Czech Republic

From Czech Republic

We said fairwell to Poland and took a night train to Prague. We ended up having a full compartment so it was very cozy. Its difficult to fit 6 grown adults and all their baggage in a train cabin. It was a very tight squeeze and we are thankfull that it was our last night train experience. We arrived in Prague, took the metro to our hostel which was situated outside of the city center in a more residential type neighborhood. It was early in the morning so we left our baggage at the hostel until our room was ready and we headed out on the town.

I had been to Prague 4 years ago so I could somewhat help get us around town. We had a typical European breakfast and capiccino in the central square overlooking the famous clock tower. We checked out the old town and walked around getting a feel for the city before heading back to our hostel to relax for a while.

On day 2 we woke up early went to charles bridge, the castle on the hill and the church. One of the attractions of the church is to climb the 260 steps of the spiral staircase to the top of the belltower. The climb was arduous, but the view was worth it. Prague is an amazing town and has so much charachter and history. We ate our normal lunch in the park consisting of cheese, meat, baguette and a bottle of wine. We never really indulged in the Czech cuisine since it is more or less the same as Slovakia and Hungary.

On our 3rd day in Prague we took a day trip to the town of Kunta Hora. Here they have another very impressive church that rivals the one in Prague. They also have the bone church. It is a very strange place where the bodies of 40,000 people were burried durring the great plague. A couple hundred years ago the bodies were unearthed and the bones were arranged into strange ornaments in the church. their is a royal coat of arms made of bones, light fixtures, etc. A very odd place. We also go to see a slice of rural Czech replublic while in Kunta Hora and I even bought myself a beautiful Gnome as a momento of our time in the Czech Republic.

Our last day in Prague we went and visited the local jewish part of town. There are a number of very old Synagogues and a very old Jewish cemetary that dates to the 1400's. We also visited the Synagogue where the Golam was supposedly burried.