Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Today I went to Cesky Sternberk and Kutna Hora, which are about and hour and a half outside of Prague. Sadly I forgot my camera so I will not be able to put up pictures until other people do and I can take them. Cesky Sternberk is a castle that is centuries old. It was beautiful and what is very interesting is that it is still owned by the family who lived in it over 800 years ago. It was taken from them in the 1950s but a member of the family was allowed to stay on as a tour guide and it was given back after the Velvet Revolution. The man who now owns it lives on the first floor but his whole family actually lived in the castle when he was a child and his bedroom was on display, the floors were over 400 years old. Since the castle is so old different rooms are decorated with all different styles of art and architecture that were popular over several centuries. After this castle we went to the town of Kutna Hora. This town used to be a silver mining town and was very prosperous but does not seem to be as well off and is very different than Prague. It seemed kind of dreary. We walked around the town which was very pretty and had architecture in Gothic and Baroque styles. There is also a cathedral and monastery there that are beautiful. The cathedral is huge and gorgeous and had stained glass all around it. At the end of the day we went to this bone church. It has all the bones of 40000 plague victims on display. Around the building there are pyramids of stacked bones and skulls in the front. Different bones arranged in patterns decorated the walls. In the middle there was a chandelier made from all the bones in the human body. It was really interesting and the decorating could actuallyy be considered interesting in a morbid way.
Tonight we are going out in Prague. I think we are going to a club, which should be fun. I am a great dancer so I can show off my skillz. For the next four days we do not have anything planned for us so we will just be exploring and getting to know the city more.

1 comment:

  1. oh my gosh...Prague will never be the same once Hannah Maurer starts dancing!!! Have fun!!!!!
    xoxoxox
    your GM

    ReplyDelete

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