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Published: April 8th 2006
Here are some pictures from the past few days, beginning from the bus ride into Poland.
The themes are:
1. Weird stuff I see in the streets. Did you know that Krakowians (?) can park on the sidewalk? Yup, they drive the cars right up the sidewalk and leave a bit of room for the pedestrians. These two street signs, from what I can gather, say a. park all the way onto the sidewalk and b. park half in the street, half on the sidewalk.
And then that light tree with 9 lights, that's just crazy. How do you know which one is for you??
2. Architectural shots, including details, arches, doorways, and portals. The nighttime shot of the town square Clothing Hall... there's no way to get the whole thing so I only have a fraction of it.
Today I went to Wawel (which should be a whole post by itself). It's hard to describe what it is. It had been the seat of Polish government until the 17th century, and it also has a cathedral where they keep the bodies of many dead kings plus some other... important peoples (sorry the signs were
only in Polish!). It's also supposed to be where one of the magic stones thrown by Shiva (Hindu) landed. ???
In short, it is a special place. To get into the palace grounds is free, but to see the stuff inside I had to pay. I opted to see the armory, royal living spaces, the cathedral/crypt, and the "dragon's lair".
The armory was cool, lots of swords, maces, rapiers, cannons... There were swords from the 13th century, hard to believe that we've been keen on killing each other for so many hundreds of years.
The royal living spaces was cool, too, but I didn't know that my entry ticket was (basically) good for only 45 minutes. Buying the ticket was equivalent to buying a guided tour. The tours were spaced 10 minutes apart, so within each room of the royal living quarters we had a very limited amount of time before the next group would come in. :-/ We went from station to station and were lead out immediately after the tour. Bummer.
And then it was the cathedral... When you first enter you see in front of you a silver coffin. Eeek! I'm not sure
who is inside of there, but he's been dead since the the 1300's. Maybe when my Polish gets better I'll make another trip and figure this out.
Then it was the giant bell, then the crypt (kinda spooky if you ask me, not as creepy as the one under St. Peter's in Rome but I got out of there pretty fast), then a bit of sun and then towards the Dragon's lair.
Ok, the I'm not sure what that's all about, but it's basically a rip off! 3 zlotys, and you walk down a long ass flight of stairs (circular) and then end up in a cave. And then when you exit the cave you see a metal statue of a dragon.
The story of the dragon goes something like: said dragon terrorized the city, a prince came up with a plan to hurl a sheep's hide filled with sulfur into his lair, dragon ate the sheep's hide, it started to burn, dragon ran to the river Vistula to drink, drank too much and exploded.
The statue of the dragon can spew fire! And as a sign of the times, there is a bronzen plaque with
Clothing Hall
Evening shot. Polish and English written on it mounted below the dragon that reads (something like)
"if you send a SMS message with the word 'SMOK' to , the dragon will breathe fire to warm up the sky just for you. The message will cost you 1 zl + VAT".
Pretty cool, but I was too cheap to do it myself.
3. Reflections. Traveling by myself... I get bored with the "one arm in front pointed back" self portraits.
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Wendy
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what you ate
I asked Mother what can she eat, being vegetarian in Poland. Haha, she said you eat a lot of cabbage and those potato thingies. Now there is photo proof.