Blogs from Lesser Poland, Poland, Europe - page 57

Also known as Zamek Wawelski is the famous Wawel Castle, it’s located on a hill that people have been living on since the Paleolithic Age, it’s name none other than Wawel Hill. This is castle served as a royal residence and a place where rulers governed for five centuries, starting from 1038 and ending in 1596. I’m really interested in castles and medieval things and just historical buildings in general. So I had a lot of fun at this castle. We got to walk through the different exhibitions in the castle- the state rooms, royal chambers, royal private apartments, exhibition “the lost wawel,” exhibition “oriental art,” the royal gardens, and the dragon’s den. Everything was just so cool!! In the royal chambers were beautiful works of art, royal portraits, and Italian Renaissance furniture, which by the ... read more

Coming from Alberta, I'm usually not overly impressed by mountains because we have the Rockies. C'mon, they're some of the biggest and most beautiful mountains in the world! But since Leszek was right about falling in love with Krakow, we followed his advice and went to Zakopane - a little resort town in the mountains. The town reminds me a lot of Banff (for those of you not familiar with Banff, it's a national park in Alberta and is where some of the Rockies are located) except that it looks more storybookish because of the old streets and houses. Just the kind of place you want to go when you need to get away from bustling cities. We arrived late at night after a rocky bus ride from Krakow and stayed in a hostel called Stara ... read more

We almost didn't make it to Poland... If it weren't for Leszek (Polish friend from Jyväskylä) and his recommendation to come here, I think we probably would've skipped this country altogether and that would've been a huge mistake because I absolutely love this country! We arrived after a long bus ride from Vilnius and realized that the third was a holiday. The holiday is to celebrate the creation of the Polish consitution in 1891 - not sure exactly what the holiday is called in Polish. How do I know that this was the cause for celebration? We happened to meet some Polish students at our hostel in Vilnius and Karol (the more talkative one) was like a walking encyclopedia about Poland. Anyway, there was a parade going on in the city centre and it totally brightened ... read more

As Mona said...Time to write again There are so many things to say and I don’t know where to start; I think I will make more than one post. So now I am going to talk about Poland, about Krakow and about some people I met there. Krakow is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen, a city of great and interesting people, and a city where I really felt like home and where I really enjoyed staying. I cannot say I have seen it all but I can say what I think about what I saw. During the first days I was in the center of the city and the area around. Main market is beautiful and clean, with lots of pigeons. It is crowded of tourists taking pictures and enjoying ... read more

I am struggling with how to describe the last 11 days. It’s not that long a time period, but we have seen and done so much. The eastern Euopean cities we have visited have been beautiful and so historic and our heads are truly swimming with information from the monarchies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the atrocities of the Nazis in WWI to the years of the Iron Curtain and Soviet bloc to the economies and cultures of these countries following the political changes in 1989. We started in Prague, the “City of One Hundred Spires,” where our education on eastern European history began with our guide, Yiri. We toured Old Town, the Municipal House and the Jewish Quarter before crossing the Charles Bridge to visit the Castle District, the seat of Bohemian kings and Holy ... read more