Czech Republic: Praha / Prague

We planned to meet up with Toolman's oldest friend Brook and his parter Kate while they were travelling through Europe several months ago. We decided on Prague (or Praha) so flew there one Friday night to meet them.

We booked some nice apartment-style accommodation close to the centre of town, and organised to meet there.



The apartment had a nice, spacious kitchen area.



And this is the bedroom. Jazz hands!



The room had an odd painting. Toolman thinks it might have beeen ninja-eyes!



Ba..Ba..Ba..Ba..Ba..Ba..Ba.. Bird.bird.bird! - Bluebirds the word! The whole bathroom was penguin-themed.

We met Brook and Kate the next morning - they were staying across the hall as planned.



We headed into town to look around; but the first order of business is always breakfast! Coffees and bagettes while we make our plan for the day.



Like many European cites, Praha has a comprehensive tram network. And everything is made of stone.



The Burnside boys!



This government garden had a wall that looks like a huge stack of candles all melting down, a special rock/concrete creation.



The building was beautiful also.



The subway stations all had neat geometric patterns.



This subway was particularly hypnotic.



We looked around the city and walked over the famous Charles Bridge, which is covered with artists peddling their wares.



This is a beautiful building - Opera house



Toolman and Brook being silly-goats.



Praha has many puppet and doll shops, indeed there are also many puppet shows for tourists to go see.



We headed up to the castle area. The area is full of shops selling all sorts of traditional trinkets.



Some areas of the castle were being excavated for archaeological reasons.



The view of the district is pretty.



After an afternoon looking around the castle and city, we headed back to base, then headed out to a local pub.



This genuine Praha pub was doggy friendly. We got some drinks ...



and made friends with the locals.



Us? Silly? Never!



The next day, we said goodbye to Brook and Kate; they had to move on to keep to their travel schedule.

We took a train and headed out of the city centre, chatting with some single serving friends we made along the way. One guy was a translator for the EU, who was notable because he correctly guessed our nationality from our accent! He has seen FoTC, which might have helped his Kiwi ducshon.

Arriving in town called Kutna Hora, we first to see the Church of Bones (Kostnice).



True to its name, it is a church and graveyard that is decorated with the bones of thousands of people.



Where did all the bones come from? From this source:

In the 14th century, the Black Death spread the bubonic plague across Europe and now 30,000 bodies all wanted a resting place within the sacred grounds. Such vast numbers of dead led to the creation of the ossuary in 1511 by a half-blind monk who gathered up the bones to be stacked up within the ossuary, making space for new corpses, which were soon taken up by more victims from 15th century Hussite Wars.

The ossuary was small, but completely filled with bones. The decoration in front is a bit creepy, but the pile in the back is just amazing!



It seems a weird juxtaposition, doesn't it?



The bones are everywhere.



The chandelier - tough to clean.



After seeing the ossuary we headed into the actual town in order to see the other sights.



Nice day huh!



All the shops were closed. Some of the shops were ... odd.



Notice the gold bits!



This is a row of gilded statues lining a boulevard.



This is the road leading to St. Barbara Church.



Interesting design.

After visiting the church it was time to hop back on the train and head back to Prague.

Prague is a pretty city with lots to see. It is easy to see why it is such a popular tourist destination.