Moravian Karst

We’ve travelled around 190km today and still managed to fit in some bizarre and interesting things. In the interest of research into other cultures our first stop was at the Sedlec Ossuary just down the road from our last nights accommodation in Kutna Hora. We found a smallish chapel in the middle of a cemetery, the interior of which was decorated with the bones of (an estimated) 40000 people. There is even a chandelier made from human bones along with a representation of the coat of arms of the local noble family. And nearby is the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist, a restored gothic cathedral. As you will have noticed we’re visiting our share of cathedrals but we are still enjoying them, each one is different and they are all beautiful and awe-inspiring.

Three hours on the road followed some of it on small local roads and some on major motorways. The motorways are mostly paved with concrete and older ones have deteriorated badly, especially in the slow or truck lanes, there are often large cracks between sections and often the centre of a section has sunk so the ride is bone jarring, and with a speed limit of 130km/h we were not very comfortable.

Our  destination  for the day was the Moravian Karst area north of the city of Brno. The area is riddled with limestone caves and we visited the most popular of them, the Punkva Cave. The tour walks you through a series of natural caves some with excellent formations, stalagmites and tites, and into an enormous cavern open to the sky where, sometime in the past, the roof had caved in. The caves are joined by man made passages but the highlight of the trip was that the second half was through water filled caverns on an electric boat. The whole place was beautifully set up with good lighting, concrete paths and steps with stainless steel handrails but (perhaps because we could not understand the Czech commentary) it all felt a bit like a production line.