Krakow Poland

Street Performer everyone Loved
Even featured on the cover of the In your Pocket Guide
For Krakow

Clock Tower in Town Square

We leave Sandie’s grandparents and arrive in Krakow, a medium size city in the south of Poland. Considered by many to be the Salzburg of Poland, we consider it more a Vienna type place.

All the tourist Trappings

The large central square is the largest in Europe and beautiful with many of the same tourist traps. Wawel castle is very large and well positioned overlooking the river.
We decided for the Friday evening we’d take in a classical concert at St Peter and Pauls cathedral. It was superb and we had the front row centre seats. 










 Remnant of the Soviet days are called "Milk Bars". They are cheap places for commoners to eat. No alcohol, just cheap filling Polish food. What we found was food that tasted just like my mom was in the kitchen.

A great Milk Bar--- Bar Mleczny

It’s neat travelling when you have sitting on one side a Chinese student studying wine culture in Bordeaux France and flies there to visit for a week, and an Irish chap who is there to attend a wedding the next day, and your conversation reviews all the various destinations you have or want to travel to. We can really contribute to that dialogue now!

Inside Wawel Castle

Castle Gate

Wawelled out

We also took in the Salt Mine located 12 kms outside of Krakow. It was responsible during the middle ages of bringing the wealth to the Polish emperor and State. It has many interesting features to it.

8 meters across 12 meters in height a Salt crystal chandelier

Cathedral underground in the Salt Mine

One thing we visited that was a bit of a bust was the Oscar Schindler Factory tour. Leveraging the movie’s interest that factory that Schindler ran is located in the Jewish quarter of Krakow. However this museum isn’t really a celebration of Schindler but rather a review of the slave labour of the 3rd Reich. Schindler’s claim to fame is he saved 1500 Jews from extermination by dismissing them a day before the SS came to round them up, and he treated them better than anyone else under the circumstance. I wouldn’t recommend this as a museum to see unless you were not going to Auschwitz.