Are you sitting down? Yes? Okay good, because we are about to burst a travel bubble: Pompeii isn't all that great. If you're still planning on making an Italian pilgrimage this spring or summer and want to get the usual ration of ancient ruins, then please let us suggest taking a day trip to the less crowded but no less impressive Ostia Antica, the old port city for Rome.

Only some twenty miles outside of downtown Rome and accessible by extra-urban train lines (yay, no bus tours!), Ostia Antica is a playground of multi-story Roman ruins just waiting for you to run amok down its cobblestone streets and in its amphitheaters—after paying the €6.50 entrance fee, of course. Like Pompeii, the place is an active archaeological site packed with mosaics and frescos. Unlike Pompeii, Ostia wasn't destroyed by a flippin' volcano, meaning that most of the city is as intact as possible for a place that's been booming since the 3rd century BC. ]]> JetSetCD 2009-04-22T15:16:42-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/4/15/101044/024

When it comes to visiting Paris, there seem to be a few unspoken rules regarding being a perfect tourist: complain about the line at the Louvre, attempt to order your coffees in French, gasp at the interior of the Opéra Garnier, and give Paris a day off by heading outside of the town to Le Château Versailles. For anything less than a 5-day trip to the City of Lights, we'd stick to the city and its Art Nouveau and gateaux, but longer visits necessitate the break from Paris that Versailles affords. ]]> JetSetCD 2009-04-15T13:23:23-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/4/14/93747/7427

Some tourists head to Prague for the Czech beer. Others, apparently, head to a spot nearby Prague instead, for the piles of bones.

We first heard about the Church of Bones--formally known as the Kostnice Ossuary--when Ewan McGregor stopped in here during his Long Way Round motorbike odyssey. It's a creepy collection of over 40,000 human skeletons, with all these bones carefully arranged by monks to decorate a small Catholic chapel. The skeletons are thought to be remains of people who died in the 14th and 15th centuries, but no matter how old they are, seeing the skulls staring out at you all around the church is more than a little disconcerting.

But it's fascinating, and easy to get to on a day trip out of Prague to a town called Kutna Hora. You can take the hour-long bus trip from central Prague for about $6 return and once you get there, admission costs 50 Czech crowns ($2.50). We recommend not souveniring any bones on this trip; a 500-year-old skull might be quite hard to explain at customs.

Related Stories:
· Church of Bones - Kostnice Ossuary [Official Site]
· Czech Beer Still Tasty After NYT Treatment [Jaunted]
· Ewan McGregor Completes 20 Country Motorcycle Tour [Jaunted]

[Photo: lyng883] ]]> amandak 2009-04-14T12:31:19-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/