Krakow Feb 2016

Krakow

My reasons for booking a trip to Krakow were the following:

1. It was a destination I could fly to for very cheap from a local airport (like £30 return) in early Feb
2. There seemed to be a decent chance of snow there and we like snow
3. Someone at work had mentioned it was nice a few years ago
4. One of the top attractions on tripadvisor was Lost Souls Alley, which appealed to our love of being scared

Not the most solid reasons, and if I wasn't going holiday-booking crazy (this was booked shortly before we were heading off to Japan, and we already had Mexico planned in the same year too) then I probably wouldn't have done it. I am so glad I did though!



Main Square at night, I knew we were in for a good trip as soon as we got here!

Getting there:

We flew into Krakow, and unfortunately exited the airport, leading to some confusing wandering aimlessly in the street before realising that I'd read that the airport was right next to the train station so they were probably linked in some way. A minor detour through a carpark later and we were back on track and in the train station! Turned out you didn't need to leave the airport- there was a walkway into the train station, but hey ho! New cities are for getting lost in!

The train was ridiculously cheap, it cost about £1.50 each to get the direct and comfortable train 25mins to the city centre! The ticket machine had an English language option, and we knew we were headed to Krakow Glowny so it couldn't have been easier.

We got a little bit lost again trying to get from the train station to our hotel as we were staying just outside of the old town, foolishly we'd thought it would be ok to find as it's just the other side of a little park thing... except the little park thing surrounds the old town! With some map checking we figured it out and tracked down our hotel, an easy enough walk once we knew what we were doing and less than 10mins from the door to the main square.



Food and drink

Sampling the beers

I wasn't sure what to expect, but everything I ate was tasty, generously portioned, and cheap as chips even in the tourist trap of the main square! There was a variety of different restaurants to choose from so plenty of choice when it came to menus too.

Beer was the cheapest thing to drink, but not being a beer drinker I mostly hit the cocktails (still cheap by UK standards but pricey compared to other drinks on the menu) and sampled a couple of vodkas. One night we decided to drink in the hotel instead of heading out as my friend wasn't feeling great, and there were 'alkohole's everywhere so finding places to acquire booze was easy-peasy for an even cheaper night of drinking!

My fancy vodka

Things to do

Our itinerary went something like this:

Day 0: Find hotel, dinner, and then bed

Day 1: Head off early to Auschwitz & Birkenau. Get back to the hotel mid afternoon, chill, and then head to the main square to do a free walking tour (the Macabre tour) in the evening.

Auschwitz

For Auschwitz we did a tour with Escape2Poland and whilst we could have done it a bit cheaper ourselves were really glad we paid a little bit extra as we got picked up from our hotel, driven to Auschwitz (a documentary video was played on the minibus which filled us in on the history), then we were taken on a tour of Auschwitz before being driven on to Birkenau, a tour there, and then back to our hotel.
The girls found it quite an emotional experience, our partners with their hearts of stone just found it interesting. I think it's a must-do experience, it felt huge and important whilst we were there and the memories will stay with me. Don't be tacky and take selfies, like one woman we saw posing against an execution wall. Whilst we were walking through Birkenau it started snowing and it just felt even more stark and even more difficult to imagine living there in weather like that in the conditions they lived in.

Entrance to Birkenau

Fortunately when we got back to our hotel we'd got free donuts in our rooms! Turns out we were there on Fat Thursday, which seems to be a Shrove Tuesday kind of deal! The sugar was welcome :)

The Macabre walking tour, through http://freewalkingtour.com/krakow/ was really good fun and some much needed light relief after a heavy day. Our tour guide was really entertaining and we were happy to leave a good tip at the end. The tipping thing wasn't pushy at all, the tour is free so it's up to you if you tip, but if you enjoy it you should, I searched on tripadvisor to get an idea of what's a good tip as it's tricky when you're tipping in a foreign currency and you don't have a base price to work out a percentage of!


Demonstration of a medieval punishment
on the Macabre walking tour

Day 2: Foods of Krakow walking tour, Rynek Underground Museum, and Lost Souls Alley

Random guy on our walking tour getting some pierogi to try...
I was too busy eating to get pics of my own friends/husband!

Another free tour from freewalkingtour.com (you'll notice a trend here!) and this one was just as good! They aren't kidding when they advise to ensure you have plenty of change on you- at each place you stop you only spend 1 or 2 zloty so it's much easier to have lots of small coins! We tried a variety of things from the parent of the bagel, through pierogi, and soup, to a kind of stew. Mostly little sampler sizes though which is perfect otherwise you'd be stuffed before you got halfway! My highlight of the tour was the vodka & herring bar, which does exactly what it says on the tin: you do a shot of vodka, and follow it with a small portion of herring (and there are as many varieties of herring as there are of vodka, the one with sour cream was really nice).


Vodka and Herring bar

We had some time to fill so we headed to Rynek Underground Museum, which we'd liked the sound of when we read about it online. It was an interesting place to visit but we didn't spend ages there, we were definitely in and out in less than an hour.

In the evening we did Lost Souls Alley. It wasn't as scary as I'd hoped (tripadvisor reviews had me thinking I'd be in tears!), but still sufficiently scary that for a good while afterwards I felt like I was still trying to catch my breath- I must have been holding it all the way round! It felt a little like we were being rushed at times, but I would still recommend it. I'd liken it to the saw attraction at Thorpe Park, but with a problem solving element and they will touch you!



Lost Souls Alley... sooo dark!

Day 3: Old Town and Jewish Krakow tours

More tours from freewalkingtour.com! By this point we felt we'd covered the old town ourselves but we actually still learnt lots, and we also went up to Wawel on this tour which was good as it was somewhere I'd wanted to go. After this tour we nipped back to the hotel (not far from Wawel) and then headed back into the main square to catch the Jewish Krakow tour.

This tour was really informative and we covered lots of ground, I wouldn't recommend doing both tours on the same day as we were quite shattered after this one, but that's just the way it fell.

In the evening we'd planned to head into Kazimierz to drink (so far we'd only had a couple of drinks in a little cocktail bar near the main square, and wanted to sample the nightlife in Kazimierz which sounded great), however it wasn't to be, so 3 of the 4 of us tried our hand at another escape game (Challenge Accepted) and the 4th went back to the hotel room poorly :( . We did not do well at Challenge Accepted but we enjoyed our first attempt at a proper escape game and I'd do it again!

Day 4: Wieliczka Salt Mine & St Mary's

We checked out of our hotel and headed off to the salt mine! An easy train ride from the centre out to the salt mine, unlike Auschwitz I'd definitely recommend going by yourself rather than paying for a hotel pick up etc. You join a tour when you get there, and English language tours leave pretty frequently (timetable on the Wieliczka website). It was an interesting tour, the highlight of which was the chapel of St Kinga, it was breathtaking!

After we got back to the city we had some lunch and then went to check out St Mary's, which we hadn't planned on visiting, but the guide on the Old Town tour had recommended going inside so we did, and wow was I glad we did: I've never seen anything so ornate in my life!



St Mary's from outside, I didn't get a photo pass to take pics inside unfortunately, but google it!

Sadly then our time was up so we had to head home, but we started planning our next Polish trip before we even left the country!

Overall impressions

I'd heard Polish people could be cold and unfriendly (even from one of our Polish tour guides!) but we only experienced that in one bar, which could happen anywhere! Generally people were friendly and we felt comfortable there.

I'd heard the food was stodgy, and yes there was stodge available, but everything I ate was great and there was lots of choice!

The city was beautiful, and there was more to do than we could fit into our 4 day break, so I would 100% recommend it to anyone!