Exploring Krakow

Today was my first full day in Poland and I got the chance to do a lot of exploring! Our hotel serves an amazing buffet breakfast complete with: scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, fresh fruit, cheese, chocolate croissants, cereal, and much more! We got an early start and our tour guide led us down to the bank of the river. We saw many swans that had gathered along the bank in hopes of being fed. We made our way along the bank and towards the Wawel Castle.

Outside of the castle was a sculpture of a dragon and the dragon's den. There is a legend that the dragon guarded the castle and would eat children, this went on for years and the people grew tired of the constant torment and so the king offered a prize to any man that could kill the dragon. He offered his daughter's hand in marriage and half of the kingdom, many knights and princes came from near and far but none were successful. Finally a young boy came up with a solution. He put a lot of salt in the dragon's food and the dragon became very thirsty so the dragon started drinking up the river, he drank so much that his flame was extinguished and he could bother the castle no more.

We then climbed up Wawel Hill to the castle and took a tour through the main area of the castle, we also toured the cathedral and saw some beautiful views of the city. From Wawel Hill we continued on to walking around the streets of Krakow, we stopped in many churches to see the different architecture over the years. We ended our tour in the Main Square or in Polish - Rynek Głòwny, the main square has a palace in the middle that is now used as a shopping area and a museum. There was also an outdoor market with many different handcrafted items. On the other side of the square is St. Mary's church, which we will attend tomorrow. At the top of the church steeple was stationed a trumpet player to alert the city of any danger, one of these trumpet players was shot with an arrow when he was trying to make the town aware of invaders. Now to this day on the hour every hour a trumpet player plays the tune and it stops abruptly just as it did when he was shot. This was the end of our walking tour for the day and we were all anxious to get some lunch.

A few of us stopped at the Napnap Cafe and we got delicious paninis! We had some class discussion and then finally a chance to rest our feet. We decided to go to the Schindler Factory Museum and we had our first adventure using the tram system! Unfortunately by the time we arrived at the museum the tours had stopped for the day, so we head back towards home picking up dinner on the way. I got a "Kebab" but it was unlike the kebabs that we are used to. This was a tortilla shell filled with chicken, cucumbers, assorted other vegetables, and tomatoes. It was very good although I wasn't sure what I was eating! The rest of the night has been very low key as all of us are very tired, I got a look at a Polish grocery store which was very interesting. Well those are the highlights of the day, I posted a few pictures on facebook and i have hundreds more on my camera! Hope you are all doing well!