Friday, 14 September 2012

Day 7 - Prague and Kutna Hora

We (Matt, Janice, Sheila, and I) decided to go to Kutna Hora for a day trip. We had breakfast and left our apartments at 9am. We headed to the Main Railway Station, found the train we needed on the board. Then went off to discover how to buy tickets. We found the ticket counters and we managed to get our ticket for 4 people return. Pointing at tourist brochures works well as she nearly sold us a ticket to Berlin. Janice enquired about what times the trains return to Prague only to get the reply yes return and the ticket handed back to us. :-) We had a little difficulty locating the actually train platforms. To add to the confusion (for English speaking travellers anyway) We needed the North platforms but they are marked with S. We found our platform and our train arrived shortly after, we managed to get 4 seats together. After about an hour on the train we arrived in Kutna Hora. We decided to walk to the Bone Church (Ossuary) as it was only just over 1km from the train station. We also saw the recently renovated cathedral which reopened in 2009.
The Bone Church was very interesting there are over 30,000 human remains that have been used to decorate the church including a chandelier a coat of arms and other wall decorations.
The recently renovated cathedral near the bone church was interesting as they had built a walk way through the roof space so you can see the top of the arches and domed ceilings from above. We then wandered back into town as we had a few hours to kill before the train back to Prague at 3pm.
Once we got into the old town of Kutna Hora it was very quant. We wandered around a bit found a place to have lunch. After lunch we wandered around the old town and stumbled across an excellent view of the St Barbara Cathedral. We decided to make our way up to have a closer look. As we got closer we decided we definitely needed to go inside even if only briefly (15 mins). It was well worth it. It is a very unique cathedral, even though it is done in a classic Gothic Style, the interior is surprising light and pleasant (opposed to dark and a bit somber inside so many other Gothic buildings).
We got a taxi from the old town square back to the train station for our 3pm train. Our train was delayed by about 15mins which made us a little bit late getting back to Prague for our group picnic dinner. The picnic was in a park up a hill over looking the city. Our tour leader went shopping and bought a heap of traditional Czech food for us to try. It was all good, meat and cheese focus heavily. We had some Czech beer and wine and watched the sun set over the city. It was a wonderful way to end the day.
We made our way back into town where the group split up (those going out those not). We (Matt, Janice, Sheila, Kim, Kay and I) decided it was too early to go back to our apartments so we decided to head out. We decided to go to a cocktail bar just near Kim and Kay's apartment, however the waitress explained that we could not get any cocktails as there was a ban in place on the sale of liquor over 20% alcohol due to the deaths of 19 people from bootleg liquor. The Czech parliament banned all sales of alcohol over 20% indefinitely across the country until the source is identified. The sale of beer and wine has not been affected. :-)

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