Prague Day 3

Kutna Hora

Day 3 of our trip to Prague we went Kutna Hora a small town about an hours train ride from central Prague, which started out as a silver mining town around the 13th Century. Famous for it's Bone Church as well as several other religious buildings which I'll get to in good time, this was one of the main reasons for choosing Prague as our next destination and we'd done a bit of research on Trip Advisor on how to get there.
Trains run frequently from Prague main railway station (which itself is worth a visit with its grand old Art Nouveau booking hall) which is about 5 mins walk from the National Museum and a joint (for 2 persons) return ticket was 262ck (approx £8). Once arriving at our first Church we bought a discounted ticket that got us into 5 attractions for 165ck (approx £5) which was a fair bit cheaper than the organised tour we saw for 700ck (approx £22) which included public transport and only entry to 2 attractions and whilst we didn't have a personalised tour guide, we really didn't need one as there was plenty of (free)information available in English. There was a local taxi service which charged approx £1 each to ferry you from the Bone Church end of town to the main town - the driver provided us with a map and suggested a walking route through the town - we also booked him to collect us at the end of our day and take us back to the train station - perfect!

After arriving at Kutna Hora train station, it was pretty easy to find the route into the town - we just followed everyone else! Past the Philip Morris factory and you come to a crossroads type area in the suburb of Sedlec, to the left is the Cathedral of Our Lady and to the right the Ossuary of Sedlec (afore mentioned Bone Church).

Cathedral of Our Lady (click to view full size)




The Cathedral was first a Bohemian Cistercian Monastery founded in 1142AD and has had a troubled history due to debt & conflict, it is home to breathtaking architecture and detail.

Sedlec Ossuary (click to view full size)




Sedlec Ossuary or The All Saints Cemetery Church is decorated almost entirely of human bones, originally piled in a pyramid by half blind monks in 1511 - the current 'design' was by Frantisek Rint and was created by the remains of approx 40,000 people and you'll be glad to know the bones were disinfected before hand! The Ossuary is a far less creepy or solemn than the Paris Catacombes and even had a little gift shop area at the entrance, where you could purchase afore mentioned taxi tickets.
We then got our taxi to the main town of Kutna Hora, we were dropped outside the impressive Gothic Cathedral of St Barbora.


We sat outside here to eat our packed lunch (hmmm ham & cheese butties) and watch what appeared to be a young sparrow hawk or kestral be harassed by one of the local stall holders, who decided it needed a drink
This cathedral was not dissimilar to the other one, so I wont bore you with the simuilar interior photographs (although the are not any less impressive), however from up here there was an impressive view of the town below
After lunch we embarked on the rough walking tour marked out by our taxi driver, which was cool as it took you past pretty much all the interesting looking architecture and places and also the Czech Medieval Silver Mine museum, which was slightly odd. We had a very strange tour - basically it was timed tours, so we had to leave our bags locked up then rush to join a tour that was about 15 minutes in (although that was fine, I really don't think I could've managed the entire tour), the tour shows the history of silver minining and it's importance to Kutna Hora and takes you into a real mine. Now I'm only 5'4" and I banged my head about 5 times, thank god for the hard hats - at times it was so narrow and the ceiling so low you were almost crouched, not very comfortable ending up down a hill about 300 yards away from the museum. At first we thought our tour guide was uninterested in giving the tour but it turns out it was her first tour in English which was why she was constantly looking at her notes and her intonation wasn't great, but all things considered it was a way to pass 45mins.
The town itself is full of interesting buildings, churches and this stone fountain, currently under renovation.
However we found a much better way in the form of a bar that advertised Staropramen for 28ck (less than a pound) for half a litre - bargain! after a couple we headed to meet our taxi and back to Kutna Hora train station, back to Prague for another meal at Jiny Stav

