Krakow

The wood and salt co exist

Salt chandelier

Lody: Lisa's favourite street snack

The sun is still shinning, though we are having a forced break from the mountains the city of Krakow is certainly one of the nicer cities we have been to. All centred around the old town the architecture gives it a rich history and the castle on the hill an extra special attraction.

As with most big cities we found ourselves a campsite leaving everything locked and safe, a walk then tram ride found us at the main church in centre of the old town. With queues out the door of school kids, we went in for a look through the quick ‘prayer section’ and a look inside. We managed to find ourselves a free walking tour in English that had already begun and tagged along learning more than we would have on our own.

A good wander around sees the street vendors selling obwarzanki a bagel type treat, another chance for us to have our favourite ice cream Lody and notice that the dragon and the gemstone amber are the two most popular items for sale here.

We headed for lunch on Wawel hill the site of the castle but were slightly disappointed that none of it was free and that each section had to have different tickets and with no English tours left we couldn’t even go into some of them. We decided the armoury and royal mint is always a good one to see so headed in amazed by what they have uncovered from 14^th-18^th century times and still in really good condition.

Both with city weary legs and feet we ended the day by heading back to cook dinner. The mosquitoes here are particularly bad forcing us to retreat into the van despite the ongoing scorching heat.

A must see as recommended by Lee’s polish friends were the Salt Mines at Wieliczka. This is a working salt mine in which they have transformed the now unused and excavated chambers by filling them with rock salt carving and chapels and figures. We had to wander round as part of a tour to avoid people getting lost but got ourselves a private 45 minute guided tour at the end somehow just the 2 of us with an English speaking guide.

From here we headed back to Zakopane with plans to get back in to the mountains.

As we cooked dinner in a passing layby we watched a man set up and then go up in his motorised paraglider as his friends took photos of him, we were able to capture one of him as the sunset, a nice way to end a great day.