Yesterday and today we took day trips outside of Prague.\u00a0The first was to Karlstejn which is a walled fortress built\u00a0as a summer home for Charles IV.\u00a0 Construction\u00a0started in 1348 and like most things that have been around for over 600 years ago it has a history that’s longer than I can possibly remember.\u00a0 The basics are that it’s big, beautiful, and you can’t go into the more interesting parts of the structure… you know, the beautiful room gilded in gold, encrusted in jewels, etc. etc.<\/p>\n
Today we spent the day today in Kutna Hora,\u00a0after a brief stop at a Bohemian\u00a0crystal outlet and factory. \u00a0There were two major highlights of that trip to me:\u00a0a silver mine from the 13th century, and a church\u00a0decorated with bones from literally thousands of human beings.\u00a0It’s\u00a0hard to\u00a0imagine, but\u00a0the\u00a0walls and door-frames and ceilings were entirely decorated with human bones.\u00a0\u00a0There was\u00a0a family crest made from bones. Several pyres (huge piles)\u00a0of bones. Even a chandelier made from at least one of every bone in the human body.\u00a0 It’s really hard to imagine what someone had on their mind when they were thinking that these works of art (they really are, in a strange way, beautiful)\u00a0should be in a house of worship.\u00a0 This is what happens, apparently, when you run out of space for all of the bodies in your back yard.<\/p>\n
Tonight, we hit the town for an evening of local modern jazz and drinks (green fairies<\/a>, anyone?), which was a welcome relaxation and entertainment after sloughing around in cold, dark mines all afternoon.<\/p>\n As for tomorrow, we’re celebrating Andy’s 24th birthday with a trip to Pilzen, the one-true home of Pilzner beer<\/a>.<\/p>\n I’ll get the pictures from these day trips up later… the camera is busy charging, and my brain is busy sleeping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday and today we took day trips outside of Prague.\u00a0The first was to Karlstejn which is a walled fortress built\u00a0as a summer home for Charles IV.\u00a0 Construction\u00a0started in 1348 and like most things that have been around for over 600 years ago it has a history that’s longer than I can possibly remember.\u00a0 The basics … Continue reading Karlstejn, Kutna Hora<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[29,27],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-prague","tag-vacation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}