Krakow

21 May - Day 67

Today we packed up and left Budapest to head to Krakow in Poland after briefly stopping for gas and to spend the rest of our Hungarian florints at Tesco.

Our 6 hour drive took us through Slovakia and was pretty uneventful. We did stop at a few points for pictures and food.

We arrived in Krakow amid rush hour traffic at 3 in the afternoon and checked into our hotel/apartment thingy. Then we went out for a wander and to withdraw some Polish szloti. After not being able to open the bank door for a few minutes, a taxi driver came up and showed us how it worked so we were able to get some money and go buy dinner.

 

22 May - Day 68

This morning to were to go on another free walking tour. We walked into town and met our guide, Dorothy (whose name is actually the Polish equivalent but I forget what it is), in the main market square.

Once a group of about 40 of us were gathered, we set off. The walk took us out of the city walls, stopping regularly at points of interest and learning about various aspects of Krakow and Poland's history. One particularly memorable stop was outside the Bonerowski Palace, a 5 star hotel (formerly the mansion of a wealthy German family) that had to change to change its name from the much more hilarious Boner Palace when English-speaking visitors started coming to Krakow.

Once we were outside the city wall, we turned around and headed back into the city on the 'royal walk', the route that the old monarchs would walk on the day of their coronation.

Stopping back in the main market square, we listened to the hourly bugle played from the one of the St Mary Cathedral towers which is weird in that the melody abruptly stops halfway through. In the old days, this was played if the tower watchman saw an approaching invading army and they say that the sudden stopping of the melody came about when the Mongolian army showed up and bow-and-arrowed the trumpeter to death before he finished playing it, but this is actually a lie.

The walk took us up to the castle on Wawel Hill. One of the Polish kings burnt some of it down while doing alchemy experiments and then decided to move the capital from Krakow to Warsaw, which Krakowians are still bitter about.

Then we walked down the other side of the hill to the river, where we saw the statue of a dragon who once ate a boatload of sulfur, drank too much water and exploded. It breathed actual fire and that was pretty neat.

 

We had lunch back in the main square and then went to check out the cinema. Wednesday was two-for-one tickets so we ended up seeing Battleship and The Dictator back to back.

For dinner, we went to a Polish restaurant recommended to us by the the tour guide where we ate a whole lot of pork.