Prague Day 2

Prague Day 2
Wenceslas Square, Petrin Hill & the Old Town Square
Day 2 of our Czech adventure saw us head out in the opposite direction towards the National Museum, as it turns out this was literally 3 minutes walk from our hotel and whilst we weren’t too fussed at what was inside, we took a few photos of the impressive building and it’s view over the infamous Wenceslas Square, which is more of an oblong by the way.
Národní Muzeum
View of Wenceslas Square
I’ll be honest, Wenceslas didn’t really live up to the hype, sure there was really interesting architecture if you looked up, but it was mostly shops/restaurants.. Nothing to do per se. We passed through in under 10 minutes and after a slight hitch with figuring out the tram system (we were told to validate tickets at the station, rather than once on the tram), we were off to Petrin Hill!
Petrin Hill is a fantastic place to have a picnic whilst enjoying the view over Prague, you can either walk up (if you’re mad) or take the funicular railway (I do like saying ‘funicular’ quite a lot) which has two stops; one half way up and one at the top. At the top of the hill are some very pretty gardens, an observatory, a grotto and a mini Eiffel Tower – Petrin Tower which you climb to the top of for even more amazing views over Prague – including a nunnery, which ties in nicely with the 12 Stations of the Cross that surround the tower.
Petřínská Rozhledna
View from Petrin towerThere is also a ‘Labyrinth’ on the hill which unfortunately sounds way more impressive than it is – a simple mirror maze that takes all of 30 seconds to get round, with a final hall of amusing mirrors.. A whole 60 seconds of fun, unless of course you’re a child in which case its money well spent.
We walked part way down the hill to the 2nd station for the funicular railway and then caught a tram on to the very popular Old Town Square – home to amongst other things, the Astronomical Clock, very expensive ‘Irish/English Theme Pubs’ (avoid like the plague unless you enjoy paying £4 for cheap, crap British lager) and the worst ‘Aquarium’ I’ve visited (it was more like some rich dude’s fish tanks – nothing exotic or exciting).
The Old Town Square itself was quite busy as it was the World Cup, so like our home town of Manchester, there was a Hyundai Fan Park which consisted of large screens to show the matches, along with food & drink stalls, the difference in Prague was that A. These were open all day and B. When the football wasn’t on – they had an orchestra playing classical music – all for free! The beer wasn’t overpriced either at 50ck for ½L of Budvar (around £1.80) – in fact the only problem was the lack of somewhere to sit in the shade as it was over 30c most days we were there!
Of course before we left the Old Town, we couldn’t miss the world famous Astronomical Clock (and tower) – every hour on the hour the clock face opens like on the Children’s TV Show Trumpton - and at the same time a man in traditional dress plays a trumpet out of the tower!
Astronomical Clock
After we made our way back to the hotel tired and hungry, we found a very nice pub/restaurant called Jiny Stav which was a traditional Czech cuisine restaurant, although they do have English menus. Whilst there were some amusing translations on the menu (such as Pork Medallions from Italian Guy) the food was top notch, so much so, that we ate here another two times during our 5 night stay!

Prague Day 1

Charles Bridge, Kafka Museum & Prague Castle
We arrived in Prague on the Sunday evening, our flight getting in around 11pm, our taxi driver Ihab from bohemiantaxis was fantastic, recommending the best times for visiting the Charles Bridge (after 10pm or before 10am) to avoid the tourists, as well as a few bars & restaurants to try. Arriving at Miss Sophie's around 30 minutes later we checked into our ultra modern room - but not before the guy on reception gave us a map of Prague and highlighted the places nearby we could get food/room supplies. Miss Sophie's could be filed under the heading 'Boutique Hostel' with its ultra modern & minimalistic design. Whilst there are several dormitory rooms, there are also apartment style rooms (self contained with kitchenette) and en suite rooms - which is what we chose. Our room included a fabulous wet room style shower with an enormous powerful shower head, as well as a fridge - handy for keeping the beer cool. We had full use of the kitchen facilities in the basement along with a lounge area complete with record player (and records!) and DVD's.
Monday morning we took a leisurely stroll towards the Vltava River, which was about 10 minutes away from the hotel. We wandered up towards the Charles Bridge and crossed over it and on to the Kafka museum which was one of the best museums I've visited, as well as objects of Kafka's and his life story, there were also rooms that were built upon his worst nightmares. Outside is another oddity in the form of a moving statue/sculpture of 2 men urinating. Not far away was the Lennon wall, a John Lennon inspired graffiti wall as well as a bridge with hundreds of love padlocks attached – a fast growing declaration of love across many cities.
With the day still young we then opted to climb a very tall tower at the end of the Charles bridge - with amazing views over the city, from here we tacked the steep hill up towards Prague Castle. At the Castle there are some guards with cute pastel blue suits, although they must have been sweating their socks off in the heat! There was also Prague Picture Gallery within the Castle, that thankfully has free entry 4-6pm on Mondays, as it was pretty disappointing and personally didn't think it was worth the £5 entry fee!
Vltava River
Sculpture outside the Kafka Museum
John Lennon Wall
Love Padlocks
View from the tower at Charles Bridge
Guard at Prague Castle

After all this we walked back to our hotel exhausted, we thought we'd check out one of the local micro breweries recommended as somewhere good to eat also. Pivovarský dům was literally 2 minutes away from the hotel and served lots of different beers including coffee and cherry varieties. We had a lovely meal with some great beer, highly recommended, after this we went back to our room for a well earned sleep!

