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Published: June 11th 2009
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Today was lovely. The weather was just beautiful, sooooo warm and sunny (well at least until it started raining 😊 Most of the group met up at 10:00am to go for a 4 hour guided bike tour of Krakow. This was one of the best bike tours that I have done in the longest time. It was amazing. We had a really great guide called John from Tampa, Florida but who has been living in Krakow for the last 11 years. John took us all over Krakow and showed us the history and the sights. We went through the main square, the castle, out to the old jewish ghetto but the best part of the tour was when John sat us all down outside of Schindlers factory and told us a 20 minute story about Oscar Schindler. This story is amazing and from what John told us the true story of Oscar Schindler is somewhat different to the one portrayed in Schindlers List, which has of course been slightly romanticised.
Another cool thing that we saw (well heard really) was the bugle call at 11am. Every hour the hejnal, or bugle call, is played from the highest tower of the
St Mary's church. The melody was played in medieval times as a warning call in case of attack. These days the melody cuts off abruptly to symbolise the moment when, according the legend, the throat of a 13th century trumpeter was pierced by a Tartar arrow.
We also visited Kazimierz which was a purpose built town for Jews built in 1335 by King Lazimierz the Great. Orginially the town was built to try and encourage jews from throughout Europe to emirgrate to Poland after the Polish population was decimated by the Black Plague. However in the 1500s the jews that were living in Krakow were forced to leave and made to relocate to Kazimierz. Then at the outbreak of WWII moved all the jews (around 60,000) out of Kazimierz to the jewish ghetto of Podgroze, just south of the Vistula River.
Our bike ride only finished at 2:30pm and by that time we were a little hungry so we headed back off to the same where we had dinner last night. Last night we had dinner in a fantastic little local restaurant that serves up the most amazing pancakes. The ones that we had for lunch today were
apple filled pancakes and they were just divine. After lunch we attempted to pay a visit to Wawel Castle. However all the tickets for all the exhibitions in the castle were already sold out, so that left us only with the option to wander around the castle courtyards which are free to visit. This wasn't the end of the world as I have seen an awful lot of castles and palaces recently. After wandering around for a little bit I decided to head back to the hotel for a while to rest my knee which was playing up after the bike ride. Everyone then met up again at 7pm to head out for drinks and dinner. Dinner ended up being a fantastic kebab from a street vendor, which we all ate sitting on the sidewalk, just like the university students that fill this town 😊
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