Cracovia

After our annual summer visit with our family in Czechia, Ellie and I went to another new European spot for a few days: Krakow, Poland! The train from our “home” station, Pardubice was a direct 5 hour run, which should have been good… however, it was 40 degrees out (like it was for most of our time in Europe this year), and the A/C was only partially working on the train. It was very tiring. Thankfully, after walking by this enticing kebab shop right across from the Kraków Główny (main) railway station, we were in our air conditioned hotel room in minutes and spent some time recovering before heading out into the Old Town.

Our first stop – the finest McMeals that Poland has to offer – our first McD’s visit on this trip! haha

And then to the Krakow Duck Store which had a very interesting selection of rubber ducks. We bought a few to take home!

The Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It reminded me a lot of the Old Town in Prague, except with wider streets and FAR less busy. The Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary dominates the main square, Rynek Główny.

Just like in Prague, the square is lined with many terraces of cafes and restaurants.

For a particular reason, I’ve had it in my mind for several decades that Poland is basically the home of the pigeon. The main square wasn’t disappointing in this regard, especially as the pigeons swarmed the tourists who were spreading bird food.

Here’s the Town Hall Tower, also in the Main Square.

There are a lot of ornate churches here, Poland being a strongly religious country. Just south of the main square is Saints Peter and Paul Church in the hot evening light. After an ice cream stop, that was about it for our evening: we had a really full day ahead tomorrow!

Our next morning started off with a trip to the town of Wieliczka, just southeast of Krakow. The main attraction is the Wieliczka Salt Mine, which was amazing. Especially on another hot day, being underground in a cool dark space sounded great!

The salt mine was started around 800 years ago, and operated continuously until 1996. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Down, down the stairs we go in one of the shafts on the tourist route. The first stairwell brings us down 64 metres below the surface.

Almost immediately we were walking through underground chambers populated by cool sculptures and statues.

The white, fluffy salt leaching from the walls was absolutely delicious! We stopped for several licks along the way!

There were wooden walls and shorings that were hundreds of years old, preserved by the salt.

One chamber had a scene of how salt was drawn from the depths in the old times.

Down we go some more…

The dwarf miners greeted us at the bottom of St Kinga’s shaft.

This is one of the real highlights of the tour – St Kinga’s Chapel, now 100 metres below the surface, in a huge cavern carved out of the salt.

You really have to be there to appreciate the scale of the place.

Another highlight, still down lower, is one of the underground brine lakes.

And then the largest chamber in the mine, supported by this massive wooden scaffolding system.

Another underground lake in another huge chamber. We’re at the bottom of the route now, 135 metres below; but less than halfway down the total mine depth.

It’s crazy to think that after walking for 2.5 hours, that we only cover 2% of the place on the tourist route. Thankfully there are elevators to bring you back topside. What a cool experience that should be on everyone’s list if in the area! Curiously, I was greeted by this sign in the restroom once we were back on the surface.

After a picnic lunch in shady spot in a park, and then about an hour’s drive, we arrived at the next stop of the day: the extermination camp Auschwitz. I guess I got it at the wrong angle to read it, but this is the infamous gate to the Auschwitz I camp stating “Arbeit macht frei” (Work Will Set You Free). About 1.1 million people were instead murdered in the Auschwitz camp complex, so much for work…

It’s hard to believe now especially on a hot summer day with gorgeous green trees and blue skies that over a million people were sent here to their deaths in just a short period of time, only 85 years ago.

There were a number of exhibits that were depressing just to see the sheer quantity of items taken from murdered prisoners. In this case, leg braces, crutches, and other mobility aids.

Or shoes.

The kids shoes was one of the saddest exhibits.

These colorful features were the coal stoves for heating the dorms. I can’t imagine it was very warm in there in the winter, but maybe it was, with dozens of people packing the rooms at night with barely any room to move.

The Death Wall in the courtyard of Block 11 was where thousands of prisoners met their deaths.

Sadly, while we were there, an American tourist and his teenage son took selfies in front of it. Talk about classless.

The tour goes through one of the gas chambers where prisoners were herded in naked, packed to the gills, and then cyanide gas crystals dropped through the ceiling and the vents sealed off.

Right next door was the crematorium where the bodies from the chamber were continuously fed into the ovens. The way it was explained to us, it was really just an industrial killing operation – the Nazis were constantly trying to optimize just how many prisoners they could murder and dispose of every day.

The outside of the gas chamber/crematorium building; very non descript.

Did I mention its hot out? The museum had a much nicer kind of gate set up at the entrance/exit. We took full advantage of it.

It was literally boiling out when we headed over to Birkenau (Auschwitz II) so the tour there was a bit abbreviated as it was mostly outside in the blazing sun.

Prisoners would be delivered in box cars like this and sorted on arrival for either work, temporary holding, or immediate extermination.

