Wednesday 11 June to Friday 13 June 2014
Our primary reason for visiting Krakow was to visit Auschwitz, but as we discovered, there is far more to Krakow than that.
After spending most of our day travelling by train from Prague, we finally arrived at our accommodation at 6.30 pm. For something different, l had booked an apartment so that we could have some home cooked meals and do our laundry at a leisurely pace. That was the plan anyway....
We were so sorely disappointed when we opened the door. The apartment looked nothing like the pictures of it that l saw when l booked it. It lacked a washing machine, dryer, table and chairs, microwave, tea towels, toaster, dishcloth, frypan, oven, griller, exhaust fans in kitchenette or bathroom, smoke alarms, bathmat, facewashers, handtowels, vegetable peeler, tongs and there was one cake of the tiniest soap l had ever seen. It did have a kettle, knives, forks, spoons, p!ates, sweet bowls, wooden spoon, sharp kitchen knife and plastic cutting board. To cook, there were two small hotplates. I suppose we could have made vegetable soup or porridge, but that was about it. Oh, it did have a bed and a couch, as well as towels !
After Auschwitz, we set off to explore the city and were pleasantly surprised to find that this was another city full of old buildings. The city square was the biggest we had seen - it was enormous. There were the now usual city gates and seemingly more old churches than any other city we had been to. This seemed to be reinforced by the fact that we saw more nuns than we saw in Rome - they were everywhere! Priests and monks were around as well, but in nothing like the same numbers as the nuns.
A number of the churches were quite large and ornate, but the one that fascinated us was the tiny one in the city square. I doubt if 50 people could have fitted in!
The Wawel Castle is impressive and the views of the city from there are quite good.
We also called into Oscar Schindler's factory. Not unexpectedly, we paid to go in where we expected some sort of a display or exhibition about the man and his saving of so many people during the war. Instead, we got an exhibition of the occupation of Krakow during WWII. While this was interesting, it wasn't what we had come to see. We eventually found two rooms dedicated to Schindler and l managed to sneak a couple of photos of Gloria sitting at what we were fervently assured was Schindler's office desk. The desk was certainly old enough to be his.
Other than the apartment, our Krakow experience was worthwhile and a place l would certainly recommend as a worthwhile visit, but getting there by Polish train does take a while !
