Today we got up and tried to get on a train at a relatively early hour to go to the town of Kutna Hora, a UNESCO World Heritage site about an hour from Prague, and home to a few really neat places.

To be fair, we did make it on the train at a reasonable hour… and then we proceeded to not only miss our stop, but overshoot it by about a half hour. Then we had to sit and wait at some train station in the boonies for the next train to show up, and then we had to go a half hour back. As a result, it was almost 1PM by the time we finally got to Kutna Hora. WHOOPS.

The #1 reason we wanted to go to Kutna Hora was to see the bone church (Sedlec Ossuary) there. If you’ve been reading along for a while, you might remember that we went to a bone church in Rome last fall, and since I heard about this one, I’ve wanted to see it, since it’s supposed to be much bigger than the one in Rome. It was… but it had a different feel, for some reason. I really liked how the one in Rome had murals, whereas this one mostly had nicely arranged piles. Still, there was some really neat stuff, and I totally enjoyed it. Here are all of the pictures I took with my phone, if you’re curious… eventually I’ll get the ones from my “real” camera put up, as I’m sure they came out much better.

Bone church

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Bird on the shoulder

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Crown of, well, crowns.

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Afterwards we walked across the street to the Cathedral of Our Lady, a medieval Gothic cathedral that got Baroqued and then mostly un-Baroqued. It’s really interesting because of its style — it’s VERY plain and simple, but instead of having plain stone walls inside like most Gothic cathedrals, it has pale yellow plastered walls. It’s a very light, airy, open, beautiful church, and the light that streamed in through the mostly plain glass windows was absolutely gorgeous. I can’t wait to process the pics I took with my regular camera, and I had a ton of fun just using the cameraphone.

South (I think) aisle of the cathedral. I'm pretty sure it's the south aisle because the altar is at my back, and most cathedrals were built with the altar at the east end and the main door at the west end. Clearly I've spent way too long reading about cathedral architecture. Maybe it's time to go reread "Pillars of the Earth".

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Music stand in a stairwell on the south side of the cathedral.

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As I was upstairs in the balcony, checking out the view from up there, I heard chanting start… apparently there are still monks there. COOL.

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After that, we wandered around town for a while and eventually made our way to St. Barbara Church, yet another Gothic church, this one of the super ornate classical Gothic variety. It was really neat, not only because of the architecture, but because a fair amount of the 14th century paint on the stone pillars and frescoes were still intact. SO NEAT.

The ceiling of the crossing and the apse (area over the altar) was covered with crests of various guilds and noble families from the town. Neat!

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520-year-old choir stalls. I didn't get to sit in them, but I did get to sit in 400-year-old pews.

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View of Kutna Hora from St. Barbara Church.

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We're finally getting the hang of this -- it only took us three takes to get this one right! :-)

Incidentally, notice those arch things on the church behind us? Those are flying buttresses, and every time I think of the term “flying buttresses”, I think of Cogsworth in the Disney version of “Beauty and the Beast”, where he’s showing Belle around the castle and talking about architecture and makes the “if it ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it” joke. Anyway, go rewatch the movie if you can’t remember what I’m talking about. Flying buttresses.

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As it crept toward sunset, we hopped a train back home, and had a nice Chinese food dinner before crashing for the night.

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AKA, Why I’m the biggest nerd EVER. :-)

On Wednesday we headed up to Prague Castle to check out St. Vitus Cathedral, a HUGE Gothic cathedral. Now, I’ve known since my freshman year of high school in Spanish class, when we learned about Santiago de Compostela in Spain, that I’ve been fascinated by cathedral architecture. But if I’ve learned one thing about the dozens of churches I’ve seen in the past three years since I got my last passport, it’s that not only do I have a thing for Gothic architecture, but I don’t really care all that much about Renaissance, I like Romanesque, and I can’t stand Baroque.  Sorry, but there it is. As I commented to John a couple of days ago, if it ain’t Baroque… DON’T. Just don’t. Unfortunately, some really really neat churches got Baroqued over time. Fortunately, in the late 19th century there was a huge classical architecture revival all over Europe, and so some dilapidated and Baroqued churches got restored to their Gothic glory (and in some cases, completed. Heh.)

