Kraków.

I may be looking back at the day through rosé 😉 tinted glasses but we had such a lovely time in Krakow – which is strange ‘cos normally we don’t hang around in cities. We get in, get photos and get out – not this time.

We are stopping at the city camping about 4km from the old town – we got the bus in which cost us 3.80zloty each way and was a bit of an adventure. The camp site gave us some bus instructions but we only realised when we were on the bus that it just said ‘get off at the old town’ which of course wasn’t signposted. After a few stops we asked the ticket man when we should get off for the old town and he gave us a bit of a funny look then in heavily accented Polish told us that we’d ‘waited too long’. So we hopped off at the next stop and walked towards the pointy buildings, we were there in no time at all!

We started our tour at Wawel Hill and had a look around the Royal Palace (no, we didn’t pay to get in the main part – shoestring budget etc) and then waked over the Kazimierz which was the Jewish Quarter, much more to our taste here. It seemed like a really chilled out neighbourhood with cute little streets and lots of cafes and restaurants.

At this point it was about 30 degrees and we thought we deserved some refreshments so we went to a restaurant called Wrega which had a lovely shaded courtyard set back off the street and were duly refreshed with a cider and beer.

Of course, we needed some food so the alcohol didn’t go to our heads (ever so sensible) so we got a sharing plate of Pierogi (polish fried dumplings) which the menu said was for 2-3 people. They must have seen us coming ‘cos it was a HUGE portion, i think we got about 15 dumplings each with a mix of russian (potato and cheese), meat (peppered pork i think) and cabbage & mushroom fillings. Just amazing. 10/10, would eat again.

Feeling much better we walked back into the old town and saw the Market Square which is the largest in Europe. By now it was about 5.30 so everyone was leaving work and coming out to the city for a drink so it had a lovely feel about it.

Krakow is such a beautiful city and i’m glad we gave Warsaw a miss and visited here instead – it’s got quite a small town feel and the streets are wide and clean so you never feel like you’re part of the crowd. There’s plenty to see and the free guides from the tourist info were really helpful.