One Small Thing: Krakow

Krakow is south of Warsaw by a two hour train journey. We headed there on Sunday. Tim had been there recently so we followed his direction from the train station to the main square, or Old Town. It was pouring rain and we could not meet up with our accommodations until 3pm so we had some time to spend.

Krakow is the second largest city in Warsaw. Old Town is fabulous. We spent some time exploring the main square. We wandered through the Cloth Hall, a building that had a long narrow hallway with stalls for shopping lining both sides. Mainly, store owners were selling amber and souvenir type items. We enjoyed a pretzel from a street vendor, as Krakow is famous for pretzels. 150 000 are made daily in the city. Unlike the New York style pretzel, Krakow pretzels are circular in shape and a bit denser. Still, they are delicious.

Kraków's Old Town is known as Rynek Główny. It is the largest medieval market square in Central Europe. St. Mary’s Basilica is located in the square. We heard the trumpeter playing on the hour a few times during our stay. Also, there was a sign on the church indicating a countdown to World Youth Day, as Krakow was hosting the event.

In order to escape the rain and spend some time, we found a cool restaurant for lunch. With an hour to kill we wandered around, leaving the boys to grab a beer. After a short walk to our accomodations, Tom met us and we headed up multiple flights of stairs to our top floor apartment. Tom was also the person who would be taking us on our tour of Auschwitz so we settle up with him and arranged a time to meet the next day.

Once we were all settled in, we headed directly back to Old Town as we had tickets to Rynek Underground. Four metres under the surface of the market square, there is a museum of the recently excavated medieval merchant stalls. We essentially entered an archeoloical dig site that has been set up for visitors. There are many artifacts of Middle Age daily life on display such as shoes, jewelery, and coins. The old walls of the stalls are uncovered in parts to show where the original walls lay. The entire square of old town became an archeological dig. This display only opened in 2010 to visitors and it is a great and interactive way to get to know the history of the market town, Krakow.

Our next goal was to go to Schindler’s Factory. We hopped on a tram to head in the direction of the building. At our stop we saw a square that was filled with 70 large, regularly spaced chairs in rows. This is Ghetto Heroes Square. This square is located in the old Jewish Ghetto. It was a place for Jews to come and socialize. It became a place where deportations from the ghetto occurred. The chairs are meant to symbolize departure and absence. It is an impactful memorial.

Unfortunately, when we arrived at Schindler’s Factory, although still open, they were not accepting any more visitors for the day. I was disappointed that we would not be able to visit but what can you do?

Well, what you do is walk. Although we rode a tram out, we decided to wander back. We walked through the Jewish Quarter of Krakow. To me, it seems very run down and a bit dodgy in areas. We saw the Jewish Cemetery and a couple of synagogues as well. There were a lot of cafes and some shops and it looks like the area is starting to come alive.

At this point the Newberys headed back to the apartment and Kim, D’Arcy, Kristen Back to Old Town for a beer in the market. The night walk home was beautiful as the square was lit up.

Monday morning, Kim and I headed to the Tourist Information Office to get tickets for the salt mine tour. We met up with the rest of the gang at Wawel Hill and Castle. On our way to the castle, we saw where Pope John Paul II lived and the university that is named after him.

On Wawel Hill you find the castle, the cathedral, the crown treasury and armoury, the cathedral museum, a tower, and the dragon’s den. Kim and I met up with the rest of the crew and headed in to see all the treasures that were held in the museum. There was a lot of weapons and suits of armour. We saw ruins of buildings and colourful tiles from ovens. We climbed the square tower to have a look out over the city. And we descended a tiny spiral staircase to the Dragon’s Den which is an cave under the castle ground where legend has it there was a dragon lurking. We saw no dragon but did get to look around a beautiful cave. The exit put us out directly in front of the river below the hill.

The courtyard was impressive and the views from the tower over the Vistula were also wonderful.

*After our tour of Wawel hill, it was time to head to Auschwitz. I have written a blog about Auschwitz exclusively, you can find it in the menu.

Tuesday was our last day in Krakow. We had tickets for a bus ride to and from the Wieliczka Salt Mines. The most unfortunate part about this trip was how disorganized the tour was prior to entering the mine. We were picked up at 9am and didn’t get into the mines until 11am. The drive there was only about 20 minutes so there was a lot of waiting around with a seemingly confused “organizer” of the groups. When we were eventually let in, we had a 370 step descent into the mines. The salt mine is 327 meters deep and is over 287 kilometres long. The mine was originally opened in the 13th century. It produced table salt until 2007. The features of this mine are all of the rock salt carvings completed by miners over the years. The most spectacular being a gigantic chapel, the Chapel of St. Kinga, where even the chandeliers are made out of salt. It was interesting to see salt water lakes underground and to learn the history of mining over the years. We ascended via a miners elevator, which was a tight squeeze, but I guess better than climbing all those steps again.

Our bus driver returned us to the hotel where he had picked us up and we walked to the train station in order to head back to Warsaw.

As we were leaving Krakow, I could see lots of youth entering the city in groups ready to participate in World Youth Day. I also saw a number of priests, monks, and nuns wandering the city and heading into the city.

Ghetto Heroes Square