3) Good morning beautiful Kraków!

 Part 3 of my diaries from my trip to Kraków. Read them in order!

 

After what had felt like about 4.5 minutes of sleep, I was the first up in my dorm. Annoyingly, someone else awoke as I was getting my things together for a shower and jumped in the bathroom before me. After my shower, I went downstairs for my complimentary breakfast. This consisted of some rather cardboardy bread with some cheap margarine and equally cheap jam.

 

Despite being very unimpressed with the bread, I didn’t feel at all let down. The hostel seemed to cater for its guests extremely well, and for a meal included in the cost of the room, which was £10 a night, I wouldn't have expected them to put on a Full English with the option of freshly baked bread rolls with cream cheese and smoked salmon! I did, however, resolve not to take advantage of the free breakfast again.

 

Striding out onto the sunny streets of Kraków, I observed contentedly that whilst there were a few folk around, the city had not yet fully woken. I was reminded how nice it can be to look around a city you don’t know on a bright morning before it gets busy.

 

The first real sight I came upon was the view of Wawel Castle, as I approached the east of Wawel Hill on which the castle sits. Its magnificent white stone walls extending up into the sky like Peter Jackson’s rendering of Minas Tirith in the recent Lord of the Rings films (albeit on a rather less mind bogglingly vast scale), this sight remained one of my favourites views of Kraków throughout the week.

 

Heading straight up Godzka Street through the centre of the old town, I reached Rynek Główny at about 8.30am. The throng of tourists and local patrons of the main market square had not yet arrived, but the place was busy with people setting up stalls, opening up restaurant and café doors and cleaning tables.

 

Wandering around the splendid Sukiennice (cloth hall), I got my camera out and began snapping away merrily. It was odd the way the everything was so familiar from all the websites and guide books I’d looked at before I’d come. Of course seeing it all in real life was very different, and the panorama of St Mary’s Church and the long cloth hall lined with its columns and arches from the corner of the square, was nothing short of awesome. I’m using "awesome" in the original sense of the word, rather then glib overused American sense. If, to you, the word "awesome" is a synonym of the word "great", perhaps I should describe the view as being as awesome as “100,000 hotdogs”. If you no idea what I’m talking about, may I recommend you watch Eddie Izzard’s show 'Dress to Kill'.

 

I picked up a poppy seed obwarzanki (knotted bread roll) and a bottle of milk to supplement the breakfast I’d had at the hostel. The obwarzanki was yummy. As for the milk, it was like milk every else that I’ve ever tried milk outside the UK: drinkable, but not the same :(

 

Leaving the market square after a wonderful coffee from a café in the Sukiennice, I meandered through the streets of the old town aimlessly, sometimes strolling through the Planty – a beautiful strip of wooded parkland that encircles the old town. As I marvelled at the seemingly endless collection of beautiful buildings crammed into such a remarkably compact space, I wondered whether I’d ever manage to see them all.

 

After St Florian’s Gate, the Barbican, the Słowacki Theatre and countless other edifices, all grand in design if fairly modest in proportion, I made my way back to the square so that I could enter St Mary’s Church and witness for myself the reputedly spectacular interior. The reports of its lavish ornamentation, I discovered, where not exaggerated. There is a fine line between opulent splendour and gaudiness. This church, I thought to myself, may be that very line.

More to follow...

Wawel Castle