KRAKOW, POLAND 2023

TRIP TO KRAKOW

FEBRUARY 2023

We had done one other city break in Budapest, and were really impressed with the place and what you could get done mid-week.

Krakow had always been on the radar to visit so, after talking to our local travel agent, we booked it!

We unfortunately had a late flight from Manchester, so you sort of 'lose' a day. We had decided on four nights, as heard many people say three was too rushed.

With the sun setting nicely, and a clear sky, we were ready to go!

We arrived in Krakow in darkness. However, what I thought was frost on the fields surrounding the airport, turned out to be SNOW!

Our airport entry was quick and quiet. We were used to far busier times, but we think the late flight was the reason. Anyway, deboarded and installed in our hotel, we set off to explore Krakow old town and find food.

The hotel, called the Rezydent, is right in the old town, so really well positioned. It was, for us, quite sufficient.

It was COLD! About -6C, but we expected this and wrapped up accordingly. We quickly selected a bar/cafe in the main square, ordered food and our first cocktails,

All around the square, these bars have large gazebos with plastic sheets enclosing them. They also run heaters, which makes things nice and cosy. The surrounding buildings, lit up at night, are beautiful.

This is the main church, St Mary' basilica. It is the main attraction.There's a story as to the unequal tower heights, but more of that later.

(Please turn your sound up high to hear this)

Every hour, on the hour, 24/7, a lone bugler plays a tune from the highest tower of St Mary's. The tune suddenly stops...... The legend is, a young (12 years old) boy played a warning to the town as the Tartars approached to invade. He was killed by an arrow, so never got to finish his warning. The tradition is proudly upheld to the present day.

To me, a city lit up at night is the most beautiful thing.

Krakow is no exception.

Our venue chosen - time to select the food.

Even though it was late, 10:15PM, there was loads of choice of places still serving food.

I just HAD to try this traditional sausage and boiled egg soup,

served in a loaf!

It was gorgeous.

THE OLD TOWN GUIDED WALK

The next morning we were sent to the dungeon!

Our breakfast kitchen was in a sort of cellar. We were to find out that most houses had this sort of thing beneath them.

The breakfast choice was mostly cold continental style, with a warm spicy sausage, and a scrambled egg dish as a different choice.

I must admit, after five days it DID get a bit boring, but it was still satisfactory, and the server was always on the ball with keeping things topped up etc.

Quite quirky! We actually loved this setting for breakfast.

The next morning, we had two walking tours tours booked.

The first was the Old Town. We went with a group called 'Walkative'. You book, and you pay what you think is fair.

We set off through the snow to meet up with our guide at Florian's gate.

This was our guide. Her English was perfect, and she was very knowledgeable about Poland in general, and Krakow in particular.

If you go to Krakow (or any other city), we always think it's a good idea to do this kind of tour early to familiarise yourself with the main parts.You can then get more of a feel when you're exploring on your own.

This was a lovely bronze topographic plate, which our guide used to great effect to explain many things about the town and it's history.

St Mary's basilica in the cold light of day.

The cloth house, situated in the centre of the main square.

There are stalls selling - well, what I would call tat!

There are also many stalls inside selling amber, but it's comparatively expensive.

Look up - you see this. What is it?

The story of the unequal towers on St Mary's basilica goes as follows;

Two brothers, who were builders, were tasked with building the two towers for the church. The older, more experienced and faster brother finished first and goaded his younger brother. In a fit of anger, the younger brother got into a fight with him, and stabbed his older brother. Consumed with guilt at what he'd done, he then climbed to the top of the church tower and threw himself off.

Hanging in an outer archway of the cloth hall is this!

It's supposedly the very knife the brother murdered his sibling with.

The town hall tower.

Just one of many cellar bars in the town.

The library of the University. There is a very fancy clock here, but it's not old. It was built very recently for tourists!

The clock.

WOT YOU LOOKIN' AT??

