time to pop into the brewery for a beer and to peruse the gift shop so our visit was short and sweet, much like this blog post!
Pilsner Urquell has a huge visitor center, offers extensive brewery tours, and there’s a restaurant on-site, so we just might have to return to Pilsen one day for the whole kit and caboodle. But for that day we were happy simply to relax, buy a t-shirt, and enjoy our first Czech beer in Czech Republic.
Our two-week Central European itinerary ended with a few awesome days in Prague, which turned out to be my favorite spot of the whole trip, and those posts are up next!
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