Ok, so back in an entry about Budapest, I mentioned that Matyas Church (on Buda Castle hill) is one of my all-time favorite churches. Well, I’ve decided that St. Vitus Cathedral is now in my top five. It’s absolutely flipping AMAZING. I honestly think that, no matter how many Gothic churches I’m fortunate to see in my lifetime, I’ll never get sick of them. Ever.

Cathedral from the outside. This thing is at the absolute tip of the hill that Prague Castle is on, so an already huge church looks even bigger. It's just AMAZING.

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Be still, my Gothic-architecture-loving heart...

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St. Albrecht!

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St. Wenceslas chapel in St. Vitus Cathedral. The walls are inlaid with semiprecious stones, and the whole thing dates back to the mid-1300s. It's INCREDIBLE.

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The rose window.

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Front of the cathedral.

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John, being the wonderful man that he is, didn’t drag me out of the cathedral, but after almost an hour, he started strongly hinting that maybe we should let the other tourists enjoy it too, so we left, but not until after I’d found out when the daily church service times were so that I could come back and go to a service here. :-)

On our way out of the castle hill area, we decided to walk through the castle gardens. This was a GREAT idea, because we got to see BIRDS! LARGE ONES! And we got to HOLD THEM!!

If I thought the church was going to be the highlight of my day, I was sorely mistaken. I think this was the highlight of my WEEK. Can you tell by the grin on my face? That's a peregrine falcon, by the way. And why the heck am I wearing the same shirt in every picture?

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John holding an eagle owl. He really was thrilled about this, we were just having a hard time getting Mr. E. Owl to look at the camera. :-)

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Apparently it’s a tradition at Czech castles to keep birds of prey, so Prague Castle has turned theirs into a demonstration kind of thing. For about $5, you get to hold the bird of your choice. AWESOME.

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After John pulled me off the ceiling, we headed down to the National Museum of Natural History to see what there was to see.

Main hall at the museum.

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Being the nerd that I am, I made a beeline for their geology exhibit when I saw the sign. I can’t help it — I like rocks. Maybe it’s because I have plenty in my head. Anyway, since I’m a bit of a geology nerd, I generally judge a museum’s geology exhibit (however fair/unfair this may be) by if they have a sample of benitoite, California’s state gemstone, which is found only in San Benito County in central California. Picky, I know. Usually when a museum has a sample of benitoite, it’s a very small sample, and it’s usually polished to look like the lovely blue gemstone it is. Prague’s Natural History Museum didn’t have a very pretty, polished sample, but darned if it isn’t the LARGEST sample I’ve seen… it’s just a trip to see it all the way over here. So cool!!! And to be fair, they did have quite a nice display of other rocks too, including some really neat meteors.

California's state gemstone.

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We closed down the museum and headed across the street to McDonald’s for dinner. I know I know… McDonald’s. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here on my blog or just on Facebook, but we’ve been going to McDonald’s on this trip for several reasons. #1, McDonald’s in Europe almost ALWAYS have free wifi and free bathrooms. If we have time to kill while waiting for a train, it sure as heck beats waiting at the train station, and there’s almost always a McDonald’s near a train station. Second, their local menu is somewhat interesting. In  Krakow, I had a chicken curry burger, and I swear I’m starting a petition to bring these to the US. Who’s in? I promise they’re really good! I mean, it’s not like having real chicken curry, but to me it was quite an acceptable substitute!

So anyway, I’d been seeing ads in the metro stations for a tzatziki beef burger. I had no idea what this was, but the picture looked interesting, so I figured I’d give it a whirl. And it had these really interesting seasoned potatoes that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

The potatoes were good, but the burger… not so much. The burger had feta cheese and fresh cucumbers in it, as well as some sort of pinkish sauce that wasn’t Thousand Island, and I think that’s dried dill as the seasoning on the bun. I kind of liked the feta and the sauce, but the cucumbers and the dill… notsomuch. To be fair, I’m not a cucumber fan anyway, but even after I took them off the burger, it was still really cucumber-y. I couldn’t finish it, and neither could John. Oh well, I tried. I’m now 1 for 3 in liking foreign McD’s burgers (the chicken curry was great, but I had a McCountry in Zagreb that I couldn’t finish either. Oh well — you win some, you lose some. Even at McDonald’s.)