One of many interesting carvings around the town.

Next, our guide took us outside the city walls to Wawel castle.

We didn't actually go inside (as this was a guided walk) but we went up the ramparts and admired the castle from there.

After our guide gave us the history of the castle, we walked down to the Vistula river below to see - THE DRAGON!

Legend has it that the king offered the hand of his daughter, the princess, to anyone who killed the dragon.Many tried, but the successful candidate, a lowly commoner, did the deed and they both lived happily ever after (not the dragon though).

Don't believe in dragons? Well, here are the bones of the beastie, hanging in the castle.

How beautiful are these buildings? Krakow wasn't bombed during the war, so all the buildings and architecture are well preserved.

The courtyard of Wawel castle .

The fire breathing dragon!

THE JEWISH QUARTER GUIDED WALK.

We knew we'd be hungry later, so took a note of this restaurant's name, as they did traditional Polish food.

At the time of our visit, one GB pound was 5.3 zloty, so you can see how cheap the food is here. The alcohol used to be cheap too, but recently they have caught on that visitors are prepared to pay a premium, so prices are not far off the UK and europe.

Although, here in the back streets, things wer a bit cheaper. The cocktails here are around £4:50

Deciding what to have, while still wrapped up against the cold.

Now on our second guided walk of the day, the Jewish quarter, our guide took us to a very traditional bar for a talk on the history of what happened to the Jews leading up to the holocaust.

My very favourite cocktail, not always made well, but here - PERFECT!

A random sculpture, right in the middle of the bar room!

We had our own room for the talk.

I'm not sure what's going on here! 🤔

More like someone's living room than a pub!

The guide was very careful to explain we were in the Jewish quarter here - NOT the ghetto.

We reached this square, and the actual ghetto was just across the road from here. What were all those chairs, we wondered.

The horrific reality is - each chair represent one THOUSAND people who were lined up and shot in cold blood on this square, mainly Jews, and mainly the old, infirm or children that were of no use to the Nazis.

There are 32 chairs. 😢

The tour ended there. We thanked and paid our guide. We had a LOT of food for thought.

EXPLORING AT NIGHT.

Time for food for tummies.

We returned to the restaurant we'd seen earlier.

Not sure why we didn't try a cocktail - we ended up with two steins of beer?

Very pretty, but quite cool inside.

Cheers!

We had been told to try the dumplings, so we did.

These ones were fried, but we were to realise later that the best ones were boiled, or steamed.

This was a jazz bar, and became one of our favourite haunts. They had live music on most nights. Of course, it was down a lot of steps and in a cellar. Drinks here were more UK prices.

Shake it, shake it baby.

We passed this place - surely a fish restaurant?

My son had seen this, and said it looked interesting. A games bar called Cyber Machina, where there were lots of consoles, both new and retro, that you could play on. We just observed.

A pound a shot!

On the advice of a friend, that night we went to a restaurant called Kogel Mogel, as he said they served the best dumplings. BOY was he right! It's a bit fancier than your average place, and the drinks prices reflect this (£5 for a glass of wine - £30 for a bottle), but we thought the food was very reasonable.

The dumplings - veal, in a chanterelle sauce - food of the Gods, I tell you! We usually swap starters halfway, so we can taste each others, but I was VERY reluctant to give any of this up!

But Sue said the soup was the best she'd ever tasted, so I swapped. Again, INCREDIBLE flavour.

My main was beef cheeks on a risotto. To be honest, it lacked the WOW factor, and I also thought the portion was small, and it was lacking one more thing on the plate.

Sue had the pork chop in breadcrumbs. Again, just look at it - surely there's a side of veg or something? No.

We decided to share a sweet. It was the house speciality called the

Kogel Mogel. It was Solaris wine, seasonal fruits, Whipped egg yolk, and it cost 30 zloty (£5:61)

Again, we were blown away! STUNNING flavour, and special it certainly was. We wish we'd ordered two 😍

We were left underwhelmed by the mains, but the starter and sweet MORE than made up for it.

