day sixteen . 16 may

praha, czech republic

morning was spent travelling to kutna hora, a small town 1 ½ hours away from prague. the town is famous for the ossuary – a chapel made up entirely of human skeletons.

story has it that as the monks did not know what to do with the bodies of 40,000 victims of a plague which struck the town, one of them came up with the idea to use the skeletons to build the chapel. the whole idea of it is quite morbid and the place does feel kinda spooky. fascinating nevertheless.



skulls

erm. more skulls?

coat of arms made of skeletons

skeleton decorations

on our way back to the train station, we were caught in a heavy rain (why does it rain so much in czech?) and since we did not have any umbrellas/windbreakers/raincoats with us, and there were no shelters in sight, we ran in the rain. havent been so drenched in a long time.

on the train, we started chatting with 2 lovely american ladies who are on holiday.

new friends!

at around 4ish, the other 2 decided that they wanted to go to the jewish quarters. finding the admission ticket of 200kc (8eur) way too steep (since I only wanted to see the cemetery) i gave the place a miss. instead, i spent the time exploring parts of the stare mesto which we missed yesterday.

i walked the 2 bridges beside charles bridge – manesuv most and cechuv most, stopped by the rudolfinum, and checked out the old town square again. weather held quite well till around 6, when it started pouring again.

exploring prague on foot, camera in hand

back at stare mesto

tourist packed!

for the 2nd time in the past 2 days, i attempted to catch the astronomical clock at the staromestske radnice (old town hall) chime. however, for the life of me, i really cannot understand what everyone was looking at, coz i seriously do not see the hourglass emptying or the march of the apostles, as described by let’s go. it was hilarious just standing there, staring up at the tower without having a single clue of what i am supposed to see. i would love to think that half the people gathered underneath didn’t know what they were looking out for as well. ha.

astronomical clock

karluv most (charles bridge) looks very different in the evening. i guess i could finally see what all the hype was about now. as the evening light shone over the bridge, one could only make out the silhouettes of the various statues which lined the sides of the bridge, and prazsky hrad, which sits atop the hill behind the bridge.

back to charles bridge

evening light

capitivating beauty

interesting sight of peak hour rush

as if prague hasn’t offered us enough, our farewell gift from the city was a hefty fine of 20eur each (after much bargaining) for attempting to cheat on the metro.

at night, we caught the train to budapest, where we are about to meet up with david (knut) and his gf!

fellow singaporeans we met in prague!

as you can probably gathered by now, im not too impressed with prague. maybe its unfair to say that the place is lousy because i may have had too high expectations of it in the 1st place, hence the disappointment. still, i must agree that the architecture is very beautiful. but even then, it may be a tad bit overrated.