Saturday, June 16
We took a guided tour to Kutná Hora, a city just over an hour East of Prague. We were happy to see that the tour would be given by Ryan, the same person who’d lead the Free Tour and the Prague Castle tours that we had previously taken. We liked Ryan a lot. He’s a young Canadian who’s been in The Czech Republic for about three years. He’s very knowledgeable about the city and its history and has a very entertaining delivery. He also likes to talk about his two rabbits and needs no prompting to show off their pictures.😁
Around 10:30 am we boarded our bus and were on our way. The traffic was terrible. It took about two hours before we arrived at our first stop in Sedlec where we were going to see the Sedlec Ossuary. If you remember our blog posting from Rome about the Capuchin Crypt you already know what we saw. It was a church where all of the chapels were decorated with objects made from human bones. The craftsmanship was very good and the objects were interesting but the overall effect was a little creepy. This time we were permitted to take pictures.
(Chandelier Made of Human Bones)
The grounds originally held a Cistercian monastery that was founded in 1142. In 1278 the abbot came back from Golgotha in Jerusalem with a jar of dirt which he sprinkled around the adjacent cemetery. People began to believe that this was akin to being buried in the Holy Land causing the cemetery to become a desirable final resting place. Over 30,000 people were known to have been interred there. During recent work to repair the church’s foundation many more skeletons have been unearthed from an earlier burial ground. It is supposed that the number will run into the thousands.
After a quick hop back on the bus we arrived in Kutná Hora. Historically the city was well known for it’s silver mines. The rather course and gruff miners did not get along too well with the monks so in 1388 they began construction on a grand Gothic style church of their own dedicated to Saint Barbara, the patron saint of miners. Construction was delayed many times over the years because of funding and wars and was not officially completed until 1995. The final length is only about 1/3 of its originally intended size. Saint Barbara’s Church is one of the most famous churches in Europe and has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
(Saint Barbara’s Church)
The interior is a classic example of Gothic Cathedrals with high vaulted ceilings, a center aisle and chapels along the sides. The ceiling over the main alter uses standard rib vaulting while the rest of the church uses less common and more exotic helix vaulting. Most of the stained glass windows are from the early 20th century and are in the Art Deco style. Situated high up in a balcony near the back of the church is a pipe organ with traditional wooden and lead/tin pipes.
(Interior Saint Barbara’s Church)
Nearby is a Jesuit college built in 1667. Because the Jesuits missed their home town of Prague so much the walkway in front was designed to resemble the Charles Bridge where there is a magnificent view of the vineyards and the valley below.
Next we went to a restaurant where we had pre-ordered lunch. Restaurant Dačický was founded as a brewery in the 16th century and has been operating as a traditional Czech restaurant for the past 200 years. The food was excellent and the portions were huge. Deborah ordered roast pork with bread dumplings and sweet red cabbage while I had goulash made with wild boar and gingerbread dumplings. Of course we had to try the house beer. Our choices were light (refers to color not to calories), dark (a sweeter beer) and mixed (a combination of the two). We had the light beer. It was very good and complimented our food perfectly.
(Wild Boar Goulash with Gingerbread Dumplings and Beer)
After lunch we walked through town and explored some places of note before boarding the bus for our return trip which lasted just over one hour. Because of the morning traffic there was no time for us to explore Saint Barbara’s Church or the town on our own. We’re considering going back to see these things at our leisure.
While we enjoyed the tour we had an interesting time getting tickets. We booked two previous tours (the Free Walking Tour and the Prague Castle Tour) with a company called Sandeman and, at the conclusion of the castle tour, had received a code entitling us to a discount on any subsequent tours. We had really enjoyed these tours so when we decided to go to Kutná Hora we figured that we’d book through Sandeman again.
When we tried to book the new tour the web site wouldn’t accept the discount code. I emailed Ryan and he said it should work. It didn’t. We called Sandeman. They told us that if we wanted the discount we had to book online; they couldn’t give us the discount over the phone. Early the next day we walked over to the Sandeman tours meeting place and spoke with their agent. He told us they had no knowledge of the discounts whatsoever but suggested we go over to their office and talk to the manager after 11:30 am. We killed a few hours by touring the Old Town Hall, which we blogged about the other day, and at 1:30 pm headed over to the Sandeman office.
We spoke to the representative near the entry way and he said that we needed to go upstairs and talk to the manager. We told our entire story to the manager and she told us that in order to use the discount code we had to book online. We were going in circles. The discussion got a little heated. Finally she said she would call her manager and get back to us. We were being dismissed. She had not even asked for our contact information. Since the tour was the next day we insisted that she make the phone call while we waited. She finally relented, made the phone call and entered the discount code on the web page for us. The fee for the tour was in EUROs and we paid using a credit card. She told us we would get an email with a confirmation and a receipt shortly. It gets worse.
When we got the email we opened the receipt and found we’d been charged about $5.00 more than we should have been. Instead of charging our credit card in EUROs as they should have done they converted the amount and charged our credit card in US Dollars. Sandeman used an exchange rate of their own choosing that wound up costing us more than it should have. It’s a despicable practice. It’s unlikely we’ll ever use their services again.
Distance walked: 5.0 miles