Squared

29th July 2012 (Krakow, Poland)
Two o'clock in the morning is not the best time to try to find accommodation. Generally, on trips led by yours truly, I tend to book a few days in advance, if only to have somewhere to aim for when I get off the plane/train/coach. Travelling Boff style means being as flexible as possible, even if it means paying a little more or wandering around a town in the middle of the night.

After a couple of false starts with stupidly expensive hotels, we lucked in with the Cracow Hostel, which is adjacent to the main square in Stare Miasto (Old Town). The photo of the day is the view from our dorm.

A few hours sleep later we didn't feel up to doing anything heavy duty like Auschwitz or the Salt Mine, plus we also had to do laundry so we headed down to the closest laundromat (which ended up being quite a funky cafe/bar) and found ourselves near the Jewish quarter.


We took to wandering around the various synagogues and museums, ducking down alleyways and finding ourselves in the middle of a flea market (all quite craphouse secondhand stuff). I did, however, buy a large punnet of blackberries. Berries here are so cheap I'm buying them by the 500g (for about, I kid you not, one Aussie dollar) and gorging myself.

Lunch was at a quaint place called Morskie Oko, which serves some kind of Polish regional cuisine. They didn't have duck so I order boar loin: the meat was a bit tough but the mushroom sauce was delicious and you really can't fault a decent meal for about A$30 between the two of us, beer and dessert and all.

I was really keen to see the mummified Franciscan monks (no embalming required; apparently a cool and dry microclimate has preserved them well) but being Sunday there was a service on and I couldn't figure out how to get down to the crypt.

In the evening, Boff and I walked around Wawel Castle and along the Wista (river) making up stories about the Krakow dragon, a symbol we see everywhere. We only recently read a summary of the legend on Wikipedia and I can tell you that the statue we saw certainly didn't breathe fire.