The tour goes inside one of the brick barracks.

Here’s one of the bunks. Each level of the bunk would have been home to 4 people for their time there.

It was just so hot out all day that Ellie didn’t have as much interest (enjoy is definitely not the right word) in the tour as possible. She was just thinking about getting back to some A/C and ice cold water for a lot of the time. Still, she learned a lot though and when this comes up for her in school, she’ll remember – I’ve been there.
Back to Krakow after 11 hours out and about, and we had an amazing pizza dinner at a small restaurant tucked away in a side street off the main square. The waitress told Ellie that she’s going to be a heartbreaker…

We ended our day with a nice walk back through the old town to our hotel.

I got out for an early morning walk before breakfast the following day while Ellie was still happily snoring away. In any city across the world, I always love experiencing these bustling spots when there are no or very few people. It feels totally different.

This is Planty, the park that nearly surrounds the old town.

This morning we’re going on a bike tour around Krakow. We went to the bike shop early, where we met a very friendly doggy.

It ended up being the two of us, and a couple from Belgium along with the tour guide – nice small group. We met the Belgian couple at the Adam Mickiewicz Monument (a famous poet) in front of the Sukiennice market hall.

We also got to see / hear (barely visible in this photo) the hourly trumpet call from the top of the church tower. The trumpet call is done in each direction, every hour on the hour, by a member of the Krakow Fire Brigade, whom works a 12 hour shift up there.

There are a lot of legends in Krakow that we heard about. One of them involves the church towers – why one is taller than the other. The builders of the towers were two brothers, and the legend goes that when one brother saw that the other tower would be taller, he stabbed his brother to death then took his own life with the same knife. Apparently this knife hangs in the Cloth Hall of the market…

We biked over closer to our hotel – stopping at the Grunwald Monument. This monument commemorates the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, where Poland and Lithuania joined forces to defeat the German Teutonic Order.

Just arond the corner is the Barbican, a 500 year old defense gate to the Old Town, now a museum.

We moved on to Collegium Novum (New College), the main building of Jagiellonian University.

This is the Archbishop’s Palace, of course with a painting of Pope John Paul II, perhaps Krakow’s most famous son.

Our cruiser bikes in a bit of shade from the blazing sun.

We cruised over next to Wawel Castle, which certainly warrants a separate visit rather than just moving on by.

A stop at Smok Wawelski, the fire breathing dragon, was fun! (Didn’t have my phone ready in time for the fire)

This is Hotel Forum, across the Vistula River, from the Communist days, where it was the designated hotel for foreigners, so they could see just how prosperous the Communist way of life was. It’s no longer a hotel.

Over in the Krakow Ghetto now, we had a rest and drink break in the Ghetto Heroes Square. The chairs, 70 of them in total, symbolize the furniture that was carried out into the square after the last of the Jewish Ghetto residents had been removed to concentration camps.

We stopped (along with some other tour groups) at one of the remaining fragments of the Ghetto wall – it was walled in similar to the Berlin wall. The wall was built by the Nazis in the same style as traditional Jewish tombstones, which we’d see shortly in the cemetery.

Onwards, past Oskar Schindler’s factory – another place deserving a dedicated visit.

It was a hot day for biking but Ellie did just great. We crossed back over the river into the Jewish Quarter.

Here’s what’s actually the New Jewish Cemetery, founded in 1800. If you look closely you can see those rounded tombstones, just like the Ghetto wall…

This is a 15th century synagogue – aptly named “Old Synagogue”.

We passed by Remah Cemetery – one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in Poland, dating from the mid 1500s. The New Jewish Cemetery replaced this one.

This apartment building was right across the street from the cemetery. You know you’re in Central or Eastern Europe when…

After the bikeride, we stopped at a traditional Polish restaurant for lunch. I had some delicious perogies!

Another beautiful church tucked away on a side street: Church Of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist.

This was my second visit to this particular gelato shop – yum!

Back we go out St. Florian’s Gate, exiting the old town to our hotel for a rest.

I didn’t catch what type of old car this was, but it was definitely cool!

Yes, it’s hot out… nothing new to see here.

We headed back to the square after some rest and air conditioning. We were meeting a friend of mine, and we were early so we perused the very touristy stalls in the Cloth Hall (inside the market building in the middle of the square).

Here’s us on a great terrace above the Cloth Hall for a drink with Jason, who lives in Krakow!

I don’t drink beer often but this seemed like the right time.

What a view! And, it was in the shade!

The three of us had a reservation for dinner at an amazing steakhouse called Salta back in the Jewish Quarter.. it was simply delicious.

After rolling back to the hotel on the tram, we had a relatively early night for our 4 am wakeup the next day. Loved the pretzels given on check out from the hotel!

And today, we’re heading back across the pond, heading to NYC for a short stay…. see you next year, Europe!