Trip to Prague - Part 2 of 3

After a rather uncomfortable night's sleep (it was sooooo warm in our room), it was time to get up and take advantage of our free breakfast. The Aycocks LOVE free breakfasts! The one at this hotel was fine. They did provide a panini press, along with sliced breads, cold cuts, cheese, coffee cake (truly horrid), cereal, and sausage. Nothing super special, but Josh learned the joy of having a panini press at hand. It was also fun to people watch in the restaurant (especially the guy that seemed to be the pure embodiment of a Hoover vacuum. I've never in my life seen somebody eat that fast, or that much.).

The hotel provided us with maps of Prague - the concierge even mapped out the subway stops we would need. Whenever you travel, make sure you ask if the hotel has a city map you can have. It makes things SO much easier. Also, on the back of the map were deals to different places around town. One "must see" on my list for Prague was the Sedlec Ossuary outside the town of Kutna Hora. I had planned for us to just take a train out there, and just figure out our own way. Buuut, on the back of the Prague map was an advertisement for a Kutna Hora tour. The tour was around 5.5 hours, and included a tour of the Sedlec Ossuary, the town of Kutna Hora, lunch, and a tour of St. Barbara's Church. The price was also around $60 per person. We all decided the night before to go ahead and do this tour. All we had to do was find the lady with the green umbrella, at the base of the Astronomical Clock.

Well, we found her. And jeez, was she cranky. Some people might accuse me of being culturally insensitive. "Maybe that's just the way the Czech people are," you'd say.

False.

We found the Czech people to be friendly & helpful. This Kutna Hora tour guide was just an ol' biddy (or young biddy, as was the case). Throughout the day, she made slightly disparaging remarks about several things, including, but not limited to:
- how annoying it was that we would bring a baby with us
- how awful it was that we didn't speak German while living in Germany (probably should have remembered OPSEC on that one)
- how "interesting" it was that I didn't have a job
- how "interesting" my necklace was ("why would you wear a bicycle necklace if you don't have a bicycle?")
- how everyone else in our group was slow, and she wasn't going to get paid for overtime

Nothing was too overtly cranky, or else certain members of our party would have had words with her. Just cranky enough to notice.

But I digress...again.

There were about 8-10 other people in our group - Brits, Aussies, Italians. The trip up to Kutna Hora took about an hour and twenty minutes.

IT SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN THAT LONG!!!!!

I swear to Zeus, the driver refused to take us above 80kph. It was like Reverse Speed. Truly awful. At this point, Josh is turning into Bad Josh, and having a fit over being stuck in a slow moving short bus. Mentally, I was really irritated at our situation. BUT, I have to be Shirley Freakin' Temple and keep up my bright, happy exterior - mainly because the trip was my idea, and I'd be damned if I was going to have my bright idea go in the pooper.

FINALLY we make it to the Sedlec Ossuary. The church exterior was much smaller than I'd imagined, but I still had high hopes. As we all piled out of the bus/van from Hell, Miss Crank-butt says, "Ok, you have about 20 minutes at the church."

What?

I think a blood vessel in Josh's brain popped when she said that. Of course, I chime in with a, "It'll be ok. It'll still be fun. Let's just go in and make the most of it."

Sometimes I want to punch myself in the face.

Anywho, we elbow our way through the scads of people who refuse to move out of the entrance, and finally make it inside the church - where we were almost completely overwhelmed by the overpowering stench of mildew.

Blech.

BUT, the church itself was pretty awesome. The Sedlec Ossuary was decorated with the bones of 40,000 corpses - most of whom died during the Black Plague.

The Ossuary is definitely a bizarre site. We had about 3 minutes left, so we ran outside to check out the cemetery. That’s when we found out that there was a whole upper level of the church we could have explored. Damn! We could have used at least another 20 minutes to view the church.

But really, 40 minutes is all you need to check out the Sedlec Ossuary. We were all really thankful that there was more to the tour than just the Ossuary. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we did it - but don’t go to Kutna Hora to JUST see the bone church.

We all piled back in to the Short Bus from Hell, and drove about 5 or so minutes to the actual town of Kutna Hora. The town made this trip worth the time & money. It was such a lovely place. While it was a Saturday when we went - the town was so quiet & peaceful.

After walking around for awhile, and learning about the history of this silver mining town, it was time for lunch! Lunch was included in our ticket price, but not alcohol. But, it doesn’t matter, because we were all in desperate need of some Czech beer. Miss Crank-Pants & the Hell Bus were driving us to it. The lunch stop was really great, and I wish I had written down the name of the restaurant. Oops. This was one of those restaurants where beer was only 30czk (about $1.50) for a liter. And it was goooood. We could have hung out at the restaurant for another hour, sitting out in the courtyard, enjoying refreshments. But nooooo. Basically as soon as our dessert forks were set down, we here, “Ok, we really need to go now, we’re running late & I don’t get paid for overtime.”

Oy.

So, on we went towards St. Barbara’s Church, way too full & fuzzy from good food & good beer.


St. Barbara's Church was pretty awesome.

This is probably one of my favorite churches that I’ve seen since being here. The imagery inside the church was hilariously awesome.

This row of seats was painted with ox blood.

After spending maybe 30 minutes here, it was time to get on the bus & go back to Prague. I must say, we weren’t looking forward to the ride home. Luckily, the driver took a different way, so we could at least see new scenery while traveling at a snail’s pace.

