Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Rainy Sunday in Krakow

Day 12 Sun. 19 July Krakow
I woke up to rain and decided I didn’t need to jump out of bed. The breakfast here had the usual plus yogurts, different cheeses, and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. After decking out in my raincoat and with my umbrella in my purse I headed out towards town.



The first “wow” sight I hit was the castle. The courtyard was very impressive (unfortunately I have not pictures of this) so I bought a ticket to view the rooms inside. I ran into a group with a sign that said “Free walking tour, please join us”. I listened for a bit, the two young men who were the tour guides seemed knowledgeable and fun so when they said they were going off to another section of town I asked when and where they started (11:00 am in the main square). Then I went inside. I couldn’t take pictures inside so you will just have to imagine, each room with different scenes painted along the top 1/4 of the walls, big huge tapestries covering whole walls below, marble floors and these floor to ceiling ceramic square things in the corner all painted in designs that turned out to be stoves for heating.




After I left the castle I walked into the center of town to the very large market square. It being Sun. the place was crowded and there were quite a few entertainers as well, the funniest one being this tall Dracula character who moved very slowly. I walked around the wall and the garden on the outside of the old town as well. I got a ticket to a Folk Show that I had read about and wandered the streets until it was time to go to that.



I sat next to a lovely English couple and we talked about our travels throughout the evening. We had borscht and then pork schnitzel, potatoes and cabbage salad, in between sets of music by 3 players and a couple dancing traditional fold dances. The costumes were fabulous and the whole show was great.

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