More Travels...

I'm trying to break these up into a few different posts so I don't overwhelm you all!

Friday, August 17, Siena time 2:30pm

So, it’s been a while since I’ve written. After writing last time, we were both so tired, we just went straight to sleep.

August 13, 2007

The next morning we headed out, looking for a café that had been recommended in the magazine on the flight to Prague, unfortunately, after wandering in crazily oriented streets, we decided to forgo that place, and just find somewhere to sit and grab a bite. We found a place called “Tower Café” which was actually located in an old tower, very cute, ate some delicious cheese, a sandwich and a couple baileys and coffee. Then we headed off to find the Florenc bus station. We got to walk through some relatively shady areas of Prague, before finally asking someone where it was (a lot of hand gestures and pointing at names). Turns out, we were only a ½ block away! Wahoo! We wander into the enormous station with dozens of busses, deal with a rather harried and irritated ticket lady who directed us inside the station to buy a ticket to Kutna Hora, finally purchase a ticket, and went to sit on the bench near the stop. Thankfully, we only had to wait for 45 mins. for the next bus (they only come every two hours) and during that time I got some reading done, and we met a nice guy from Australia. He was thrilled to meet us since he had not spoken to native English speakers in a week. We determined that we were all headed to the same place (which is actually, come to find out much later, the Sedlec Ossuary, and NOT St. Barbara’s Cathedral, suppose I should have read that Rick Steve’s page a *little* better).

So, we all head onto the bus when it arrives and settle in for an hour and a half ride. As we get off the bus at Kutna Hora, another guy approaches us, also looking for the same place, and he’s from New Zealand (though we found out later that he’s actually living in London for the time being). So, since none of us has ANY idea where this place is, we head over to this little magazine shop that has this tiny, little old lady running it, who, OF COURSE, knows NO English! We buy a little map, and again with the hand gestures and pointing at names, finally determine where St. Barbara’s is. She also points at some other spot on the map at the top left, but since *I* think that St. Barbara’s is the location we want to go to, I don’t pay attention.

BRILLIANT! We head up to St. Barbara’s, with me gladly relinquishing the navigator position to our new friends. Once up there we are greeted with this stunning, gothic church. Absolutely gorgeous, but very obviously NOT what we were looking for. So, we look in our Australian friend’s guide book again, and it says “Sedlec Ossuary”, and NOT St. Barbara’s. Ooops! We look on the map, and sure enough, up where she had pointed, and I had ignored, was “Sedlec”. On. the. other. side. of. town. Crap…

So we start walking rapidly, since the last bus leaves at 5pm, and it’s now 3:20. We make it by about 4pm and are stunned. It is AMAZING. Simply amazing. The entire inside is completely decorated with human bones. The current design was done in 1870, though the collection of bones began when part of the surrounding cemetery had to be demolished in the early 16^th century. The one funny thing was all the obviously “goth” types of people hanging out in this church, you know, the kind with the “Satan is my God” t-shirts. Ah, sweet irony…

So, we left there and headed back towards the city center to catch our bus home. However, we had some time, so we stopped and grabbed some beer and water (my treat since it had been my mistake leading us up to St. Barbara’s, thankfully it ended up being only 78 crowns, or around $3.54, for all four beers and two waters). We made it back in time to catch the bus, and headed back to Prague. Once there, we all decided to head out to dinner together since the New Zealander knew of this place with ginormous steaks. So, we wandered for a bit until we found it, then sat down and had some heavenly ribeyes and french fries. After this we all said goodbye and good luck, then headed our respective ways. Back, once again, to our hostel straight out of a horror movie, I took a shower and we both headed to bed.