Day 5 & 6 (Kotna Hora & Vienna)

So today we left the Czech Republic behind us and head for Vienna, Austria where we've got another 2 night stay *bounce*. The only scheduled stop on the way was in Kotna Hora to see a church where a very bored monk has created sculptures from human skulls and other bones. I think it may well be the weirdest tourist attraction that I've ever visited..I certainly can't think of any other that's up in the same league as it.

In the centre of the church there was a skull & bone chandelier with four pillars underneath with more bones. Then in each of the four corners of the church there was a stack of bones/skulls that was incredibly high and wide. The info all seemed to be in Czech so I don't know the background story for the place for sure (think it's people who died from a plague) – reckon it's something that might be interesting to read up on. Very, very weird stuff – check out the photo album referenced below to see for yourself!

We had our first bus issue today – it didn't start up when we came back from looking at the bone art! It was quite worrying to see Martin walking down to the back with a screwdriver in his hand. When he got back on the bus he reverse rolled the bus out of the parking spot and slightly down the hill we were parked on and tried to start the engine again – thankfully it sprang into life. Apparently some people were cold on the bus so the heating was put on for an age...it reached sauna temperatures and I was about ready to pass out.

When we got back on the road I watched some tv shows and kept an eye out on what was going on with the landscape outside of the bus. The most random sight of the day has to have been the row of theme restaurants and amusement park places we saw before we passed the village of Jetzeldorf. There was a medieval place with a giant dragon, a huge globe, a restaurant in an airplane, an American style casino and some kind of animal world. The strange thing was that these were out in the middle of nowhere..if they were on the outskirts of a town then fair enough, but it was like they'd just been plonked down on a free bit of land – like Field of Dreams, if we build it, they will come.

We made good time getting to Vienna which was great, especially given how lovely the hostel was (Meninger Hostel Vienna). We had free wifi in the reception area again, the location was extremely central and the rooms were top notch. The place was more like a hotel than a hostel really! Rather than spending another fortune on restaurant food the vast majority of us took advantage of the kitchen in the basement to cook up a storm of microwave meals, salads and pasta dishes. Loonie and I had pasta stuffed with spinach with a red pesto sauce, melted mozzerella and some delicious brown bread. Delicious and much cheaper than we've been paying for eating out recently!

We had a full day in Vienna on May 29th to go explore the city, so that we did. Loonie wanted to visit some museums and galleries, and I was more on for exploring the city to find the Butterfly House and Planetarium so after heading out pretty early (with our packed lunch made from the all you can eat breakfast buffet at the hostel) and going to the Imperial Palace to see the morning training session for the Spanish Riding school we headed off separately. I wasn't sure that I wanted to pay €12 to get in to see some horses exercising, but it was actually very good. They have 5 or 6 horses out for 30 minutes at a time trotting them around a fabulous arena (I think it must have been a ballroom in the Palace) before bringing out a different set of horses. The brochure for the place said that it's not always possible to see them training the horses to jump (straight up in the air – no fence involved), but I saw not 1, not 2, but 4 jumps total in the hour and a bit that I watched for. Within the second set of horses I watched there was a single bay amongst all the grey who was phenomenal. It trotted sideways the entire length of the arena, making it through two poles set a little more than a horse width apart in the centre of the arena – crazy stuff!

After leaving the horses I joined up with Mel, Abby & Sara for a portion of the day (they went for coffee at the palace while I went into the Butterfly House). I wasn't sure what to expect with the Butterfly House, whether it was going to be live ones or a museum showing the different species so I was very pleasantly surprised to find it to be a big conservatory/glasshouse at one side of the palace. It was very beautiful in there, definitely somewhere you could spend an hour or two relaxing (if only they had more than on bench – reckon it's a strategic lack of them in there).

When I managed to tear myself away from the butterflies the four of us made our way to Prater to find the Giant Ferris wheel with a stop off at the Cathedral and a costume shop en route. It was pretty big, but I've seen bigger to be honest. The impressive thing about it was that instead of having the normal little bucket shapes or pods for people to get into to go around on it, there were wooden cabin shaped things that held 14 people. I waited until later that evening when I met up with Loonie again to go up on it – I rediscovered my dislike for heights..what am I going to be like skydiving?? Next to the fairground was the Planetarium that I wanted to go to. I bought my ticket, got inside the IMAX and sat down waiting for the show to start – it was in German! I understood some of the words for the star signs but not much else if I'm honest. It was cool to sit back and look at the stars though, and I was even able to pick out a few constellations.

Loonie eventually found Prater after getting lost a few times, so in addition to the ferris wheel we went on a water ride in the fairground..twice! The first time down I took a video clip of her, the second time down she tried to take one of me (but it didn't come out properly). It was great craic..we were laughing our heads off the whole way down. We were sat into a pod like a walzter with a rubber tube on the bottom, which was then raised up to the top of the big slide on a lift that twisted us around and around until we got up there. Then we were released onto the slide and the pod spun around in circles in the opposite direction to the spirals of the slide, very fast! So fast in face that Loonie was thrown sideways and couldn't get back up so was left clinging for dear life laying across half the pod..hilarious!

Vienna was wonderful, and like Brugge is somewhere I'd consider revisiting in future. The hostel was fab so I'd definitely use them again.

For photos from Kotna Hora and Vienna click here.