Copenhagen Day 2

For our second day in Copenhagen, there was one trip that had been very well researched - a trip to the Carlsberg Brewery Visitors Centre! It was about 20 minutes stroll from our hotel and is one of the most impressive buildings in terms of decorative architecture I've seen.

The visitors centre costs DKK 60 which is around £7 and includes 2 free drinks (soft or beer), this in itself makes the ticket a bargain as you would pay somewhere in the region of £6 a pint in most Copenhagen bars and the staff all speak several languages like most places in Copenhagen.
The tour starts with the largest sealed bottled beer collection in the world and it is impressive!

Row upon row of bottles, there are also screens with more info and Carlsberg adverts, but we just spent ages looking at all the different labels!
The rest of the tour guides through not only the history of the Carlsberg Brewery & beers, but also of the workers and the city of Copenhagen, pretty much all of the written information is in both Danish and English.

Like most tourist attractions there is also a gift shop which has all manner of Carlsberg/Tuborg related merchandise - we were quite gutted that we couldn't take stuff home in the suitcase with us, they had some nice bottles/glasses etc..
After the gift shop is the aroma room - this was my favourite part of the tour - numerous bottle with various aromas in that are used in beer

the idea being that you sniff them all and mark on a card which aromas you like most, then there is a corresponding chart hanging from the ceiling which tells you which beers you should try based on their aroma. My favourite aromas included coffee, cereal & bread! So then it's on to the Jacobsen Bar where you collect your free drinks - with over 35 types of beer to choose from you are spoilt for choice!
The bar also does some nice Danish food which is also reasonably priced

The menu for food & beer can be downloaded from their website - most beers (after the free ones) cost DKK 25 which is about £3. Also if that isn't enough, in the centre of the room you can see the bottling plant, which is the only part of the tour where you'll see actual brewery action.


After all the fun of the brewery tour, we had a casual stroll back towards our hotel, which is when we noticed all the sex shops on the same street!
We had decided to take in some art in the afternoon so we went to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

This gallery also charges DKK 60 to enter, but it wasn't really worth it in our opinion, unless you're really into 19th Century/Early 20th Century French/Danish art works.

We thought the Early Egyptian/Ancient Roman & Greek artefacts would be interesting but without any context as to why they were collected (the translations were quite sporadic) it left us cold - we'd seen similar collections in Tunisia that seemed far more coherent.

It's probably worth noting that in Winter/off season (ie October to March), most Danish tourist attractions close at 4/5pm which feels quite early.

After this we headed back to our hotel, grabbed a bite to eat, then went for an intended wander, however we didn't get very far as we ended up at the end of the street (literally 30 seconds away) in the Jernbane Cafeen a train themed bar/pub. It was very quaint and friendly - the staff spoke good English although we had a bit of trouble explaining which type of Carlsberg beer we wanted, however - there were folders/menu's on the table, and after pointing at what we wanted we ended up with a good ol' Carl's Lager

The bar train theme (we assumed because of the proximity to the station)was pretty impressive - the seats were from trains, all numbered along with destination plates etc.. the toilets even had train sound effects when you entered! They also had one of the cheapest slot machines I've ever tried, for about £3 we had around 80 goes, of course the winnings were also minimal and we didn't really know what we were doing, but it was fun.