Seriously. Fresh cucumbers. The fries in the background are John's, by the way. He's not quite as adventurous when it comes to McDonald's as I am... which makes sense given that he's always been happy with and able to finish his meal. :-)

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After dinner, we headed to a DVD store to amuse ourselves with the cheap Czech offerings (I still think they’re pirated, but John doesn’t think so) and then we headed home. It was the perfect relaxed day. :-)

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I’m really going to try really really hard to simplify things here, since I really need to get caught up.

On Day 39 we slept in… I think travel fatigue is really starting to get to us, because we both wanted to see Prague, but neither of us was enthused about going anywhere. So we opted to stay an extra night. Good idea.

We finally dragged ourselves out of the room and wandered the city for a bit. It was SO FLIPPING HOT. I know it’s not as hot as Sacramento, but at least at home pretty much everywhere has a/c. In Prague, not so much.

Want to know the best place to hang out? Near one of the vents for the subway. It was like a gigantic outdoor air conditioner. Greatest thing EVER.

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Anyone notice anything interesting about this street? There are NO STREETLIGHTS. OR STOP SIGNS. And this is a fairly large street in the middle of downtown Prague. I'm really not sure how more accidents don't happen here -- maybe they just pay more attention? CRAZY.

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See if you can guess why I took a picture of this. Hint: I'm amused by it. Give up? Well, the little devil that constantly resides on one of my shoulders wanted me to relocate this guy's bike to somewhere nearby just to give him an object lesson in what not to lock one's bike to. I didn't though... my nice side (the part of me that doesn't want to get arrested for bike thievery) won out.

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Around mid-afternoon, we met up with a tour guide for a free walking tour of the city — the guides work for tips, and we tipped quite well after enjoying the tour quite a bit. Our guide was an Irish college student, and she was flipping hilarious. I think she needs to be a high school teacher — she’s got the energy level down!

Our awesome tour guide standing in front of composer Antonin Dvorak's statue and reenacting the story of how the Nazis wanted to push the statue of composer Felix Mendelssohn off of the national music hall, only they didn't know what he looked like, so they figured that since he was Jewish he must have a big nose. So they went to push the statue with the biggest nose off, only to find out right at the last minute that it was really Wagner. Wagner, incidentally, happened to be Hitler's favorite composer. HA!

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See that small dried thing hanging up there? That's an arm, and it's hanging from high up a wall in the Church of St. James in Prague. As the legend goes, it belonged to a thief who tried to steal jewels from the statue of the Virgin Mary on the altar one night. But the statue miraculously came to life, grabbed his hand, and wouldn't let go. The thief had to wait until the next morning when the monks showed up. The monks tried to separate the thief from the Madonna, but they couldn't, and they weren't about to break the statue. So they cut his arm off instead. Right as they finished cutting it, the statue came back to life and released his arm, and then turned back into a statue again. The monks hung the arm to remember this event and as a warning for other thieves, and there it still hangs, some 400 years later.

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Rather kafkaesque statue of Franz Kafka (he's the one sitting on the headless dude's shoulders.)

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After the tour, John headed home and I headed to a classical music concert at an old church. It was by far the most expensive event ticket I bought this trip, and I hate to say it, but I was kind of disappointed. The music was a treat, and it was at an 800-year-old church with great acoustics, but (a) there was an American woman behind me who talked incessantly through almost the whole concert, and (b) the musicians kind of rushed through everything. They played the most popular parts of things, rather than the entire piece, and they went fast for a lot of stuff. The flier said they’d play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, but they only played Spring, Die Moldau was TOTALLY cut short, and that was the absolute fastest rendition of Pachelbel’s Canon I think I’ve ever heard.

