A Day in the Life of a Typical Tourist

---

Today was the allotted sightseeing day, so after our gratefully received included breakfast we set off to the centre with guidebook in hand.

We began our tour in the main square in old town. In the centre of the square is a renaissance cloth market which now houses a souvenir market. The building itself is beautiful, however the hoards of people inside is not so nice. St Mary’s church is in the northern part of the square and I really wanted to go in to see the gothic altar but we found you had to pay to enter. This I thought was particularly cheeky as I have never paid to get inside a church before.

We walked up a beautiful cobbled street that looked almost like a side street except out of nowhere a cathedral appeared. In this area there were loads of people trying to get professional pictures. We tried but I’m not sure our results will be as great. From there we continued past a rather small unimpressive Barbican up to Wawel hill. Rob tells me that we walked past the Barbican yesterday from the station, but it was that unimpressive I hadn’t noticed it. Wawel castle and cathedral are situated atop Wawel hill and look rather impressive due to closeness. The two buildings are so close that the spires on both the castle and cathedral look like they belong on one building. Unfortunately tourism has gone mad here and you have to pay to see each individual part of the castle and cathedral, so we just walked around the grounds and appreciated it from there. From talking to other people that did pay to see parts of the castle we didn’t miss much by the sound of it anyway.

Kazmierz is the Jewish quarter of the city which we decided to visit only because we were already almost there. It was largely disappointing but it did appear to have lots of bars and restaurants open. We did walk all around the walled perimeter of the cemetery, but it appeared not too have an entrance (or an exit for that matter)

Two places we wanted to visit that were suggested in our Lonely Planet have both ceased to exist. We are now trying to buy a more modern version of the book along with one of Turkey that we don't have. This is backed by the fact that often we have found ourselves looking for an eatery or pub that seems to have vanished into thin air.

We found ourselves at a restaurant that we'd walked out of the night before. Last night we went in and the menu implied that food was paid for by weight which according to the given prices we couldn't afford. Today rob managed to find a waitress who spoke English and we found out that actually it was a dirt cheap place. The food wasn't spectacular, but it was warm, filling and had vegetables with it.

Whilst Krakow was buzzing with people out for the night, we weren't in the mood for paying into a club, so we headed back to the hostel around midnight.

We have just been checking out places to stay in Kiev and cheap accommodation looks like it may be a problem to find. Oh well we will keep looking tomorrow.
Night night. stob

---

Photos

Poppy and Lucinda
Believe it or not, thiis is a picture of Ziggi's sisters that we found in a small bookshop in Krakow. We couldn't quite believe it. Small world