Copenhagen Day 1

This was the second of our 'City Break on a Budget' where we aim to pay £300 or less for travel & accommodation. We opted for Copenhagen as we've both fancied Scandinavia for a while and we'd heard how quick & easy it is to get to Malmo - 2 cities in one break - bonus!
We had a really early start for this trip, arriving at the airport for just after 5am. It was our first time flying with Easyjet so we weren't sure what to expect, we'd checked in online about 8 weeks in advance as the website led us to believe that people were allocated seats the order of check in which we soon found out was misleading. There are 2 groupings - those who've paid to get on the plane first and everyone else, regardless of how soon you checked in. We'd also printed our own boarding cards, expected that as with other airlines we'd just check in our bag and that would be it, but no the happy chappy tore up our boarding cards and reprinted identical ones, whilst trying to sell us the 'guaranteed' seats together (on the return journey, we used our printed boarding cards and just found the bag drop, no hard sell).
After a fairly speedy passage through security we had breakfast, followed by an on time flight and smooth journey. Landing at Copenhagen is slightly strange, as you get off the plane in the same area the folks are waiting to get on the plane to go back to the UK, then you walk through the duty free area to passport control! All very strange (we didn't bother with any duty free as it was more expensive than the UK).
After managing to buy train tickets to Copenhagen H (or Copenhagen Central), we hopped on the train for the swift 15 minute journey, upon arriving at the station, our hotel was literally 30 seconds away.
We stayed at Hotel Nebo Run by a Christian Mission, we opted for an 'economy room' which is what you see - no ensuite as the toilet/bath/shower rooms are around the corner. We also had a desk and TV with several english speaking channels (with plenty of decent TV if you choose to spend an evening in doors). The reception area of the hotel has free internet, tv screens with live teletext airport departures, snack/drink machines and a whole stand of tourist information, including pocket sized cards that also give you discounts on many attractions. We picked up one for the Canal Tours and headed out towards Gammel Strand (ok so we got a bit lost on the way there...)

Gammel Strand
We were a bit early for the last tour of the day, so wandered around taking photos and found a great little souvenir shop behind the horse man statue.
The tours run all year round, although in Winter as when we visited, there was just the red and yellow lines, the boats in Winter have an indoor section with glass roof and is heated and was much needed at times.
The canal tours are a relaxing & easy way to see a lot of the sights without lots of walking, they last approx one hour and take in sights such as Nyhaven with it's colourful fishermen's houses
The Royal Danish Library with it's new extension nicknamed the Black Diamond due to the way it sparkles in the sun
The infamous little mermaid who is currently on display the other side of the world

As well as Christiansborg palace , Christianshavn , the Opera House to name but a few. We were very lucky weather wise, as not only was it gloriously sunny (albeit freezing cold), the last canal tour of the day was during the so called Golden Hour which meant we got to enjoy a lovely winter sunset from the boat

Sunset over CopenhagenAfter the tour, frozen but happy we wandered around for a bit more sightseeing, then headed back to the hotel. Being on a budget, we stopped at the 7/11 store two doors down from our hotel for our tea. Amongst the broad array of hot food & drink they served the traditional Danish style hotdog - different to ours in that they are served in quite a crispy toasted bread roll (almost French baguette style)which is hollowed out, the sauce/mustard etc is then squirted inside and your sausage is squished down inside it, very tasty I might add. The shop also appeared to have a Domino's Pizza franchise inside it, selling pizza, calzone and other dough/pastry based dishes - they even did room service to the hotel!

London Again... Part II

On Easter Sunday we decided to do some touristy type stuff - first stop Monument to the Great Fire of London.

A staggering 202 feet tall with 311 steps taking you to the top, you climb the narrow spiral staircase which runs inside, and when I say narrow, i mean backs against the wall whilst passing people going the other way!
It was well worth the effort (as the steps are harder work than you would think) with amazing views over the city, even though visibility was limited we got some decent photos.
After waving at Ant (who was waiting at the bottom) and snapping as far as the eye could see, we started our decent back down the spiral staircase, this invoked my mild vertigo and it took a wee bit longer to get back down
Once at the bottom we were presented with a certificate congratulating us for climbing the stairs! Here's Jen with hers
After that we headed up towards Camden, which was absolutely rammed with people (more so than usual) making the walk up the main street to the market quite arduous.
Once there we checked out the Proud Gallery which was showing two photography exhibitions, one of AC/DC and one of Withnail & I, there were also some live acoustic acts playing as well. We also stopped in the bar there for some much needed refreshments, before heading back out into the throngs of shoppers and into the markets to find some lunch.
We ended the day by meeting Danielle and her Fiancé for drinks, choosing the wetherspoons pub for it's cheap drinks, room to sit down and cleanliness! We had visited the World's End, but after waiting about 15 minutes to be served, being charged a stupid amount even by London standards for a pint, then sitting at tables covered in pots and food that the staff kept on walking past we left.

