Castles, churches, dumplings & Moet

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It was a long afternoon travelling. We took two flights; from Riga to Warsaw and then Warsaw to Krakow. The final leg was delayed 30mins (while we were all sitting on the plane) as the plane waited for some late people. It was a lovely evening so we strolled to the town square and had a drink watching the sun go down. The square is beautiful, rather big with a market in the middle churches on the corners and lined with pretty buildings, all now of course restaurants and bars. There is a huge amount of bars in the city. Another stag do city for the Brits, apparently one of the flights arriving Friday morning had a man dressed as a chicken. We had a sensational meal at a Polish restaurant; it was a vaulted cellar and decorated superbly. The food was great and we got stuck into some traditional dumplings, yum-bo! The next day we quickly zipped around the castle which is by the river. They had an iron dragon sculpture breathing fire every so often on the outside of the castle which was pretty funny. That afternoon we meet up with my colleague from work and her husband and headed out to Auschwitz. It is a harrowing reminder of just how horrible some humans can be to each other. Even though I visited the museum back in 2004 when I was travelling in the region, I was still shocked again by the scale of the camps and extermination operation. That evening we enjoyed a pre wedding dinner just off the square; more dumplings so I was very pleased about that. We headed home fairly early many of the other wedding party went drinking in the square until 2-3am. Our final day of holiday was fantastic it was a beautiful sunny day so perfect for the wedding later that evening. In the morning we joined a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter and Ghetto. Our guide was superb very informative and he told some interesting and different stories as we strolled around. One about a Polish nurse who helped smuggle ~2500 children from the Ghetto and hide them in the country. He also told us the real story regarding Oskar Schindler - not as rosy as the movie makes out. The wedding was good fun. They had got married the previous weekend at a Catholic service; this was an Anglican blessing in one of the old town churches followed by a ride in an old tram around the city before arriving at the reception. The vodka appeared on the bus and didn’t stop appearing. It was highly amusing on the tram as the breaks didn’t work so the diver was a little panicked and called up some help. But we finally made the roof top terrace and enjoyed Moet with sensational views of the square and roof tops. It was a lovely wedding with great people, food and wine. Sunday morning we were up early and heading for our flight home.

Photos

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