Day 45 - Krakow, Poland

Today we had nothing planned apart from the thought a walking tour would be nice to fit in for the Jewish area and maybe a tour of the Wieliczka Salt Mine. We didn’t want a too early start so we decided to do the walking tour for 10.30am. We had breakfast in the accomodation (side note: this accommodation is great for location but the aircon doesn’t even pump out air properly so we are getting hot at night - it’s what you get in cheap accommodation!)

We set off for our day and stopped off at Stary Kleparz, a local farmers market that is set up daily. We grabbed a coffee here from a local coffee shop, in one corner is the coffee machine, another corner the coffee roaster machine, and a heap of coffee bags everywhere else!

We walked through old town towards the Jewish Ghetto area. Our tour starts at the Old Synagogue, this is the oldest Synagogue in Krakow but they don’t actually know the date it was built… somewhere between 1407 - 1490’s, somewhere around there! We walked through the Kazimierz district where a lot of Jews were at Synagoga Remu for one of their Rabbi’s festivals - seemed like a party inside going off at 10:45am.
The guide took us through the catholic area of Kazimierz where there are 3 churches which you can see from Plac Wolnica, the main square of the area. We went over the most recently built bridges in Krakow, Father Bernatek’s Bridge, which has sculptures of acrobats by artist Jerzy Kedziora hanging in the middle of the bridge. This leads to the Jewish Ghetto where we stopped to see the front of St. Joseph’s Church which is a gothic style church, this the edge of the Ghetto but originally was planned by the Nazi’s to be in the Ghetto. We walked through the area that once was gate one of the Jewish Ghetto through the war, walking the streets it was hard to imagine the amount of Jewish people the Nazi’s put here during the war to be housed. Our tour finished at Plac Bohaterow Getta, an artist piece with empty chairs in the square, each chair represents 1000 Jews that died from the Ghetto.
The tour was good, felt like we should of watched Schindler’s list first as there were many references to that unfortunately.

For lunch we found a place right where the tour ended called Matt’s Cheesesteaks, we had a burger and I had to have an oreo shake, it was good and as a follow Matt, I recommend the food and Matt’s sauce.

We took the train out to Wieliczka Salt Mine, Katie was somewhat happy to come down the 135m underground so we had booked tickets for both of us. On the way down there is 380 steps to start with. The mine was started in the 13th century when they accidentally found lumps of Rock Salt, today there is sculptures made out of Rock Salt, Chapels, Chambers and Saline Lakes you get to see. The tour was good but had a very touristy vibe and had pretty much felt like I had seen the best of it online, nether less a good way too see some amazing mining history.

We went back to Old Town and went on the hunt for dinner, we found a place called Domowe Przysmaki, this had a flute busker across the road… we all know I’m a sucker for a busker now - so we sat outside and had dinner. I had the tradition pork chop & Katie had the tradition potato pancake (In Katie’s words, with a whole heap of shit on top) That shit was very nice though!

We finished the night off with a Good Lood ice cream, I had seen people with these ice creams for days and hadn’t stopped for one. Now I know why people stopped, it was amazing!! They have flavour of the day and amazing tasting waffle cones, I had Walnut & Maple scoop and Katie had Dark Chocolate. This was right around the corner from the accomadation so an easy stroll back! Czytaj więcej