Easter Monday we a tootle down Oxford Street and bought a few obligatory souvenirs for family then left for the sanctuary of St Pancras for the train home!

London part 2

On our second day in London, we got up slightly hung over and headed into central London, first stop Oxford Street. With the credit crunch and recession looming it was sale central. We stopped off at Debenhams to browse their sale with up to 25% off, we got loads of bargains and did a fair bit of Christmas shopping. After that it was off to Russell Square to check out the Babylon exhibition at the British Museum in the pouring rain, unfortunately it was sold out for the day, so we dried off by browsing the permanent collections and realised that interspersed with the very old was the very new in the form of Statuephila - Contemporary British Sculpture including Damien Hirst's painted skulls, Antony Gormley's Case for an Angel 1 and my favourite Ron Mueck's mask II - which along with the easter island statue fell foul to the "crushing your head" thing



After grabbing a bite to eat in the nearby Museum Street, we headed off towards the Barbican as we had tickets for the snappy titled This Is War! Robert Capa at Work, Gerda Taro On the Subject of War. it was a very interesting photographic exhibition, concentrating a lot on Capa & Toro's coverage of the Spanish Civil War, but also down stairs included photos and video pieces based on more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought maybe the upstairs section (Capa & Toro) could've been better laid out, it wasn't clear where the exhibition started and finished, and there were several shots that were displayed twice for reasons unknown. But if you're in London, definitely worth a visit. We also managed to visit the Curve Gallery on the ground floor of the Barbican which was hosting Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Frequency & Volume which is a large scale installation piece contains radios (that seem to double as projectors)that you walk past, depending on the size and strength of your shadow on the wall, the projectors tune to various radio frequencies, displayed on the walls. It's quite surreal listening to a mish mash of local, pirate and national radio stations mixed in with emergency services radio frequencies etc... a lot of fun to be had though - great for kids.

It was getting on for after 6pm at this point, so we took the tube a couple of stops to Brick Lane, in my old neighbourhood of Whitechapel to meet with Julia and Carly who I hadn't seen for well over 2 years! We had a couple of drinks in the Archers pub and then went for a curry. Sorry can't remember the name of the curry house, but as usual the standard was high whilst being less that £10 a head including drinks.

Monday was our day home but we still had the morning to kill, so we checked out the Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990–2005 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, just off Trafalgar Square. I was really looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint as one of my favourite Leibovitch photos of the White Stripes was on display

it also contained a variety of "famous" images and faces along side personal photos of the late Susan Sontag. Again, this is definitely worth checking out if you have £12 to spare.

After this there was not much time to do anything except grab a quick bite to eat anc head back to St Pancras for what turned out to be a rather uneventful train journey home.

London part 1

Made a visit down south a couple of weeks ago to visit my best friend Jen, and of course to do some shopping and sights. I'm honestly not going to mention the farce that is East Midlands Rail Replacement service - just that it should be avoided like the plague.
First stop was Tate Modern, we got off the tube at St Paul's to walk over the bridge and I was amazed at how gleaming white the building is now after all the cleaning work that has gone on (there are some parts still left to do)

Once we got to the Tate, I called up my friend Julia who works there and we got to see a couple of exhibitions gratis. First up was Cildo Meireles who created some quite bizarre and intriguing installations that you walk through - including a floor made of cracked panels of glass that crunched under foot with various other materials on top including barbed wire, metal chains, and scrunched up plastic.
Another installation consisted of a white room with the walls covered in clocks

with thousands of rulers hanging down in circles clacking as you couldn't avoid touching them as you walked through.
Also included was a what looked like a tree on a field of coins with bones for leaves but turned out to be something completely different "Mission/Missions(How to Build Cathedrals)"

"the work comments on the human cost of missionary work and its connection with the exploitation of wealth in the colonies: the ceiling is composed of
2,000 bones, while the floor comprises 600,000 coins. Symbolically joining these two elements is a column of 800 communion wafers."
After this we also briefly checked out the Rothko exhibition but weren't that impressed in all honesty.
Then feeling rather tired we headed back to Kilburn stopping off at Papa John's for pizza, which was nice.