Krakow: A Fusion of Historical Significance and Tourist Attractions
After three fun filled days in Warsaw capped off by the Taylor Swift concert the night before, it was time to say goodbye and head south to Krakow. Krakow is just under 300 Km or about a 3-hour drive from Warsaw, which would be an easy drive and let us to take our time if we wanted to. However, anyone I’ve ever talked to who’s extensively traveled throughout Europe, raved about how convenient and easy the train system is. With that in mind, we bought our train tickets online that morning through the Omio app, had breakfast, and then walked across the street to the train station.
Rule 1 Of Train Travel: If You Want A Seat, Book Earlier
The first mistake we made was not buying our tickets ahead of time because we failed to secure a reserved seat. I tried booking a reserved seat in 2nd class with no luck then tried in first class, again with no luck. Back in the states, I’ve only traveled by train for work between DC and Philadelphia, Newark, or New York and those trips were on the Acela train. My experiences with those trips were that if there wasn’t an available seat, you weren’t getting on that train. On this train, you can buy a ticket for the train and play musical chairs with the other passengers as seats become available, so I opted to buy us seats in first class, thinking there would be more opportunities to get a seat if they weren’t filled for long stretches of our trip. The difference in price was only about 12 dollars for a reserved seat versus a standard ticket and it was the end of Taylor weekend, so the train ended up being full but not crowed so we played musical chairs for the duration of our 3 hour and 46-minute ride.
We weren't always lucky enough to have a seat.
Despite lack of seating and sitting on the floor at times, the trip wasn’t that bad. Unlike a plane, you are free to move around the train the entire trip, so we went and hung out in the bar cart, which has seats that aren’t reserved so its first come first serve. Another advantage to the taking the train is the ease of the boarding process. There are no security lines to go through, just walk by the occasional police officer with a dog in the station or on the platform, when your train arrives, hop on, find a spot, and have your ticket ready to show when the Ticket Checker comes through. We weren’t in a rush either, so I had my pick of trains to Krakow to choose from, even on the day of, however, because of timing, the 2 hour and 45 minutes train didn’t work for so we ended up on a train that took longer. If you are traveling between cities/towns, are flexible in timing, and don’t mind not having a seat potentially, the train can be a very affordable mode of transportation. For the four of us to take the train, we spent $177 USD, not including beer and snacks.
Krakow Has Something for Everyone
During the Uber ride between the train station and our hotel, you can see that while Krakow is a beautiful city, it appeared way older than Warsaw. This is likely because it was one of the few towns in the area that wasn’t destroyed during World War II and didn’t require complete rebuilding. During our stay there we mostly ventured around the Main Square, Wawel Castle, and the Jewish Quarter. There are other destinations outside of the city limits worth exploring such as the Wieliczka Salt Mines, Auschwitz, and Zakopane. Each of these destinations seem like they would be worth a visit and I sort of regret not making it to Auschwitz while we were there but with Naomi having a meltdown at almost every tourist spot we visited, it was probably the right call and we’ll be sure to go back another day either when the kids are a little older.
The area we spent the most time around was the main square which resembled something out of medieval storybook. After walking along the streets lined with buildings, it opens into a large open space filled with vendors selling their various goods such as leather bags, fur or leather coats, and other goods you could find at your local farmer’s market. There was a large clock tower, St. Mary’s Basilica, restaurants, bars and shops that lined the perimeter, and horse drawn carriage rides. This area seemed like the biggest tourist attraction in the city since we found a Starbucks next to a McDonalds and the infamous street performer found in most major cities who paints their body and stands still for hours.
Krakow's main square. St. Mary's Basilica right next to a Hard Rock Cafe
The most intriguing part of the city in my opinion was the Jewish Quarter. After the German occupation of the city, all the Jews who remained in the city, were herded into a small section and forced to lived in crowded residence and share/ fight over scarce resources. A lot of buildings in this section of town seemed very similar to how you might imagine they were during the 1940’s possibly as a symbol of perseverance of those who survived and remembrance of those who didn’t. However, despite what would have been a somber area to live in, it was quite the opposite. The streets were lined with restaurants and bars where everyone was having a good time.
A walk-through Schindler's Passage after dinner at Restauracja Starka
Two-Thirds Of Our Stay Was Spent Underground
As I mentioned earlier, there were tons of popular attractions to see outside of Krakow. The one we visited and probably the highlight of our trip was the Salt Mines. From the city, it was an easy ride on the 304 bus that we picked up outside of the main square and dropped us off right in front of the Salt Mines. We bought our tickets from Viator and met their representative who gave us our tickets and we proceeded to get in line for the English guided tour. It’s a maze down in the mine, so this is one of those trips where you will need to get the guide since you aren’t allowed to wander down there on your own.
The trip takes about 2 to 3 hours, and you’ll walk about 3.5 km during its entirety, so bring some comfortable walking shows. It starts by taking 380 steps (63 flights) down a spiral staircase to the underground entrance of the salt mine. It wasn’t until 1996 that it ceased to be a working mine and transitioned into a museum where they host daily tours and special events in their banquet rooms. Despite being a new attraction, I believe there is room for improvement regarding the tour. We were in a group of about 40 people and there were groups ahead of us and right behind us. Sound reverberates off the walls and it all blends together making it difficult to hear the tour guide, so unless we were right next to her, we didn’t get much from the guide except not lost.