Don’t get me wrong — I definitely enjoyed it, but I don’t know that I would have spent that much money twice. Oh well. (I actually almost cornered the talking woman after the concert and told her that I didn’t know how much she was spending on her trip, but my ticket that night represented a significant portion of my daily budget, and I really didn’t appreciate listening to her talk throughout the concert. But I chickened out.)

I do have to say that my favorite part was hearing them play (a piece of) Smetana’s “Die Moldau”, since Smetana was Czech and the Moldau is another name for the Vltava River that runs through Prague. It was better than hearing “Blue Danube Waltz” when I was on the island in the middle of the Danube in Budapest, since this was live and that was a recording. (Although that was still pretty freaking awesome.) :-)

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Here’s a playlist to most of the rest of the concert. And Mom, before you get worried about copyright, there were a number of people in the (very small) audience openly recording this, and no one stopped them… so I guess it’s kosher. :-)

Hmmm, apparently I can embed the playlist into this blog post. Click on the arrows on the right or left sides of the video below to scroll through all of the videos. Fun!

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After the concert, I still had daylight and energy left, so I walked over to Old Town and climbed up the Old Town City Hall tower to get a view of the city. I was hoping to get some decent sunset shots, but it was really hazy, so I just enjoyed the views for about 30 minutes before heading down.

View of the Old Town Square from on top of the Old Town City Hall. I went to that church (Church of Our Lady Before Tyn) three different times, trying to go in and see it, but it was closed every single time. GRRRRRRR. I hate being deprived of a good Gothic church, darn it! :frownyface: Not like I haven't seen enough churches this trip. :-p

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View looking down.

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At the top of the tower, there were a bunch of informational signs about things you could see from the tower. Read the English translation of this one -- the last two lines are pretty funny. :-)

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As the sun set, I hopped a metro and then a tram to get back home, where John was waiting for me at the tram stop. I had a fun day, but I think getting off of that tram and seeing him there waiting for me was the best part. :-)

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John actually wrote the post title as a Facebook status update. Lovely, I know, but man was he right about that!

We got into Prague around 7:30 AM, got our bearings, and hopped a tram to our night’s lodgings, a guest house about a mile from the train station. We knew we wouldn’t be able to check in until that afternoon, but we were hoping to at least drop our bags there. We rang the bell, but even though it was after 8 at that point, no one answered, so we lugged our stuff to a coffee shop down the hill and hung out there drinking tea and reading for an hour. I left John there with the luggage and hiked back up the hill to try ringing the bell again. Not only did the owner answer this time, but she said the room was ready and that we could check in right then. FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. OMG. We hadn’t showered since the previous morning, so we were both sweaty and sticky from spending the previous day in the sun and in an un-airconditioned bus and train. And, even though it was barely 9AM, it was already 90+F in Prague.

I went back and got John, and we checked in, took the aforementioned GREATEST SHOWERS EVER, and crashed for a nap in the most comfortable bed we’ve slept in the entire trip so far. OMG HEAVEN. Neither of us had slept much or well on the train, so the nap was absolutely wonderful.

After a few hours, we woke up and headed out to see what there was to see. Mostly this consisted of trying to figure out how to get places and instead getting lost, despite both a map and a GPS. Street signage here is like it was in the Balkans — fairly non-existent. I found out yesterday that during the Prague Spring uprising of 1968, when the citizens tried to replace the Communist government and the Soviets came in to quash the rebellion, one of the ways the people of Prague tried to mess with the Soviets was to take down all the street signs. I think they still haven’t put them back up, or something. Gah.

But at least in our wandering we figured out where things were and what we wanted to see. We wandered down to Charles Bridge and watched the view for a while.

John on Charles Bridge, with the Vltava (Moldau) River in the background.

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Then we hung out cooling our heels in a fountain with a lot of other people. Aaaahhhhhh. Relief from the heat.

As evening turned to night, we headed back to our guest house, stopping by a grocery store to get some food for dinner, breakfast, and lunch the next day. Easy, relaxed day. :-)

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