Rain! About time, I needed a rest day. Went sightseeing today, big drive out to Hradek Kralovie to the East of Praha, in the driving rain. The curse of the driving tourist is roadworks and diversions - and we had some doozies today. We got there in the end though. Lovely 'little' town on a river, the old town was obviously walled at some point, it is up on pronounced rise in otherwise flat ground.
Matt and Jen were very restrained while we navigated around, M & I would have been yelling at each other! Had lunch at HK, walked around the town square (in rain) then headed off to Kutna Hora to see the bone church and cathedral. Once you get off the highway the roads get a lot smaller and the travel times blow out. Not quite as bad as UK though.
The ossuary in Kutna Hora is amazing (those who follow the Portmans blog will already know about it), they had about 30,000 plague victims who went there to die and another 10,000 or so vicitims of the Hussite wars 'buried' in the grounds. Apparently the bones were originally stacked outside but the monks made huge piles of them in the church, then later the Schwarzenburgs,
who owned the area, got the best woodcarver in Czech to redecorate. Totally amazing, I think it tops the head of John the Baptist in Amiens and the Hand of sir whatsit in Norwich! All these towns were obviously incredibly wealthy in the past, silver was mined throughout the area apparently.
Tomorrow it will be a quiet day poking around Praha.
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