Big Adventures, Little World

We’d booked a train to Warsaw for the afternoon, so we spent the morning on a tour of Krakow with a local guide who liked to make up stories and legends about some of the building and places which seemed a bit strange to us as we never knew if we should believe him or not. Poland has been involved in many wars and therefore have had defences which some are still standing today, including some of the city walls from the Medieval ages, as well as The Barbican which was once joined to the city walls and served as a checkpoint for all who entered the city, and also as provided as a major defensive structure during wars. It is one of only three barbicans still standing in Europe today, which considering it was built in 1498 is a testament to its strength and effectiveness. Along the way we also stopped at a number of places including the main market square, Rynek Główny. This is home to the Sukiennice, or cloth hall as it is more commonly known which is full of stalls selling all kinds of goods. There is also a number of stalls outside around the square, and a number of shops and restaurants surrounding it as well. Along with this, the square is also home to the Town Hall Tower, Church of St. Wojciech (St. Adalbert’s), Adam Mickiewicz Monument, St. Mary’s Basilica and “Eros Bound” a sculpture of a man’s lying head by Igor Mitoraj. We stopped at a few more places along the way before making up way up to the Wawel Cathederal and Wawel Castle. On the way up to the castle we stopped at Tadeusz Kościuszko Monument, which is who Mount Kościuszko in Australia is named after. However, as we found out, we pronounce it completely wrong, and our guide proceeded to make all the Australians in the group pronounce it correctly before we moved on. It is actually pronounced ‘ko-chew-sko’. There wasn’t much to the castle but one interesting fact was that when building it they ran out of room at the edge of the hill and therefore made just a wall there, rather than actual rooms attached to the castle.

We got on our train and found some seat and unfortunately it was very similar to the train compartments we were in when we had travelled to Munich, except there were 8 people per compartment. At least it was only a 3 hour journey though, not 11, and at least we didn’t end up like some of the passengers, who had to just line the aisles and sit wherever they could because all the seats filled up. The train ride was completely uneventful, where I mainly just slept and played Nintendo DS and Elese did the same, but we made it to Warsaw and went off to find our Hotel. Other than that we didn’t do too much that night. We had planned on going to meet Kate, Lucas & John but by the time they eventually got where they were going there wasn’t much point so we crashed out and went to sleep.

The next day we didn’t really get up to much either, as it was mid afternoon before Kate, Lucas and John were up and functioning. So we met them as the sun went down (which was about 4:00PM by the way) and we went to the Palace of Culture and Science which is the tallest building in Poland. We went up to the top and there were some amazing views from up there with all the lights of the city shining bright. John and Lucas spent some time getting all their photos right, but it was cold and raining, and being at that height when the rain came in, it hurt. They were closing soon as well so we made our way back down and went to eat before we would all meet up again later that night.

Later that night we all met up again and we went out to night club. Firstly we went to the bar to order some drinks. It sure does help having a Polish person with you, that’s for sure. We ordered a bottle of vodka and some small bottles of juice to mix it with which cost about £10. A bottle! In a club. For 10 quid! Everything was so cheap in Poland. It was crazy. We spent the night with a few drinks and a bit of dancing but by about 2:00PM we headed back to the hotel for another early start, this time going back to Krakow by train.