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Day 8,
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from Prague to Horni Misecky,
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via Kutna Hora
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Saturday, May 30, 2015
Yesterday the breakfast restaurant was crowded but today there were only
a few guests. maybe because we were an hour earlier then yesterday ?
We had breakfast at eight and before half past eight, we were on the road
to Kutna Hora to see the church with the bones and skulls of fourty
thousand people.
We had to cross the Moldau and while we were riding on the bridge, I noticed
a strange construction on the top of the hill. It look like a giant metronome
and it moved like one......
A giant metronome on the top of the hill
We spend the first half hour riding through the suburbs of Prague and the
villages around it but after a while there were less houses and there was
more open road.
The weather was very good when we started. Blue skies and a nice temperature
so we enjoyed the ride.
We enjoyed the nice weather
One of the many villages we rode through
An hour and a half after we left Prague, we arrived at Kutna Hora. We were
not sure were the Sedlec Ossuary was so we asked someone and he gave us the
name of the street so with the Tomtom, we soon found the street.
The first church building we saw turned out to be the Church of Saint Barbara,
a beautiful Gothic church. They started building this in 1388 !
The Church of Saint Barbara
The Church of Saint Barbara is a beautiful church but not the chapel we were
looking for but fortunately, that one was only a few hundred meters down the
street so we got back on our bikes and went to the Sedlec Ossuary.
The entrance of the Sedlec Ossuary
In the year 1278, someone brought a handful of earth from Jerusalem to make the
Sedlec cemetery "Holy Ground". This made it a populair cemetery and about
fourty thousand people were burried here.
In the fifteenth century, the cemetery was abolished and the remains of those
people were brought to the chapel. In the eighteenth century, the current bone
decoration of those remains was made.
Thousands of bones and skulls
A big chandelier and four girandoles
made out of lots of bones and skulls
A peaceful corner of the Ossuary
Coat of arms, made of bones and skulls
After all this macabre art, I was good to be out in the open air again....
unfortunately, the sky was no longer blue but very clouded with dark clouds.
We left Kutna Hora quickly because we hoped to outrun the rain.
The clouds were getting darker
At a few minutes past eleven, we filled out tanks at "Ulhlavni Podebrady"
and I got my rain trousers on. Not a minute to soon because we did not manage
to outrun the rain.
....and then it started to rain
Fortunately, it was not raining very hard and we had some dry spells between
the rain showers.
Riding through another Czech village
The last twenty five kilometer to Horni Misecky was on a beautiful winding
road through the forest, next to a small river, right into the Giant Mountains.
This is the kind of road that I really like.
A wonderful road next to a small river
Because of the raindrops on my windshield, I could not take good pictures with
my dashboard camera so I parked the GoldWing on the side of the road to take a
few pictures.
What a beautiful scenery !
The last few kilometer of the mountain road to Horni Misecky was a little more
challenging because the road was under (re)construction and the road surface was a
little more difficult to ride in the rain with a lot of gravel and dirt on the
road and traffic lights on a narrow passage (I like a little "adventure riding"
but Dick did not like riding there very much, but he did fine anyway).
Waiting for the traffic light
A little after half past twelve, we arrived at Pension (guesthouse) Yveta and
tried to park our bikes on the sloped parking lot. Unfortunately, Dick droped
his bike and broke one pannier attachment of his BMW pannier.
With the two of us, we got the bike back on his wheels. Beside the broken pannier
attachment, there were just a few minor scratches and nothing serious.
On the parking lot, after we had put
the BMW with the shiny side up again
After this little incident, we had the bikes neatly parked on the side of the
parking lot and went to Pension Yveta.
Our bikes at the parking lot
There was nobody there but on the window next to the door was a note with a
phone number and when Dick called, the owner, Lenka, came to open the door
for us.
Lenka, the friendly owner of Pension Yveta
The restaurant was higher on the mountain and for a coffee and our lunch
we had to walk through a field with sheep to get there.
It was a nice restaurant with good coffee and delicious cheese sandwiches.
The daughter of the owner, translated our order from English to Czech
for us.
A nice cup of coffee in the restaurant
The field we had to walk through, to get to the restauarant
Back at the guesthouse, we got on the internet to book rooms in Dresden in
Germany because that is were we will go to tomorrow.
We booked two rooms in Kim Hotel Dresden at Gompitzer Hohe 2 in Gompitz,
Dresden.
There should be a tram from the front of the hotel to the city center of
Dresden so it looks perfect.
Dick went to his room and I went outside for a walk to explore the
surroundings. It is a thousand meter above see level and in winter this
is a wintersport area.
A ski lift for the wintersporters
The building on the right is Pension Yveta
At half past five, we walked through the field up the hill to the restaurant
again to have coffee and dinner. After dinner we payed for the meals, coffee and
the rooms and we got a nice surprise. We booked the rooms for fourty two euros
each but because we had only one person per room, we had to pay only thirty euros
per room.
Before it got dark, Dick needed to fix his pannier attachment and with a few
cable ties and straps, Dick managed to get the pannier solid to the frame.
Cable ties make a great pannier attachment
Tomorrow we will ride to Decin next to the river Elbe and try to ride on roads on
the banks of the Elbe to Dresden.
Fortunately, for breakfast, we do not have to walk to the restaurant because
breakfast will be served in the guesthouse.
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