This weekend Holly and I went to Krakow, Poland. It took about 8 hours by train. The first leg was 6 hours and we had this sleeping car. The last 2 hours sucked, from 5-7am we had to stand in the hallway because there were no open cars. And there were some creepy looking guys.
Our dorm room at Mamas Hostel. We arrived shortly after 7am and got to check in. It was easy to find, just about 5 min from the train station. Since we hadn't slept well on the train we went back to sleep till about 10am.
Gothic Mariacki Church
Coffee, sun, Poland- what could be better?!
On the first day we walked around Krakow and went to different cafes. Krakow is just the kind of city I like. Lots of small cafes, open space, parks and whatnot. It wasn't even very touristy. In Prague everything is aimed at tourists, with so many souvenir shops. I actually had to search for post cards in Krakow. The city was really easy to navigate and not that big, we walked all over.
Awesome Obama Mama bagel
Corpus Christi Church
Castle and Church
Cathedral Wawel
Polish money- 3zloty=$1=20czech kroun...It was so confusing going from the CZ where I'm used to paying about 100-500 for things, and now paying like 30 for food. The prices were good, about the same as the CZ, so the most expensive thing for us was the train ride. Which was about $150- which was too much! I'll be taking the bus next time.
Wielickza Salt Mines 125m underground. This was really cool. The rooms were big and spacious. I have no idea how they made it. All the statues are created from sand as well. We even got to taste some of the salt water. Totally different from ocean salt water.
Holly and I aren't the biggest fans of eating meat, but seeing as we were in Poland, we had to eat a Polish sausage. It was very yummy! There was a festival going on in the main square for Easter with lots of venders selling hunks of meat. I had a shish-kebab type of thing.
"Work will make you free" the famous sign from the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps. This was the largest camp and about 1.1 million people were killed at Birkenau. We only got to go to Auschwitz, which was mostly a work camp. The majority of the exterminations were at Birkenau. The craziest thing was the tree lined streets, it actually looks like college dorms. It was not eerie like Hiroshima, Phnom Pehn, or Pearl Harbor which surprised me.
The local beer in Krakow was quite tasty. We met Chris at our hostel, he's from the US but lives in Berlin. The train ride back was nice, we didn't have to change trains and we got our own room again. There were lots of warnings about stuff getting stolen on the train to and from Praha, so it was nice to have our own room to lock. The train was so rocky though, it was a bit scary at times, and it felt like the train would roll off the tracks!
All in all, it was a great trip and everything went smoothly
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