Tom & Laura's Great Adventures: Our Second Day In Krakow (Pictures)

31/05/2010 – 21:57 - Day 6 – Krakow, Poland

Unsurprisingly, today we had a bit of a lie in. For me usually, 9:00am isn’t much of a lie in but it was today! We took our time getting ready and made it out the hotel for 10:15. We headed straight for Wawel Hill – the castle and various other sights as it was the last major thing to see in Krakow city.

When we got there we were impressed with the architecture of it all, but very disappointed at their admission policy to certain places. We went to the ticket office and saw that the Armoury and the Lost Wawel exhibit were both open till 12:00 on Monday, but were free so we quickly made our way over to the Armoury as it was 11:15. We needed a ticket. Back to the other side of the castle, to the ticket office we went. “Sorry, all tickets are sold out!” That is what the ticket woman said. We were very pissed off that the ticketing system for ALL barring 1 exhibit (which had no limit to tickets) that this particular ticket office catered for were “sold out” that is, they give a limited number of tickets out, for set hours and times during the day. Had we known this (our guide book failed to point it out) we would have gone much earlier. We sat for a while in the ticket office, quite annoyed.

We eventually decided to buy the ticket for the exhibit – called Dragons Den – and as we knew it exited the hill, went to have a look around the cathedral before going into the Dragons Den. Before entering the cathedral we saw another ticket office, this time for cathedral based activities. These weren’t limited and we were quite pleased to find that we could buy tickets for the bell tower, the royal tombs and the cathedral museum. The Wawel cathedral was beautiful inside, much like that of the Vatican, unfortunately I wasn’t allowed to take pictures. The bell tower was good fun, albeit a very narrow and compact route through the tower! The royal tomb was good, very interesting to see all the kings of Poland there as well as Generals of the army in the Second World War Even more interesting, and somewhat harrowing, was the tomb of the recently deceased President and his wife, who died in a plane crash, along with many other Polish officials. There were a lot of people in the cathedral, and it did annoy me quite a bit as many of them were school children, but to see many Poles crying and touching the tomb of their recently deceased leader and his wife in a tragic accident was very sad.

Before we left Wawel via Dragons Den, we decided to have lunch at the café in Wawel. We both had Perogi and a drink for less that £6 –something that would never happen in the UK (that is a meal at a tourist attraction for such a low price). Dragons Den was a underground cavern beneath the cathedral/castle, where a dragon was once fabled to have lived… it wasn’t great and left me disappointed with Wawels ticketing system. I was really looking forward to some of the other exhibits that we never got round to seeing, and now won’t have time to on this trip.

So, we had finished lunch by half 2, and with nothing to see in Wawel, we decided to go on another Lonely Planet tour walks, this time of the district Podgórze. The walk took us to some weird but wonderful places – over fields, past churches and along roads. It ended with a visit up Krakus Mound (an unknown sourced manmade hill) and then a walk downhill to the ruins of Podgórze concentration camp. A harrowing experience in its own right, seeing remains of tombstones of the Jewish cemetery that previously occupied the land and abandoned SS Officers houses left me with strong thoughts and feelings of sadness.

Auschwitz and the Salt Mines tomorrow, an early start and long day with mixed emotions awaits.

Pictures

The abandoned house on a residential street in Podgórze of a former SS Officer