Prague. Described in my Lonely Planet book as ‘the perfect irony - You are lured there by the past, but compelled to linger there by the present and the future. Every day you’ll uncover plenty of reasons to reinforce Prague’s reputation as one of Europe’s most exciting cities’.
Prague was that for us and much more. Having the luxury of spending 12 days there was a major highlight for us, we had time to see the city at our own pace, didn’t have to rush around all the tourist attractions in a day, and had plenty of time to enjoy the little jewels off the beaten track. We took advantage of the good weather, visited a few beer gardens and top notch drinking spots, and were extremely lucky to have a native Czech speaker as our own personal guide (my cousins awesome fiancée Zuska). We drank beer everyday, had some big nights out in the city (fell in love with green peppermint shots), ate the local Klobassa (sausage) and even caught a couple of rugby games at the local pub. We loved it there! The historic buildings are beautiful, but for those who aren’t so much into history and architecture, there’s still plenty to keep you interested! There are lots of parks and open spaces, great for picnics and a few brews on a sunny day, you can walk for miles and never get bored, the metro system is amazing and gets you everywhere with ease (I could even navigate and that’s saying something!!), everything is cheap and the people are friendly!
We took a few day trips out of the city, one to Kutna Hora, which is a small town south east of Prague, which is famous for its Bone Church Ossuary that is decorated with the skeletons of 40,000 people. The site of the church was such a popular burial site in the 17th century (as it was considered holy land), that the number of burials outgrew the land available, so the older remains had to be exhumed and stored in the chapel. An artist/decorator decided to get creative with the bones, and the Ossuary is now decorated with pyramids of bones, a chandelier that contains at least one of each bone from the human body, and even a coat of arms made entirely of bones. Although it sounds creepy, I really enjoyed seeing this church and its great to see the the remains have been put to good use and made into something beautiful, although a bit macabre.
The other day trip we did was to Karlsteijn castle, the home of King Charles IV who founded the castle in 1348 . We took a guided tour of the castle, saw portraits of Charles and his 4 wives that he lived in the castle with (his first wife he married at age 7!). It was a great castle, and its walls were never breached fully by any enemy force, even though the Swedish managed to get into the main courtyards they never made it to the crown jewels!!
It was sad to say goodbye to family in prague after having such a great time there (I could totally live there!), but it was time to move on to the next part of our adventure and we arrived in Hungary this morning. We are here for 2 nights (3 days), and then the next stop is Montenegro. The temperature is sitting around the 30-35 degree celcius mark so we are well and truly in the midst of summer here!