Advertisement
Published: March 27th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Our last and final day in Prague. We decided to take a tour to Kutna Hora which is about 70 miles from Prague. It is one of the oldest towns and used to be a huge silver mining town at one time with a population greater than Prague’s. Now it is a small town of 20,000. Probably the main reason that people go there is to see the Ossuary. Kutna Hora lost thousands of people to the Black Plague and the cemetery ran out of room. They excavated 40,000 graves and invited some famous artist guy (sorry don’t remember the name) to come and “do something” with the bones since they were literally just piled inside of the church. What he did was pretty amazing and cool. As you will see in the pics, he decorated the church quite nicely with the bones. The chandelier is the highlight with it being made from every bone in the human body. Very neat and unique place to visit.
We then were led on a walk through the town of Kutna Hora which was just great. Much history here and lots of neat small streets, cobblestone, great buildings, etc…We had lunch at a
local restaurant and the meal ended up being our 2nd fav behind our dinner the other night. They brew their own beer and our tour guide recommended the dark beer as it was not “like Guinness,” but dark like caramel and “very popular with the ladies.” Naturally I had to try it and it was delicious…I wish I could bring some home! We spent most of lunch talking with a family from Liverpool. A couple of funny things about our talk with them: The dad is from Ireland, and I maybe understood 60% of what he was saying..I know he was speaking English but??? He works with someone that is from…you guessed it, New Jersey and his impression of the accent was quite impressive actually! He dreams of going to the Black Hills in South Dakota…funny, of all places in the US? And lastly, he was telling a story about going to a police station and he said, “You guys call them Sheriff stations over there, but we call them Police stations.” OMG too cute….Matt had to laugh and said we call them “police stations” too and that Sheriff stations come from Westerns. That’s his daughter chimed in and said
Inside the Bone Church
Check out the chandelier
he watches way too many Westerns!
After lunch we headed over to the main cathedral. The only one of it’s kind in the world because of it’s unique 3-peaked roof, the ceiling inside, and frescos. We headed back to Prague with a drive through the countryside. Overall a great 5 hour investment.
Another bust of an evening unfortunately! I had read about seeing Mozart’s first opera Don Giovanni in the famous Estate Theatre here and we got tickets. The neat thing about it is the theatre is beautiful and Mozart debuted the opera in that theatre in 1787. Well, it was……pretty awful. Just 2 singers and they were dressed up in period costumes that have seen better days. Half way through (Thank God it was just an hour!) I looked over at Matt and he was falling asleep. This made me look around and realize that ¾ of the audience was asleep too! I whispered that into Matt’s ear and then it began….he caught a case of the giggles and couldn’t stop. You know…the more he tried to stop laughing the worse it got…which makes me laugh…then you try to hold it in and there’s the little snorts,
Ok you get the picture. Overall, a bust ☹
Dinner sucked too…The Blue Rose was supposed to be a great restaurant according the Trip Advisor, but obviously the atmosphere alone is what is saving this place. It’s in a neat cellar, but the food was not so hot. Our pub lunch was better today.
Prague was a pleasant surprise of a city and once again we are so fortunate to be able to see the places that we do! Thank you to all of our friends and family for joining us on another trip! We love sharing our stories and our pictures.
Some last minute observations or things I forgot to mention on previous blogs:
• The escalators down to the metros we have nicknamed “Escalators of death.” They go so fast you can barely get on and you go down at a 45 degree angle, and they are huge…probably 6-8x the normal length of our escalotors….Scary! I want to Google how many deaths and injuries there are a year from falls on these things!
• A shout out to the European women of the world!!! There is no doubt my feet have become more acclimated to
wearing heels, but let me tell you that I brought my most comfortable black heeled boots that I could walk all day in NYC with me. The cobblestone kills!!! How do they do it? The first evening where we walked around taking photos after dinner I wondered if there would be any flesh left on the balls of my feet..LOL
• Beggers…the most heart-wrenching thing I have ever seen. We saw them the first night on the St. Charles bridge and gave money to both. We soon realized that this is how they beg here. On all fours, on the pavement (I mean cobblestones), head down like Muslims praying, holding out their hands. They can’t show their face I guess….it just seems like the ultimate humiliation and we couldn’t stand it.
• Italian Teens: A reminder that they are loud, loud, loud and very disruptive. The tour groups of them are awful. Even our tour guide today was speaking of the Czech Republic transitioning to the Euro within 5 years. He is sad as it will make Prague more expensive, but happy that it will keep the Italian teenagers away because they are rowdy and ruin statues!
• McDonald locations
throughout the city were all jam packed with locals….always funny to us
• Of all the European countries we have visited, so far the C.R. look the most like Americans in the way that they dress. Very similar and there are many American stores around too.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.56s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 21; qc: 96; dbt: 0.3636s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb