Advertisement
Published: September 5th 2010
Prague posers
Old town squareTop Times
* Sampling beer from its home country
* Great architecture in the town squares
* Hearing (we think .. possibly) a pack of wolves in the Tatra foothills
Due to the rainy weather, instead of making our first stop in Czech Republic at a lakeside campsite, we decided to stay in a hotel in one of the first cities we came to. Pilzen, being the home of lager (hence Pils), sounded like a great idea, but instead we went for the impressive spa town of Karlovy Vary. It’s been likened to Bath in the UK and we could see why with its rows of Georgian houses lining the Tepla river.
We carried on into Prague, the capital of Bohemia, the next day to do the touristy sight-seeing. We stayed in a tiny campsite which was really just someone’s back garden, but we were happy enough, and it allowed us to cycle/walk to the main attractions easily. Prague was very pleasant, with fantastic architecture, but we were happy to get away from the tourist hoards a couple of days later and go north into the countryside. Since unusually there was a bit of sun shining, we
Odd ossuary
Gory decoration at Kutna Hora took the opportunity to do some cycling, on route stopping to see the fortress at Trencin which was used a Jewish Ghetto / Camp during WW2. Not exactly a normal thing to see on your holiday, but its part of the history and highlighted the horrors that occurred in several towns in this region of Europe.
To cheer ourselves up we hit the Czech wine region next, but rain again washed away our plans for cycling, and since there is a zero alcohol limit for drink-driving in the Czech Republic, it meant we skimmed through it and onto Kutna Hora. Although having several UNESCO buildings, it is really only famous for its Ossuary. This is not some Dr. Moreau combination of an ostrich and a canary, but a place where they store the bones of dead people, in this case, the majority from the plague of the 14th century. Its famous because they are not just piled up in some corner, but in a macabre manner, instead make the centre-piece of the decoration of the building (see the photo)
From Bohemia we passed through Moravia, stopping at various places on the way (such as the pleasant city of
Cycle path getting a bit wet
Hops in the background at least promise local beers afterwards Olomouc) and across the border in Slovakia. Both countries have interesting history and have frequently been ruled by other countries such as Germany and Hungary, but they still have some of their own identity. All the hotel stays highlighted noticeable cultural differences to what we are ‘used to’, i.e. they uniformly had in common rock-hard beds countered by enormous pillows, and tiny towels for showering. Also, many streets had speakers on the telephone poles, which we assumed must be for broadcasting in an emergency, but in one town they were playing relaxing music. We're split on whether that was a good or bad thing.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.388s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0482s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
