Prague

Fear not if you get lost in Prague's maze of cobbled streets and Gothic architecture as beer is often cheaper than bottled water and with no shortage of watering holes I have not doubt that any traveller would be able to find a place to rest their feet, make friends and find a map.  

Wenceslas Square looks more like a boulevard than a square but it is one of the two main squares in the city and is a hub of activity as its streets are lines with hotels, clubs, shops, bars and restaurants. Originally laid out as the Prague horse market 650 years ago the square has come a long way. It can be found in the heart of the New Town area of the city and can hold up to 400 000 people. At the top of the square you will find the National Museum.

Another little bit of info is that if you walk towards the National Museum on your right hand side near the top of the street you will find the Beer Factory where once you have descended the glass staircase you will be able to pour your own beer on tap at your own table. Yip, at your own table and I don't mean one of those beer towers that you buy at the bar and carry to the table but an actual tap built into the middle of the table. It even has a screen where you can keep track how who has drunk how many beers. Endless hours of beer drinking fun. The Czech Republic is well known for its beer some of which have gathered a global following like Pilsner Urquell. Czech beer can be dated as far as back as 1118 when the first brewery was built.

A John Lennon Wall in Prague may seem rather odd especially when you take into account that the man never visited the city, but the wall exists and has a long history of being a memorial and a monument to free speech. In the 1980s the youth of Prague began to fill the wall with Lennon inspired graffiti and lyrics from Beatles songs and despite numerous attempts by the Communist government to keep the wall clean the graffiti keep returning. It's message that voices can not be silenced ringing loud and clear even to this day. The wall is located at Velkoprevorske Namesti, Mala Strana and is worth the visit.

Bursting with activity and a prime meeting spot the Old Town Square is one of the most visited sites in Prague. Dominated by the monument of Jan Hus, who was an important Czech reformer and nationalist, the square is a collage of architectural styles like Gothic, Cubist and Baroque.

The Old Town City Hall can be found on the Square. It is here that civil ceremonies are still held and there is a wedding only exit from the building.

The Astronomical Clock is also housed in the Town Hall Tower which you can climb to get views over the square.

Prague Castle is definitely one of the gems of the city with its 1100 year old history you can get lost in the wonder of its stories. Towering above the city up on the heights of Hradcany you can not miss it. It has managed to survive fires, invasions and World Wars and to the people of Prague it is seen as being a symbol of the living legend of the city.
Inside the castles walls you will find a wonderful example of Gothic architecture in the form of the St Vitus Cathedral which is the biggest and most important church in the Czech Republic. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Prague and the burial site of many important people in Czech history.

If you time your visit to the castle just right you can observe the changing of the guards and depending on the weather you can walk the 278 steps up the Bell Tower.

When I visited the castle we had our own local guide, Shaka, who was great. She made the history of Prague really come alive. If you look closely at the photo below you will see a tower in the background which kind of looks like the Eiffel Tower. This is the Petrin Lookout Tower which was built in 1891 as an observation and transmission tower. You can access the tower either by doing the roughly half hour walk up the paths which can be rather slippery in wet weather or you can jump on the Petrin funicular railway which services the tower.

Parts of Prague will remind you of Venice has it has canals that run through the city. On the bridges that cross these canals you will find padlocks and lots of them. These are love locks attached by couples to symbolise their everlasting love.  

Love locks can even be found on the Charles Bridge which is one of the most famous tourist attractions of Prague. Charles Bridge which crosses the Vtlava (Moldau) River dates back to the reign of Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor. It's design and construction was started by Master Otto but continued by Peter Parler who saw it completed in 1402. It was called the Stone or Prague Bridge up until 1870 and is 516m long and 10m wide, which may sound large but because of its popularity now as a tourist spot the bridge can be quite crowded. It rests on 16 arches which are shielded by ice guards and is decorated with 30 statues mostly in the Baroque style which were erected in the 1700s. Although the original statues have been moved to the Lapidary (in the National Museum) and replicas have replaced them the bridge is still a magical portal joining the banks of Prague.

Bone Church in Kutná Hora

Happy New Year Everyone!

Now I know that my Berlin post was quite a few weeks ago but don't worry I haven't forgotten about the rest of the cities that I visited on my Contiki tour. I plan to in the next two weeks give you all a taste of the places that I went to through the photos that I took there.

So to pick up where we left off I was heading out of Germany and into the Czech Republic. Before I tell you all about my stop in Prague I wanted to tell you about our other stop which was at the Bone Church or Kostnice in Kutna Hora. Yes you heard me right a bone church as in a church which inside is decorated entirely with human bones. It is said that the church contains the skeletons of more than 40 000 people and is definitely a strange thing to experience.

After the Black Death mid 14th Century and the Hussite Wars in the early 15th Century there were thousands of bodies buried at this Roman Catholic Chapel. In the 1400s a Gothic church was built in the cemetery to act as a ossuary to house the remains that had been unearthed during construction. Once all the bones had been exhumed the job of sorting and stacking the remains was given to a half-blind monk. Some say that the monk was not entirely sane from spending days on end sorting bones that he began to arrange the bones into patterns and create objects such as a chandelier out of them. Whether he was sane or not we do not know but the skeletons are indeed arranged in an artistic way that most people would probably not have thought of and if you are ever in the area it is well worth a look.