Prague: Kunta Hora and last day – 4 & 5 January 2007

Today was my first proper day on my own so I decided to try and do the Kunta Hora day trip. I got up early (even after last nights sleeplessness) and went to book in for the 9:30am tour. Unfortunately the tour doesn’t run of Thursdays so I decided to look around and try and find the one I saw advertised earlier that went in the afternoons. I wandered through the Jewish district which was pretty cool and bought a Golem – I didn’t know but the Golem folktale comes from the Jewish community, maybe even the Jewish community in Czech.

On my wandering I had just about given up finding the tour company and was heading back to the hostel when I saw it. It was a little dearer than the one that goes in the morning, but I managed to book into an English speaking tour for Thursday afternoon. I went and did a little bit of shopping – bought some new ankle boots and a few other bits and pieces and then went back to the hostel.

Kunta Hora was pretty good. I thought the tour was going to be too short. It only went for 5 hours and half of that time was spent in the bus but there really isn’t too much to see in Kunta Hora. It would be nicer in the spring, but it was still a good trip.

First of all we went to Baroque Ossuary – the bone cathedral. It’s quite small, but has a chandelier that is made up of every bone in the human body. The coat of arms was even made of bones and each corner had a kind of statue or altar type thing in it – also made of bones. We only had about 20 minutes there, but it was enough.

Next it was back on the bus to St. Barbara Cathedral (she was the patron saint of miners). It was absolutely freezing inside. I had on gloves, beanie, all my layers and I was still cold. It was colder inside than outside! Then we walked along to the Italian Royal Court & Mint. We got a tour of the mint and they told all about the silver mining and the coins they used to make. Kunta Hora used to be as big and as important as Prague but when the silver mine dried up so did the town. There is still silver in the ground, but it’s too deep to get out. Not cost effective or safe to keep mining it.

As it was my last night I decided to go out for dinner. I got a nice pasta and had a couple of glasses of wine (in fact I woke up more hung over from two glasses of wine than I did from all the beers I’ve drunk all week!).

Friday was my last day in Prague. After I’d packed up my stuff and checked out of the hostel I had my last bagel at the Bohemian Bagel shop and spent 2 hours reading the paper. Then I wandered round the Jewish Quarter and the shops and did a little more shopping (I bought a Prague t-shirt to wear to the gym).

After that I had a late lunch then got my stuff and went to the airport. I was at the airport way too early but I was out of money and decided I could sit there and read while I waited. The only downside of being there so early was that I finished my book just as we were taking off. Luckily they had an English paper so I read that between naps on the flight home.

Anyways, 4 hours later I arrived back in Cairo… I thought 2am would be pretty quite but two other planes had landed at the same time. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the chaos of Cairo. I was stood in the passport control ‘line’ – Egyptian don’t line up, they kind of mill around in groups and randomly push their way to the front. While I was in the ‘line’ there were about 6 people in front of me but because of how they were standing there was a gap of about 2 bodies worth in front of me. This stupid guy beside me tried to push past me to the gap, even though there were still 6 other people there. I kinda blocked him and he said ‘oh you go first’ and I said ‘there are 6 people in front of us!!’.

Anyways, I finally made it through passport control and I was waiting at the baggage carrousel. There was a security guard standing right next to where the bags came out. In the 10 minutes or so I was waiting for my bag at least 4 bags fell off the carrousel, one right next to the security guard. He just looked at, then went back to staring out into space. I couldn’t believe how useless he was. I went over and put it back onto the carrousel.

Anyways, finally got my bag, Ahmed (driver man) was waiting for me at the gate and so by about 3:30am I was home nice and safe. It felt so warm after Prague – it was about 13 degrees I think.

So another adventure over. Prague is just lovely, I recommend it to anyone, but it’d be best to go before they go onto the Euro… Aussie to Koruna is quite a good exchange rate, much better than Aussie to Euro!