Who goes to Prague in Winter?

Once upon a time... Stu & Al skipped to Prague. After battling airport security and loose pants, we made it aboard. Who's ever heard of SkyEurope airlines? Not us, but it must be noted their flight attendants are much more comely than the has-beens that are in Qantas' employ. Hey, a happy (and hard) passenger is a cooperative one. One could have mistaken Prague airport for Alaska. Visibility was down to 30 feet, the cold post-communist mist hanging around like a bad dictator (haha, ahem). Apparently it was -2, but I hear once you go sub-zero, your extremities cant tell the difference. The Revolution brought Pragueans many things - one of which is the right to spend Christmas Eve with their family. Thus, practically the entire airport was a ghost town, and about 40 freezing travellers were left out in the cold (literally). All we wanted was to be home for Christmas damnit – what was this, a Hollywood movie?

We arrived shaken from our drivers apparent contempt for human life (or maybe just ours). Knocking on the doors of Hotel Kettner, it seemed no-one was home - the hotel was closed. Seems our booking never made it through (that, or my credit card details had been re-routed to the KGB). We trudged a few blocks and after bewildering some locals with our question on directions (the general response from locals is a frown and a grunt) we found another hotel which was open. Hallelujah - we were saved.

The sun was shining but it had no heat to it per-se. Must be the Ozone layer or something (pfft who needs one of those - not Australia!). A highlight was Prague Castle. We both stood in awe of the Castle lit up against the darkening blue sky (did we mention it gets dark there at 4.30pm?). The photos dont do it justice, but this gothic church was definately worth the trek.

We'd figured we'd earned a decent meal, and what better choice to make than the fine local Czech cuisine. A round of your best processed meats sir! Stu opted for the '3 meats/3 dumplings /3 cabbages in vinegar' while Alyssa got the 'tough-as-old-boots beef'. Neither was particularly memorable. They did however serve us up some fine Absinthe and Jagermeister, which Alyssa sculled and Stu choked on.

The next day we trained out to Kutna Hora, a place we really knew nothing about. It had a Bone Church and thats all it needed. I could reel off facts about the thousands that lost their lives to the black plague, or the stories of the mad priest who collected their bones and decorated a church with them, but frankly we were a bit too weirded out to remember any details.