Krakow

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At the moment i'm sitting in my hostel after spending my first day in Krakow, Poland.
I left Prague around 9 o'clock last night and arrived in Krakow 6am this morning. Was the single, most horrible train ride i've ever had. 9 hours of bumpy, rattling, noisy, hot, crowded, unconfortable insomnia. Worst of all, it seems our carriage somehow managed to bypass passport control. So no stamp once again!
Anyway, now the whinging is out of the way, Krakow is a beautiful city.
For the largest tourist destination in Poland, it is very small. You can walk across it in 20 minutes. Population: 785,000. It's a very old city (like most of Europe), and it's main attraction is Wawel Castle. The castle is fairly big, with most of it's walls in tact. In side the castle grounds there is plenty to do, including visting Dragon's Den. According to the myth there lived a dragon inside this cave who would come out at night an eat all the town's virgins. It's a good 3 or 4 hundread step descent into the cave and (luckily for the overweight poms behind me) it came out at the base of the hill, so there was no need to walk back up the stairs. Unfortunately i didn't see the dragon.
Tomorrow i'm going to Oświęcim (Osh-via-shem) or Auschwitz. The next day i'm going to hire out a bike, and make the 30km ride to a Polish National Park, that is supposed to have plenty of underground caves. Sometime next week i will either head to the Polish capital, Warsaw, or maybe even make the 26 hour bus ride (at least if i'm on the bus for an entire day and a bit i can't spend too much money) to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. From what i hear it's a beautiful country, that's great to get off the beaten track a little bit. But only time will tell. I'll just have to wait and see where the wind (or the bus) takes me.

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Photos

Wawel Castle
The cathedral of wawel castle, from insdide the castle grounds.

Dragon's Den
No dragon here...

Dragon Statue
Ah! He was outside all along!