Day 1 - Krakow - Old Town

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After kicking off the day with a quick all you can eat breakfast in good old Premier Inn Gatwick, we headed over to departures for the all to familiars easyJet scare mongering followed by delays at the gate. Eventually we boarded and took off headed to our first destination, Krakow!


We made our way from the airport to the city Centre via (a very modern and comfortable) train and walked across to Mosquito Hostel, our abode for the next few nights. Mosquito is very decent given the ~£25 per night costs which covered our private en-suite room, continental breakfast and a small polish dinner each night if we wanted it. It's clean and has all the basics we need. After being shown around, we ditched our big bags and wandered around the Old Town in search of somewhere good to eat. Both Dan and I had separately found a place called Chimera which came with a shining recommendation. There is a restaurant and salad bar of the same name in the same building, so I'm guessing they are under the same management. I think the reviews were based on the restaurant but even so the salad bar was very good. We each got a large (6 portions) plate and a drink for under £5. I went for a polish veg casserole, broccoli tart, mixed beans, rice with chicken and pineapple, noddles/pasta and potatoes. It was all very tasty, all being a little lacking in protein for my liking!

We then walked down to the Wawel aka Castle, which was not medieval as I had expected but was still very picturesque. After that we wandered around old town some more checking out various different statues, churches and squares, including the main square and the cloth market, before heading back to the hostel for a little chill out before dinner. Dan hadn't been that keen on the hostel dinner followed by Wednesday's activity, Pictionary, so we opted to check out eating establishments #23 & #24 on TripAdvisors top options and pick which we fancied.

Milkbar Tomasz (#23) looked good but more suitable for brekkie and lunch over dinner, so we decided on Szalone Widelce for some traditional Polish options. We each got a pint of Zywiec and, as I couldn't pick one thing, I went for 'Crazy Plate' an mini assortment of all the main dishes. It was huge! Literally the largest dinner plate I've seen to date, but it was delicious (or Pyszny, pronounced 'Pish-Ni', in Polish) so I soldiered on and demolished the lot bar some coleslaw, which I'm not a fan of.

To finish off the day we wandered round the main square again and Dan got a gelato, we watched some street artists play what sounded like dance track mashups on drums and saxophones and got invited to 7 different strip clubs in as many minutes! I started learning some basic polish phrases on flight over and was glad to have used 3 of them today (Hello, Thank You and Goodbye), they seem well received so hopefully I'm not murdering the language too much.

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