Despite the lack of information we got from the tour, the visuals were stunning. There were underground lakes and several chapels built within the mine with one still serving as the location for a weekly church service. One of the more interesting tales we manage to hear was related to the horses that lived down in the mine and pulled the carts of salt or turned the massive wheels that controlled the various pulley systems. Some of the horses lived their entire lives down there and early on when they retired a horse, they moved it outside and having lived its entire life down in the mine, freaked out with all the open space and didn’t know what to do or how to act. I don’t think it ended like Brooks’ release in Shawshank Redemption, but they stopped retiring the horses outside the mines after that, so we were told.
One of the many cathedrals built within the salt mine. This is the largest one and still host weekly church services.
Being down in the mine, it is easy to lose track of what is going on outside, what time it is, or what the weather is. I liken it to the feeling you get when you walk out of a movie theater after a matinee show, so we changed things up on day 2 and spent it above ground exploring the main square area and the Wawel Castle area. One of the focal points within the main square was St. Mary’s Basilica that is significantly taller than any of the other buildings within the square or nearby area. Unlike many of the churches in Sicily, you needed to a ticket to go in and admire the artwork and décor of the church, but they aren’t too expensive. Like the churches we’ve visited in Sicily, St. Mary’s was filled with paintings depicting various stories from the bible, stained glass windows, and various statues of either Baby Jesus or Jesus on the cross. There was an alter for Pope John Paul II, who was from the Krakow area and preached there before being elected pope. Unlike Italian churches we’ve seen, the ceilings weren’t painted with various angels and imagery from the bible but instead of a royal blue background and stars, reminding me of a night sky. Instead, behind the center pulpit, there were statues, cloaked in gold, depicting several men surrounding a knelling woman, while others gaze up at the sky at Jesus and a praying woman. I am not certain what this scene is depicting, and I haven’t found any descriptions of it, but I imagine there might be some hidden symbology there or I’ve read too many Dan Brown books.
What do you think this scene is depicting?
Just outside the main square sitting atop of Wawel Hill is Wawel Castle. Today, it is a series of separately ticketed buildings that you can visit, but it is famous for being the former residence of the Polish kings and the cathedral within the castle walls, it is where the monarchy was crowned and even buried. There are several different attractions you can get a ticket to see, but they each take 30-60 minutes, so a little pre-planning is necessary if you want to see them all. One exhibit that seemed interesting but also probably a big letdown was the Dragon Pit. After doing a little research, legend states that a dragon lived in a cave underneath the hill and was defeated by a shoemaker who created a decoy ram filled with sulfur and pitch. When the dragon ate the decoy ram, the gases created from the sulfur and fires within the dragon reacted and caused it to explode. Alas we decided to skip the dragon den and tour one of the residence buildings and the treasury.
Dragon imagery was everywhere.
The museum of the residency wasn’t set up as a view of how the residents of the castle lived, however it was a tour of varying pieces of art depicting themes of Christianity, portraits of the families that lived there and tons of ceramic pottery of their dogs. You can look out of some of the open windows at the panoramic view of the city and imagine what it was like for the individuals living in the castle watching the common folk in the town below go about their daily lives or a carriage ride from the castle to the main square. The treasury, was filled with varying artifacts such as swords used in battle or ceremonies, tackle used for the horses that pulled the carriages, etc. It was interesting reading the history of some of these artifacts about how they were lost or stolen and how they popped up at varying antiquity auctions throughout the course of history. I don’t have many pictures of our trip to castle since strollers weren’t allowed and Naomi refused to walk, so I had to resort to carrying her the entire 2 hours we spent in the museum.
Day 3 took us back underground to the underground museum, located directly beneath the market square where we had spent the following day walking above. Over the centuries, the floor of the main market square rose which led to the area being enclosed until it was excavated. After the excavation was completed, it was converted to a museum which starts in the main room, they have some visible aqueducts, a reconstructed blacksmiths workshop, and artifacts that were discovered during the excavation, and several other exhibits showcasing what life was like during earlier periods of Krakow. After the main room, you move on to a glass walkway allowing you to walk above some of the foundations of cottages that date back to the 12th/13th centuries and there are rooms off to the sides playing videos providing additional information on what life was like back then. The entire exhibit probably takes about hour or so to complete and if you weren’t chasing a two-year-old all around, you can probably stretch it out to an hour and half to 2 and learn a bit more.
Outside of the Taylor Swift concert, the thing that Vanessa wanted to do the most in Krakow was to take a horse drawn carriage ride. After walking anywhere between 15,000 and 20,000 steps a day for the past several days, this was a nice way to end our trip. We boarded the carriage, and they took us around the main square, outside the perimeter of the square and down the street towards the castle. Our carriage ride was short on information, so we didn’t learn anything about the buildings we were walking past but it was a relaxing ride.
We had an early morning flight back to Catania, so we ate an early dinner, got some last bit of Polish food/beer, and rode electric scooters back to the hotel to pack up and get Vanessa and Naomi to bed. Like most every night on our trip, Naomi proved tough to get to sleep when she wasn’t confined to a crib, but after almost 2 hours of sitting in the dark taking turns trying to prevent her from getting up and singing lullabies, Naomi finally fell asleep and ended her first Polish adventure. With everyone asleep, it was time to sneak down to the hotel bar for an espresso martini or two and reflect on our trip.
One final drink to cap the end of our week in Poland.