All that was left was the walk back through the wonderful old town, maybe stopping for a nightcap.

AUSCHWITZ/BIRKENAU

We went to visit Auschwitz today.

We didn't take any pictures.

It just didn't seem right. 😢

The tour wass, we felt, very important and well done. We would say it has to be done, not only in respect of what happened, but to perpetuate the memory and learn from it.

WEILICZKA SALT MINES.

The day after our harrowing visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau, we visited the salt mines at Wieliczka . Lots of people had told us NOT to do the both things on one day, and I'm very glad we didn't.

It's 800 - yes 800 stairs down to the bottom of the salt mine. This is looking down the seemingly never-ending stairwell.

The mine is breathtaking in it's magnitude, and the structure of the place is just unbelievable! To think that this was ALL dug out by hand. Extract from their website;

In the 13th century, while one of the saline wells was being dug, the first lumps of rock salt were accidentally found. The discovery of the valuable raw material turned out to be revolutionary. It made it possible to obtain salt by mining methods – the first shaft leading underground was struck as early as the second half of the 13th century. Who did this? The latest research suggests that the extraction was carried out by local specialists, but the technological knowledge was brought from Western Europe.

The website can be accessed CLICK HERE

The mine is filled with examples of the workings of the miners over the years, from the very early days, right up to present day.

Some of the figures and icons are exquisite.

An old shaft.

Notice, everything is caked in salt.

We were walking on wooden pathways, but the old miners would have been crawling along salt floors. They must have had terrible skin problems.

All carved from rock salt.

This chamber, hewn out of the salt in the 15th century!!

16th century - before modern tools and lighting.

What a world they lived in!

Everything encrusted in salt. So much so, that most of the timbers are original. No bacteria can live down the mine, so things don't rot.

Many models demonstrating how life was are evident around the mine, and were pointed out by our guide. It's all very well done.

Just when you think you can't be more amazed- THIS!

It's a HUGE, almost cathedral like cavern, again dug out by hand. People can come here to get married, and they also have church services regularly.

Lots of religious carvings and some papal stuff to commemorate his visit.

I mean - just LOOK at the detail in this.

Water was a problem in the mine, and had to be pumped or channeled out. The old miners devised many ways of moving or getting rid of it. This underground lake is even saltier than the dead sea!

There have been tours of the mine for many, many years. This was the site of a rare accident down there. Apparently some soldiers capsized a boat down there, and asphyxiated, due to lack of oxygen.

In the ubiquitous souvenier shop, they had some great examples of crystals.

Salt stalactites.

That's some chandelier!!

HUNTING GOOD BARS.

That night we headed out into town, looking for lively bars.

This one was great - a tap room with a huge choice of drinks.

Lively little place!

After our great experience at Kogel Mogel, we decided that's where we'd have our final meal. We both had the dumplings, and we both had the soup, skipping the unremarkable mains. We then had another of the house special sweets. A perfect end to our holiday.

Then a nightcap at another underground bar.

Again, really reasonable prices.

Mostly under £5

We also did the Schindler's factory tour on our penultimate day, but to be honest, it wasn't the most interesting thing. So much so, we didn't take any pictures inside. We had been given so much information by our walk guide that we felt we already knew most of it.

ST MARY'S BASILICA AND THE CZARTORYSKI MUSEUM.

We had an afternoon flight back, so spent the morning in and around the old town. This was the first time we'd been inside the St Mary's basilica. I don't think I've ever seen such opulence and ostentatious decoration. All in the name of religion.

The SIZE of that crucifix!!!

The organ, which I would LOVE to have heard playing.

The guide on day one had told us about a very special painting in one of the galleries here. It is a Da Vinci. His second most famous painting called; 'Lady with an Ermine', and recently valued at two BILLION dollars!