Over Easter 2015, we were lucky to spend a few days enjoying Krakow, Poland – a city with a fascinating and deep history. Sumptuous architecture, grand and imposing and oozing character this place has seen so much since the Stone Age.
We based ourselves at Campanile Hotel and could not fault the service, breakfast buffet or massive room and smart bathroom, with greatly appreciated tea and coffee at the end of a long day of walking.
Krakow Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it’s obviously easy to spend several hours just exploring the main square, home to the Renaissance Cloth Hall, a thousand year old church, horse-drawn carriages, quaint coffee houses and bakeries and much more besides. I won’t give you the tourist brochure blurb, you can find that anywhere, but if someone wants to pay me to go back and stay a while to do just that job for them, I would be packed and ready to board the flight yesterday. Krakow is simply charming.
Krakow Old Town
Walking the short distance from hotel to main square we found Milkbar Tomasza to which we twice returned and several stag parties chasing the cheap beer before stumbling onto the Free Walking Tour to the Jewish Quarter assembling under the towers above St Mary’s Basilica. Pavel was an excellent guide, passionate and full of storytelling skill. Before setting off for Kazimierz we were treated to a bugler….um, bugling?…and then waving to us from the tower above St Mary’s – quite the insider’s tip to know where to be to see that one.
Just as I found on our trip to Berlin, the influence of WW2 is hard to escape in such a pivotal location. The tour took us to the Old Synagogue, Szeroka Street, Remuh Synagogue, Plac Nowy Square, former Krakow ghetto area in Podgórze district, Ghetto Heroes Square and finished at Oskar Schindler’s Factory.
It was a sobering experience, hearing how warped humans can turn on each other. For a city with such a high population of Jews prior to the war, it is forever changed, yet somehow it felt to me like it wants to continue to rise through art and culture. The area is very popular with artists and the huge street art and murals on the sides of buildings are excellent.
Even as I write this near on a year later, I cannot forget the Memorial to the Jews of the Ghetto. Metal chairs, 70 in all, step out in all directions and provide a profound sense of absence and emptiness.
We finished our tour at Oscar Schindler’s Factory late in the afternoon and bid our farewells to Pavel to make our way back to the city centre. Part of the wonder of travel is trying to buy essential supplies – that’s beer and snacks – from a tiny corner shop with no prices or labels in English…which is interesting when you have no idea what you’re potentially going to nibble on. And then you have to work out how many euros to the złoty…lately that’s about 0.233 just by the way. So the beer is cheap when you do manage to find it.
I personally found Krakow’s main square spellbinding, you could spend hours people watching, gazing at the gorgeous architecture and completely forgetting parts of its sorry history. During the evenings we would head out to walk around the square, scurry down skinny side streets, enjoy dinner at Milkbar Tomasza and then walk it off making a circuit of Planty Park.
We joined another walking tour to learn about the Old Town and in such a short distance seemed to have a year’s worth of history lessons. City Wall fortifications, massive battlements with now-dry moats, centuries-old churches, universities, previous Pope’s stomping grounds and Wawel Castle on the hill. It would have to be the only Castle I’ve known in my travel to have “Dragon” bones hanging outside the door, as a reminder of Smocza Jama. Who doesn’t love a good myth!
The University clock is delightful if you’re there on time…
Exploring Krakow is easy on foot and thoroughly diverting. Churches, universities, historic buildings, cosy cafes and warm traditional restaurants. After making our way around the old town buildings we found ourselves back in the square for an early dinner. A very lovely young man managed to snag us outside a quiet and dark looking storefront, espoused the virtues of the restaurant confidently enough to convince Julie we could find something resembling vegetarian, at least without the ubiquitous pork. Once inside we relaxed as the facade hid a lovely interior, straining under the weight of traditional touches and costumed waitstaff. The beer was cold and served in very large steins. While waiting for our meals of perogies, meatballs (for me), local cheese and soup for Julie, we were treated to a “traditional appetiser” of dips and bread. We really should have read the leaflet that came with it first before digging in…but it had been a big day and we were starving after all. The curd cheese dip was lovely with the dark dense bread but the other dip was amazing. I could taste caramelised onions and Julie was convinced it had something more…turns out that would be pig lard. And bacon fat. Pig and pig. And it was divine. And it was all mine once Julie found out what it was, ha!
If you go to Krakow for no other reason than the lard dip and dark bread, you won’t be wasting your time 😉