Day Fourty-Nine

Day Fourty-Nine - 13.07.05 - [Krakow]

• Arrived in Krakow around 5h, I figured that the sun rises sometime around 4h30 in Poland) and looked for the tram that would take us to our hostel.
• We figured out that Krakow was not that big and that we could get to our hostel by walking, on the walk we realized that a lot of people were up and busy!
• The only thing that made the scene different was that the roads were not full of cars, but it was full of trams!
• We got to our hostel and could not figure out how to enter and sign in so we decided to look for a cafe. The irony was that there were so many people walking around along the streets, but we could not find a single cafe open! We were baffled and kept on walking around until we finally found one that was open.
• We bought some pastry and coffee and looked at the map of Krakow. We figured out that things were going to be pretty cheap in Poland, if our calculations are correct 1.00 pln (Zlotych) = USD$0.30 or CAD$0.35.
• We returned to our hostel and found more people waiting for it to open, there were even customers who woke up and were waiting for breakfast too!
• The woman who was responsible for opening up arrived and signed us in, showed us our room and we found out that the hostel was brand new, it opened in May 2005 which explains why they are clumsy with opening up and maintaining the hostel.
• We got settled in and decided to have a nap because we did not have a comfortable ride during the night and ended up napping until 11h.
• We got up, made sandwiches for lunch and walked down to Wawel Hill.
• At Wawel Hill, we had a glimpse of the city at the top of the walls of the castle, then took a swirling stair down to the tunnels where legend says a dragon (have to come back with the name) lived there and ate on little childern, cattle and knights until a clever child stuffed a sheep with sulfur and fed it to the dragon and caused it to blow up.
• Got out at the bottom of the castle wall and walked along the wall to the enterance of the old town.
• We walked along Grodzka street until we reached Rynek Glowny (Main Square) and St. Mary's Basilica.
• We got a chance to see a fireman play the trumpets at the top of St. Mary's Basilica tower and stop in the middle of the bugle call in memory of the event when Krakow was invaded by the Tartars. Legend says the fireman, having spotted the army on the horizon, started playing his trumpet to alert Krakow's citizens and was hit by one of the invaders' arrows in the neck.
• We walked along the old street, Florianska and enjoyed the view of the old buildings and exited the old town walking through the Florianska Gate.
• We headed to the train station to get prices for train trips from Krakow to Oswiecim (Auschwitz) and then to Prague.
• Figured out that we would save money by taking the train (approx. 130pln) instead of the tour bus (approx. 160pln). We felt we did not want the tour bus because we did not want to come back to Krakow and it had a guide that we wouldn't understand since they did not provide anything for Deaf people.
• We headed back to our hostel, showered and headed out to have dinner. We went to 12 Mikolajska and ate dinner at a nice resturant named "Greenday".
• We reccomend this restaurant for anyone - even if you are a "Meat Lover", you will still love the food there!
• We both ordered one mixed salad (4.50pln) and our own plate of six mixed plates (14.50pln) along with Bread Drink and Grapefruit juice. The total was approximately 42.50 pln, but we used FrecklesFly's ISIC card and got a discount bringing it down to 38.16pln (approx. USD$11.09 or CAD$13.40)! We had enough food to feed four people!
• We headed to the internet cafe to contact our host in Prague and let her know we are going to take the night train tomorrow night to Prague and be there in the morning of 15.07 and to update our blog and stuff online since things are cheap here (2.00pln/hour vs. 6.00euro/hour in Euro countries)!
• Did not realize that I only had one day to update for my blog - I did all my updating yesterday and now I wish I updated it all today for a better value.

Amount Spent: 254.95pln (FrecklesFly & 195 combined, not including internet and remaining night expenses)