Krakow - where only the beautiful people seem to be allowed to be waitresses!

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January saw an ambitious boys club, as rather than making a break for sunnier climes we were going to take on Poland...in January! We knew that it might be a tad chilly, but luckily the weather held as well as we could expect and it hardly rained at all! However, I think I was the only one that had brought a brolly and the light drizzle when we arrived meant that we made some Polish market vendors day as four umbrellas were snapped up in double quick time without a hint of negotiation! The quality wasn't the best either, as Shaun was soon to find as the top of his detached at the slightest hint of wind and floated skywards!

We soon embarked on our usual first day stomp around the city, taking in the main square, some cool sidestreets and a few underground cellar bars which seemed to be the norm throughout the city. We had spotted a really nice looking restaurant earlier on our wanderings and so after getting ready for the night, there was none of the usual fannying deciding on a place to eat!

Unfortunately, our choice of Georgian restaurant didn't prove to be the best, and the alarm bells started ringing when our menu was brought out made of plastic and with photos of the various dishes on it. Unfortunately our wine had already reached the table and so we didn't feel able to make an escape but it looked like we had stumbled into a Georgian Wimpey!

We headed to a few bars, including one recommended by the hostel with photos of people all over the wall that prompted many games of spot the terrible look-a-like! Shaun then got us into an ace jazz club, but unfortunately the set was just coming to an end so we didn't catch as much of it as we wanted. We found our way, via a very dodgy taxi driver, to the Jewish quarter and tracked down a bar that Moss had heard about in which you had to pass through a wardrobe Narnia-style in order to get access to another part of the bar. The atmosphere in there was top notch and we stayed for a good part of the night, until suddenly we checked our watches and it was 3a.m.! We thought that we better had try and get ourselves into a club, but it seemed that we had left it a little bit late as nowhere was all that keen to let us in. We even managed to befriend some cool locals who took us along to the club they were heading to, but unfortunately even though they sailed straight in, the massive Polish bouncers were not going to let us through the door, and the somewhat intimidating frame of a Polish bouncer meant that we had the walk away without much of a whimper!! It later turned out that that club was the trendiest in Krakow and its were all the rich and beautiful people of Poland head on a Saturday night and so it wasn't too much of a surprise that five slightly drunk Englishmen didn't quite fit the bill!

The next day we had one simple plan, to go and view the castle. It wasn't ambitious but we still managed to fail! After rousing ourselves around midday we reverted to true boys club ways spending hours wandering around the city trying to find a suitable restaurant. This was made worse by the fact that it was Sunday and so not many places were open !! However, when we did track down a suitable restaurant it turned out to be so good - and the waitress so pretty (as with pretty much anyone else who served us anything in a bar or restaurant in Krakow) - that we just ended up staying, having a few drinks and letting the banter flow. This meant that by the time we got out of the restaurant after breakfast, it was dark outside and the castle had closed!

After the debacle of the previous night's dinner we decided to take any risk out of the equation and ask the hostel to recommend their favourite restaurant in the city. It turned out to be absolutely top notch, a quaint place underground with a piano player and everything. The menu was also pretty amazing with us sampling wild boar and elk amongst others!

That evening we managed to get to the jazz club a bit earlier and grab some seats to enjoy the whole of the show. We hit a few more bars and then a club but found that, being Sunday, things were unfortunately a little quieter in the city than we were hoping. Post club we ended up in the ever reliable Tower Rock Bar, the deepest, smokiest, brick dust heavy venue I've ever been in, but it kept serving us through to the early hours! Randy and Nug headed home for the night as things were winding down, but after they had gone Captain Beige headed to the bar and came back bearing most un-beigelike gifts: three shots of absinthe for him, me and Shaun. We melted the sugar into them knocked them back and this soon got the night rocking again, with Shaun, as only Shaun can, managing to piss off a Scottish lass whose table we had joined, who then proceeded to launch into a tirade against him while Moss and I sat back, laughed ourselves stupid and butted in with the occasional Nutkins insult!!

It brought the curtain down on a hoot of a trip to Krakow - an absolutely beautiful city with stunning architecture that much be a joy to visit during the summertime. Nice one guys!

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Photos

Narnia Bar
Moss popping out of the wardrobe of the bar he'd tracked down.

Krakow Castle
Some of the architecture on the periphery of the castle.