But then, something very strange happened. As soon as we got to the outskirts of Prague, and left the freeway, the bus driver went FREAKING CRAZY!!! Speeding, screeching around corners, blasting thru yellow lights. At one point, I just knew we were going to roll over while taking a turn too tightly (alliteration, ha!). I don’t know what got in his ass, but it was slightly terrifying. At least the last little bit of the trip went by quickly, though...

When all is said and done, I'm really glad we did the Kutna Hora trip. It definitely could have used an extra hour (at least), and it would have been much nicer without the Queen of the Harpies running the show. If I were you, I would definitely do the trip - but if you have multiple days in Prague, maybe wait until you get a different tour guide. I can send you a picture of our guide so you know who to avoid, if you wish. ;)

When we were finally on terra firma, back in Prague, it was time to go shopping. L&Y had been to one of the malls here before, and wanted to go back. Everything really is cheaper in CR, so it’s the perfect time to stock up on clothing, especially for babies. I guess when you have a baby, you have to keep them clothed or something. I don’t know, that’s what they said anyway. So, we headed off to the mall.

I'm not much of a shopper, but it's really fun to see the different styles of clothing, and different setups of malls around Europe. This mall was huge, and while there were a lot of people there, it certainly wasn't packed for a Saturday.

After shopping, we headed back to Old Town. It's not that Old Town was that awesome, it's just that it's in a centralized location, and on the same side of the river as our hotel.

Josh's favorite artist is Salvador Dali. While Prague has nothing to do with Dali, they did have a Dali gallery at Old Town Square, so we decided to go. L&Y weren't interested, so they hung out in the square while Josh and I Dali'ed.

After doing Dali (ha!), we walked around to all the little food kiosks along the square. Tons of meaty foods everywhere - sausages, potatoes with bacon, cabbage with bacon, etc. We sat behind the kiosks to enjoy our snacks (well, their snacks) and takeaway beers. After we were sitting there for awhile, we noticed that we were basically in a drunk tank. I guess behind these food kiosks is where all of the local "street people" come to dig thru garbage cans, and sleep off their alcohol. Lacie accidentally dropped her fried potato-on-a-stick, so she threw it away. Almost as soon as she put it in the garbage, some guy fished it out and ate the potato. Then, the guy that was sitting on the bench next to Yahreen fell over onto the ground (and continued sleeping).

At this point, we decided we'd had enough of that area, so we decided to go get our tickets for the Ghost Walk. I was so excited about this!! The only problem was I wasn't sure exactly where to pick up the tickets. We kind of assumed that there would be somebody selling tickets at the base of the clock tower (that's where L&Y got their tickets the last time). But, nobody was there. So, we had to go find the ticket counter. There was a period of about 15 minutes where we looked exactly like a Benny Hill skit - racing back and forth, map in hand, misreading the map, etc. Now, there were two ghost walk tours. One at 7pm, and one at 10pm. We were going to do the 7pm walk.

Now, it's like 7:05pm. I FINALLY find the ticket booth, and ask if we are too late for the 7pm walk. Then they laugh at me.

That's never a good sign.

"You're actually too early for the 7pm walk. The 7pm walks don't start until after October 1st." (keep in mind this was the end of August)

FUCKADUCK

I've never felt so defeated & dejected in my entire life.

Okay, well, that's a lie. But at the time, it sure felt like it. ESPECIALLY when I reread the ghost walk information I had, and noticed the little asterisk next to the 7pm walk time. Of course, at the bottom of the information, it explains that the asterisk means the 7pm walk doesn't start til after October 1st.

Kids - always always always look for asterisks when planning trips!!!

Even though we had another night in Prague, we knew we weren't going to be doing a ghost walk on this trip. The next night was when we had our free 3-course meal reserved. We could have done the 10pm walk, but we knew that wasn't going to happen. For one thing, L&Y wouldn't have been able to do that with the baby. And, Josh and I didn't want to go BACK out to the city center, after we had been back to the hotel. Count it as laziness on our parts, I guess.

Anyway, we couldn't do the ghost walk. Wait! I had planned to do the marionette museum, and we still had time to do that! The marionette museum was also joined up with the marionette theater. Thankfully, it wasn't too hard to find.

It was rather strange that there wasn’t a museum sign, but the theater was there, so I went in and asked about it.

“Hi, I was wondering if you could tell me where the marionette museum is located.”

“Well, it’s about 200km away, down in Austria.”

...

WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK!?!

I KNOW I found information about a marionette museum in Prague. I had the times it was open, the address. I was so confused!!

But, at this point, I just wanted to sit & cry. My plans had not worked out. Then the guys were like, "hey, let's just go find a place to sit & have a drink. We can listen to the band that's playing outside. It'll be fine."

Of course, at this point everyone's cranky. We sat down at a few different restaurants, but nothing looked good, and they were all restaurants that sold crap "popular" beer (Bitburger, Heineken, etc), not good Czech beer.

We ended up not doing a restaurant, and decided to just get takeaway beer & sausage for cheap. God, I love Europe and their to-go beers.

At this point, we were just ready for the hotel. We had an awesome time playing games, and chatting - which more than made up for the foibles of the day. It definitely wasn't a bad day, the ending just didn't go exactly according to plans - and you really have to get used to stuff like that happening, when you're traveling.