night time in Market Square, Krakow

night time in Market Square, Krakow4, originally uploaded by jumu556.

So I'm back from Poland, it was a lot of fun. Well worth the time and $120 that it cost me.

Friday night, after wandering from the train station with little else but a "gut feeling" of direction (and enough wits to know we should follow the flow of people), we visited a pub called "Middle Earth" down in a basement off of Market Square. We all went in mainly because Allison and I had read about it in our Easyjet booklet on the flight to Prague and figured being able to say "I went to Middle Earth last night" would be cool. I'm not sure I'd have stayed there as long as we did though, it unfortunately reeked of cigarette smoke, as did everything I had worn there for days afterwards.

Saturday, after eating breakfast for two hours in our (very very nice) hostel (while waiting for the rest of our crew to wake up after their late night), we wandered around the square a little, and then Allison and I decided to go to Wieliczka salt mines. More on my prodding because I'd seen a discovery channel show on it and never thought I'd actually get there. It was very touristy, but it's fun to be a tourist every once in a while. Plus it was astounding what amateur working miners had carved into this mine. There were chambers and chambers, each one named after someone, with sculptures and lots of chapels, including one particularly majestic one, I may post a picture of it, but they'll all definitely be up on flickr.

Sunday we (Allison and I) had another long breakfast, with the same company as the day before of a German and a Flemish guy who were also being tourists for the weekend. They were friendly and provided good conversation while waiting for everyone to wake up. We ended up doing our last hour of wandering (before we had to catch our train at 12:30) with them, since they wanted to go see the castle, too. It was really warm, sunday, I didn't need the insulating layer of my coat at all as we were walking around. It seems the cold weather has abandoned us for NC, are we a jinx on cold weather?

The train back to Prague was not direct, as Friday's trip was. We in fact had 3 trains. Number one was a local Polish one (very slow, stopping at every little bit of sidewalk we passed). The next one that crossed over into the Czech republic was nicer and somewhat faster, of the same level as the train we took friday, with individual compartments for 6 people with the little sliding doors. And then a final "high speed" train set up like an airplane, with rows of (first class airplane level) seats and automatic window shades. That one still probably didn't go faster than 45 or 50 mph, but it only stopped twice before arriving in Prague. Allison and I had already been warned by the German guy who had studied in Poland that semester that Polish "high speed" trains seemed even slower than the slow trains in Germany and the Netherlands, so we weren't expecting bullet speed.

So I'm really glad I went, it was better than I think I expected, and really different from Prague. And I got some good nighttime shots of Market Square, as you can see. If anyone's thinking of visiting Krakow anytime soon, let me know and I'll give you the link to Mama's Hostel, it was very nice and clean and friendly, nicer even than where we stay now in Prague. All except for some chunky milk I poured on my corn flakes the first morning. But that can be forgiven, if I exert myself to be generous.