Plzeň, the Pilsner Urquell Brewery, and a Czech Christmas Market

Yesterday we went to the Czech Republic to visit the town of Plzeň.  Why, you ask?  Well, the Pilsner Urquell Brewery is there.  Usually all breweries are pretty much the same.  They're pretty cool because you get to see how beer is made, but this one is especially cool because its the brewery where the Pilsner style beer is brewed.  Any light colored beer is usually a pilsner style, so it's a pretty important brewery.  If you are of drinking age, you can visit the website here.

We arrived at the Brewery after a snowy drive.

 While we were waiting for the tour, we looked around at some beer-y artifacts like this motorcycle:

 On the tour we got to see the bottling factory where they fill zillions of bottles a day:

 The copper vats where the beer is made and boiled:

 And the underground cellars where they used to keep the beer in big oak barrels:

 Like these:

Doesn't that look tasty?  (probably not, but it was :) )

After the brewery we went to the town center to see the Plzeň Christmas Market.

This was the prettiest part.  The actual Christmas market was definitely NOT as cool as the ones in Germany, but we did get these really tasty dough rolls that they cooked on big metal sticks.

We brought the cold weather to Plzeň with us, so after about 45 minutes of wandering around, we were ready to get into the warm car and get home to some soft pretzels.  Unfortunately, what was a 3 hour drive on the way ended up being 4 on the way home because the Czech Republic was full of super dense fog!  It was SO foggy, that we almost went the wrong way or drove off the road or on the wrong side of the road a bunch of times.  It was pretty scary and really stressful, so we were all tired and ready for bed by the time we got home.  No Christmas Markets last night...