Olomouc & Hyncice

On Friday (our last full day in the Czech Republic), we traveled by bus to the lovely city of Olomouc where the "Center for Plant Structural and Functional Genomics" -- which is a new facility that just opened six months ago, but based upon an older science organization that used to be called "Institute of Experimental Botany." 

The director of the Center is Jaroslav Dolezel, whom Mark met up last year when considering whether to come to Brno this year. 

Roman Hobza also joined us, for which we were grateful -- besides being a good companion and an employee of the Center, he was instrumental in translating for us as we wove our way through this part of the country.

Jaroslav speaks good English also, which was great because he treated the class to a lecture.

After his lecture, Jaroslav took us on a tour through the many labs and science and genome projects being conducted at the Center.

After the tour, we bussed to the main part of old Olomouc (pronounced "Oh-low-moatz") and walked all around the town admiring the fountains, statutory, and beautiful old buildings.

 

 

 

We ate lunch at an old establishment -- once again a feast for all!

 

 

 

After lunch and one more walk through in Olomouc and then continued on our journey to Hyncice (pronounced "Hin-see-che") to visit Mendel's old farmhouse owned by his family for generations. 

 

This was a long day yesterday!  We leave for Cambridge today (Saturday) and should arrive in the early evening sometime around 8:30 p.m.