Over the 4th of July weekend, a friend and I (along with our oldest kiddos) went to Krakow, Poland! Both boys had just had birthdays and we enjoyed finding some fun things for them to do. We had an amazing 4 days in the beautiful city of Krakow and enjoyed driving the boys nuts by taking a lot of pics!
Here was Evan and I's apartment in Krakow.
Here was the beautiful church outside of our apartment.
There were golf carts all over Old Town. The first day we walked around the area and checked out how pretty the square was. We then had a food tour later that evening. The guide not only took us to different places to try different Polish foods, but he also gave us some history of some of the buildings in the square.
This statue is of the poet, Adam Mickieiwcz, who symbolized freedom and peace. The Nazis took it down and hid the statue in Germany in a warehouse. After the war, the Polish found it and brought it back.
Krakow is known for a bagel called the Obwarzanek. They were all over the city and it was the first thing we tried on the food tour. They had sesame ones, poppy seed, and salted ones.
Krakow is also known as the
city of the dragon due to a legend of a dragon living under their castle. Everywhere we went, we saw dragons for sale. There was also amber all over the place, because amber is prevalent in Poland. It comes from fossilized resin.
This building used to be a cloth hall where they sold textiles. Now it was a place to buy tourist trinkets.
The artist that created this made an empty and blindfolded head because it depicts someone in love.
There were horse-drawn carriages all over the square.
Evan is trying an obwarzanek.
Also on our food tour, we were introduced to the Pope's cream cake that became popular in 1999 because it was the Pope's favorite from his home town.
This tower is the only thing left standing of the building that used to be there (see the next photo).
Here's the cloth hall from the outside.
Our guide shared with us that there is a legend that every Polish child knows of these two towers. Supposedly there were two brothers. The older one made the tower on the right, and the younger was faster and made the tower on the left. In the legend, the older brother kills the younger brother from jealousy. In reality, though, the extra height of the one tower was due to creating a room for the trumpeters to stay and warn the city of fires or anything dangerous. They still play the trumpets every hour and we got to stand there and enjoy it at 8:00pm.
At this restaurant we tried a Polish soup and delicious pierogis. Yum!
Our final stop on the food tour was to try Polish vodka (wodka), herring, sardines, pickles, and bread with lard. Mary and I weren't too keen on this food, but the boys were good sports!
The next day Evan and I ate breakfast at the corner bakery.
These were the restaurants across from our apartment.
Our plan for the day was to go find Mila's Polish pottery, check out the Jewish quarter and take the boys to an arcade museum.
I found a few odds and ends at the Polish pottery stores. The pottery had the artists that had hand-painted them written on the bottom.
We then walked 15 minutes to the Jewish quarter and it rained on us most of the way. It was neat to see the area. Everywhere seemed to have a menorah or the star of David interwoven somehow.
We found a cute book shop...
...and a totally cool chalk mural.
I loved seeing the bike on the balcony.
The boys were craving pizza and we found this adorable place with hanging rolling pins.
There was a lot of neat artwork and/or graffiti.
The boys were done with photos!
We loved this little coffee shop.
An Uber picked us up and we headed to the arcade place. The boys loved all of the games from the 80s and 90s, while Mary and I rocked Dance, Dance Revolution.
On the way back from Old Town, we finally got a view of the castle.
That evening we went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Old Town. Evan had the most scrumptious strawberry lemonade!
These doors were neat on the cathedral next to Hard Rock.
I found Embry an adorable bunny at this store.
Mary and I left the boys at the hotel and went and searched for the castle. Along the way, we found some amazing cathedrals and buildings. I also made sure to find gelato! Once we reached the castle, we couldn't enter it so we walked around the whole perimeter. We also found the dragon and waited for him to release fire every 10 minutes. We also went back to the square by our hotel to see it lit up. We really enjoyed the peaceful walk without children!
It was interesting that the gelato was cut like slices of cake!
The river next to the castle was reflecting the lights and it looked beautiful.
It was funny that they had stars on the ground for famous people just like Hollywood does.
The next day we had signed up for a tour of Auschwitz and the Salt mine. We loaded into a bus and drove an hour and a half to Auschwitz. It was a somber morning as we walked the two concentration camps where thousands upon thousands of people were tortured and killed.
It was a very beautiful place and it was hard to imagine such horrific things happening here.
Here shows the three camps that Auschwitz is made up of. You can visit two camps, but the one on the far right is no longer there. The largest one, Auschwitz II-Birkenau was where we went second.
If I remember correctly, blocks 1-10 were for the women and there was a fence to separate them from the blocks of men.
These were empty canisters they found of Zyklon B that they would put in the gas chambers.
These were suitcases with their names written on the outside. We also saw a rooms full of things such as piles of glasses, hair, dishes, shoes and more.
This is where we walked through silently out of respect. This was the wall where many lost their lives.
We walked down into the reconstructed gas chamber (the nazis had blown it up to cover up the evidence). Here we also remained silent out of respect to the horrific acts that had taken place where we were standing.
This is the famous gate to hell (or gate to heaven) that the train cars would come through for Auschwitz II. Some called it the gate to heaven because they knew they would never leave there.
This is one of the actual rail cars that would bring people in. You can see there was next to no air ventilation.
This is a memorial to those that died in one of the 4 gas chambers on Auschwitz II.
This gas chamber was blown up the day before liberation and left how it was.
This is one of of the buildings that housed sickly women before they would take them to the gas chambers. We could see names written on the wall. This was incredibly humbling to be there.
After leaving such a gruesome tour, it was nice to head to the salt mines which was about an hour and 20 minutes away. All of the grey in the photos is salt. When you scrape it off, it is white. There were a ton of salt sculptures throughout the mine.
Here is Evan sitting on stairs of salt.
These are the original stairs of the miners. We now have nice wooden stairs to use instead.
This is the large beautiful chapel in the mine. The mine is huge and actually has a couple of other chapels as well. This one still has a service every week! The congregation can take an elevator down to access it. We didn't get that luxury and walked well over 500 stairs.
This chandelier is made out of the purest form of salt.
I loved this carving of Da Vinci's Last Supper.
This water in the mine is so dense with salt that it couldn't dissolve anymore. Mary wondered if we could float like one can in the Dead Sea, because of the salt content.
After coming out of the mine, Evan and I enjoyed some Polish Kielbasa!
That evening when we got back, I enjoyed not only some savory pierogis one more time, but we also ordered sweet pierogis! They had strawberry in some and blueberry in others. The cream tasted like a sweet yogurt.
The next morning we had to go to the airport early so that Evan could get a covid test. When done, we enjoyed breakfast there as well. I had a latte with a delicious quiche.
The boys were able to enjoy some gaming time while waiting to check in to our flight.
After arriving home, we handed out all of the Polish trinkets and gifts we had bought. Embry especially loved her new bunny! Eli received a dragon pen, a small metal dragon, and a music box with the Star Wars theme song. Embry got this bunny, a music box with the theme song of Beauty and the Beast, and a rolling pin with snowflakes. I got Danny two books to read and some Polish beer to try.
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