Hello Krakow!

Sunday 17^th April

When my alarm went off at 6.30am I was surprisingly well rested. I did wake up several times during the night, afraid that a Spectre spy was going to burst in to my compartment and try assassinate me but thankfully I’m not James Bond and that didn’t happen.We made it to Krakow in one piece and once we’d left our bags in the station lockers (after spending and hour trying to get change for said lockers) we set off in search of the Old Town.

The first thing we stumbled upon was the theatre and from here we spotted the Barbican and Florians Gate.  The Barbican is a fortified outpost which is connected to the city walls which once encircled the Royal city of Krakow. This led us to Florians Gate which was also built in the 14^th century and was used as a watch tower.From here we walked to the university quarter and explored some of the local churches. We were both surprised by the sheer number of churches and how busy they all were. Some of the church choirs were really beautiful and it certainly  added to the romanticism  of the Old Town. However, we also saw another side of Krakow – the morning after the night before. When we arrived at 8am the streets were still dotted with lover and fighters, heading home after a heavy night on the lash. The odd couple was making use off the occasional public bench and there were plenty of men hugging their beer bottles as they struggled to walk in a straight line. However, by 10am these people were replaced by an entirely different breed of people – tourists!

The sleepy town that we had been exploring was completely transformed as hordes of tourists descended. I realise that I am a tourist but this is a less of a criticism and more of an observation. It also surprised me just how busy the place was.  But why wouldn’t it be? Everything we had seen thus far was beautiful and the sun was beating down upon us, easily hitting 20c and it wasn’t even noon! My initial itinerary had given a full day to the Old Town but we had already seen quite a lot so we decide to go straight to the castle.  There is something really magical about European castles. They’re brightly coloured and look like they’ve come straight from a fairly tail. The walk up was pleasant and the views weren’t  too shabby either.  We decided not to take any of the guided tours as rather than pay for an all inclusive ticket you had to buy individual  tickets for different rooms or the castle. This felt like hard work so instead we enjoyed spending some time in the sun!

We’ve had some really good food while we’ve been on this holiday and while I am all for trying local delicacies, we couldn’t resist a burger.  Following TripAdvisor and our noses we found the insanely busy Moaburger where we placed our order and patiently waited for our obscenely large and surprisingly delicious burgers to arrive. Fair play to him, Rory doubled up and still managed to finish his and then mine. Talk about a Knight in shining armour!  While I couldn’t finish a burger I managed to destroy an Oreo cupcake but after that I was out of action for a while and we sat in a local park enjoying the sunshine.

Once we’d picked up our bag from the train station we headed straight to our Airbnb to finally check in. We got caught in a very light rain shower and ended up waiting outside for half an hour until the host phoned to say that she was waiting inside. Despite being absolutely fuming about this, I was very impressed with the apartment. The apartment has everything we need and once Rory had discovered the bed and the WiFi it was impossible to get him to move so we spent the evening watching  episode after episode of  Suits! Our first day in Poland has been really good. The people are friendly,  everyone speaks English and we even saw the sun! Fingers crossed for more sunshine tomorrow!