After Auschwitz we took a one hour bus ride into Krakow to the hotel. At this point it was around one in the afternoon and I was exhausted so I slept for the entire bus ride. When we finally arrived at the hotel I went to my room with my roommate Patrick and took a nap while others went and explored the city. I woke up around 6 and went to my friend Emily's room to go out for dinner. Emily, Mary-Cait, Peter and Jacob decided to go to a traditional Polish restaurant. This place was great. The restaurant was super nice and the food was dirt cheap. I had a three course meal and a beer for about 50 Zloty (17 Dollars). For an appetizer the waiter brought some sort of spice and lard spread with bread. This stuff was amazing. Hands down the best lard spread I've ever had. This made sense because I read the guidebook later and it said that this restaurant had the best lard spread in Krakow.
After dinner we went back to the hotel and got ready to go out. We eventually met up with Patrick and his group at a bar and started putting back 21 Zloty pitchers of Heineken. Apparently, there are fewer domestic beers in Poland and most places sell Heineken or Carlsberg. After this place we headed over to a club that sucked so we got a kebab and went home.
We woke up early in the morning for a tour of Krakow. Our tour guide, Andrew, was a nice guy but the tour was pretty hurried. We walked around the Jewish quarter but just saw the outsides of synagogues (It was Saturday) and sites from Schindler's List (I haven't seen it). After a while we headed to Wawel Castle. The Castle was the original seat of the Polish government before Warsaw became the capital and it was absolutely beautiful. The view of the city and the river from the top was great and the church and courtyard from inside were amazing.
Walking down for the castle we visited two churches. Apparently, in Krakow, they LOVE John Paul II (PJP from now on). PJP was originally from Poland and since Poland is incredibly catholic they have pictures and statues of him everywhere. On the way to the second church we entered Krakow's main square which was absolutely huge. The church was called the Basillica of St. Mary's and it was the best church I have been to so far. It has a massive golden altar that depicts Mary and the apostles. The entire church is covered in paintings and statues of angels going into heaven and the ceiling is a deep blue night sky with bright gold stars. Behind the altar there are three stained glass windows that are the original ones from the 14th century. There were super pretty.
After the tour ended we explored the city for a bit and the headed back for another nap. That night we went out to an Irish pub to buy cocktails and burn some money. A few mojito's and gin fizzes later we went to a club that was wild. They had two rooms. One had all sorts of poles and played Katy Perry and the other one played crazy techno and Katy Perry techno remixes. Katy Perry is everywhere. We danced to the techno and then finally went home.
The next morning we went to the salt mine. The salt mine is probably the hokiest attraction in all of Poland. It started as a salt mine in the 13th century and operated until 1996. The place is literally an entire complex of passages and salt. Every wall that isn't wood, is salt. You can literally lick the walls, and I did. Because the salt preserves everything, there are original crucifixes from the 14th century in perfect condition. The Poles also filled the mine with churches and there are all sorts of salt statues of saints. The tour was just room after room of salt statues and salt churches. The place was in limbo. It was kind of serious because you can actually get married and pray in the salt church but at the same time they had all these damn statues of salt things. They needed to make it totally serious or just make all sorts of random stuff out of salt. They did have a salt statue of PJP which was great.
After the tour was over we took the 6 hour bus ride back to Krakow and I wanted to kill myself. It was the most boring bus ride ever. And that was Krakow.
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