I hadn't originally planned on going to Krakow on my trip, but my friend Adrian that I met in Berlin convinced me. When I met him, he had already been there twice and had ended up staying three weeks, he was also planning on going back. He wasn't the only one that raved about it, so I decided that it was a place I should definitely check out. And I'm so glad I did -- I've finished my travels and have been back in NYC a week now, and I can definitely say that Krakow was my favorite city on this trip. It even beat Prague in the number of pictures I took - by nearly 150! I didn't even think it was possible to take that many pictures in 4 days!
Why was Krakow my favorite? It was a combination of a number of things: (1) the history, (2) the beauty of the city and (3) the people. I will say, I had the most fun with the people I met in Krakow, but it was also a city that I found the most emotionally draining. One of the reasons for the latter was the visit to Auschwitz - I'm going to write in more detail about that in a later post as I'm still trying to find the words to give justice to the feelings brought up by that visit.
The actual city of Krakow is divided into multiple areas, I took walking tours of both the Old Town and the former Jewish Quarter, where the Ghetto was in WW2. The Old Town was beautiful, the pictures do it more justice than I could with words:
One of the stops on the tour of the old town was unexpected -- it's was the city's first McDonald's. This seemed like an interesting choice of stops, but it was the first example of capitalism in 1989 and apparently there was a line 12 hours long when it first opened!
The Jewish Quarter was more interesting on a historic level, although my tour guide kept pointing things out from the movie Schindler's List, which I have yet to see. Guess it's time to order that one on Netflix!
The city also had another one of those "love bridges", this seemed to be a pretty popular thing over there:
One of the things that made my stay so memorable was the people I met in my hostel, and the hostel itself. I stayed at Greg & Tom's Junior Hostel. Now, if you are looking for a nice quiet stay in Krakow, do NOT stay here. But if you are looking for a place to make new friends and have fun - this is the place for you. It is also a great value - $15/night and includes free breakfast and dinner, not bad! In NYC, I can't get Chinese take-out for $15! Every night the hostel staff planned evening events to ensure that everyone was having as much fun as possible -- this included pub crawls, games, etc. And of course, a beer bong competition - and no surprise on that one, the Aussie won.
Oh, and not a huge surprise -- but I also ran into Adrian there -- on his third visit!
