Saturday 16th June–Day trip to Kutna Hora

Having seen Prague very thoroughly yesterday, Julie and I decided a day trip was in order. A few of us had expressed interest in going to see the bone chapel at Kutna Hora and had decided that instead of paying lots of money to do it as a tour, we could be adventurous and do it ourselves! After a quick breakfast stop at the same amazing local bakery as yesterday (with the same amazing breakfast), Julie and I met up with Marissa, Dan and Sarah and we all begun the mini hike to the train station.

Of course, nobody really knew where the train station was and after some wandering in the wrong direction we only JUST caught our train in time (the first of many transport dramas for the day). There was nowhere the five of us could sit together so this meant a 40 minute train trip standing outside in the corridor. This wasn’t altogether unpleasant, the window was open, there was a breeze and we all just relaxed and watched the fields roll by.

A quick change and another ten minute train ride brought us into Kutna Hora. Sarah led the way to the nearby ‘bone chapel’ (or, the Chapel of All Saints as it is officially called). I didn’t really know much about this, except that it was well known… I expected something somewhat like the bone room in Hallstadt (about a couple of hundred skulls stacked in a room). I grossly underestimated the place. The story is that a king a long time ago brought back some soil from Jerusalem and sprinkled it around the graveyard of the church. This made the graveyard extremely popular, everyone wanted to be buried there so they soon ran out a space. Their solution was to exhume to bones and put them inside  the chapel instead (freeing space for more graves). The result of this is a little church extravagantly decorated with thousands of bones, in all different formations – banners, pyramids, a chandelier. Its amazing and so morbid at the same time. Really fascinating stuff.

    

After wandering around the church for a while and taking many photos we headed out to enquire about taking the little tourist bus into the main town to see the big gothic church there – apparently the driver was on a half hour break so instead we headed off to another church nearby (today is filled with churches). I liked this church, it was long and narrow with high ceilings… and it was all painted a sunny yellow. Half an hour passed and we went back to the bus – the driver still apparently had half an hour of his lunch break left. We enquired about the public bus and was told it left in two hours time.

    

Stranded, we had lunch at a nearby restaurant – cold drinks were enjoyed by all as it was getting very hot indeed at this point. Eventually, about an hour and a half later than planned, the driver from the tourist bus was back and we headed into the main town to see St Barbara’s church – it was big, it was gothic, it was impressive. Then the bus took us back to the train station.

We arrived at 3.20pm just in time to catch our 3.50pm train… only to be told that the next train left at 5pm. With nothing to do and an hour and half to wait, we rearranged some platform benches and got out the cards again! I needn’t have worried we wouldn’t get around to card playing on this trip. Luckily, a train did arrive about forty minutes later and we were on our way back to Prague.

After the hour train trip home we were back at the apartments where we all had nice cold showers and caught up with packing and other little jobs. At around 7.30pm, Tish, Marissa, Julie and I went out in search of food. I had read on the net that there were some nice restaurants with view of the bridge and river and after minimal searching we found one. This was just perfect – sun, wine, yummy food, a warm wind, good company plus a view of the river, Charles Bridge, the castle on the hill and the sun slowly setting behind the cathedral. True perfection. I took many many photos of the sunset and needed to do much culling later on!

    

After dinner we grabbed some icecream at a nearby dessert cafe, chatted for a bit and then wandered slowly back to the hotel, passing the huge amount of people in the square watching Czech Republic play Poland (and win!). The atmosphere was certainly electric, particularly when Czech Republic got their one goal – there were cheers from the square, and from all the surrounding pubs where everyone was glued to the television.

Finally, back to the apartments after a long, hot, sticky, very enjoyable day!