We took a train to Kutna Hora; it was about 1.5hours away.
Yep, so the main attraction of Kutna Hora is actually the bone chapel (otherwise known as the Sedlec Ossuary). Apparently this Czech woodcarver was given a job by the Czech government to organise the many bones and skeletal remains that have piled up due to the Black Death and the Hussite Wars, and he created this macabre structure of an entire church interior made out of the bones of more than 40 000 people. It is really pretty gorgeous and elaborate in real life! We had this slight bio lesson here too, cause one of the participants in the tour group studied the human anatomy/skeleton before, so she taught us how to like estimate the gender and age of the skulls based on how the skull looked like. Quite cool :D
Skulls everywhere. People even threw coins as offering(?)
Huge chandelier made out of skulls and bones in the middle of the church.
He even created the Schwarzenberg coat of arms with bones!
Upstairs there was a room filled with paintings each depicting a scene in the bible.
Thought it was quite cool
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Next stop, the huge gothic St Barbara's Cathedral. St Barbara is the patron saint of miners, which is quite appropriate since Kutna Hora was historically a silver mining town. This cathedral is HUGE, like maybe the size of a small HDB shopping mall :/ But as with most cathedrals, all you do is look around and marvel at the elaborate stained glass and architecture so it wasn't that interesting to be honest.
Lunch was at this 'traditional' czech food restaurant that the tour group brought us to. Evidently, the restaurant has partnered many tour agencies as there were other tour groups having lunch inside as well. Upon seeing that, the inner cynicism in me quickly made the conclusion that the food probably is going to be overpriced and would suck. This is probably one of the limitations of joining a tour group.
Exterior of cafe
What I ordered: Beef with jam and whipped cream and bread dumplings
It was decent, but then again this was my first time eating Czech food and so I had nothing to compare it to. Before the dish came I was very curious as to what the 'dumplings' would look like. Being Asian, dumplings to me would mean xiao long bao and other assorted dimsum, and I read on wikipedia that the traditional food of the Czech included dumplings, and of course I got quite a shock. HAHA but now I know their dumplings just mean pieces of either bread or potato.
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After lunch, we walked around the city center and to be honest I was dying from information overload and the ridiculously chilly weather so I just followed blindly and I didn't really listen to the tour guide anymore haha. Took a few pictures of the pretty quaint neighbourhood though. I really like the architecture! Haha. In any case, after this trip I resolved to understand one day what the different styles of architecure were. Cause the tour guide kept telling us that this building was gothic, and the other building was medieval but I seriously cannot tell the difference HAHA :/
So after that we took a train back to Prague city center where I walked around the Christmas market with a new-found Malaysian buddy. The christmas market is really just this giant tourist trap with overpriced food and souvenirs haha, but I guess the atmosphere was festive and jingly and happy xD
Super expensive chocolate coated fruits, but I gave into temptation to buy one anyway. It wasn't bad, but I promptly got scolded for wasting money :PP
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