Krakow, Poland

Hey everyone! We made it safe to Krakow after our 13-hour train ride. Our room on the train was really nice and we had it to ourselves. We all got a pretty good night sleep and are enjoying how cheap Krakow is so far. We ate lunch for about 4 dollars each, and the perogies were amazing. We're relaxing a bit tonight and hitting up a bar that was reccomended to us before sleeping early. We're getting up at around 7 tomorrow to go to Auschwitz. It's going to be a long day but we're looking forward to it. On Monday we leave at 11 at night to take another overnight train to Prague. I'll make sure to fill you in before then. So far one week is down as of today and we're having a blast. I'll talk to you soon!

~ Mike

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We woke up this morning at around 8:15 to the soft lull of the train. After a few delays, we arrived in Krakow at around 9:30 and walked to the Gardenhouse Hostel, which

was relatively close to the train station in the old part of the city. Our room wasn't ready when we arrived so we went and grabbed some lunch at a place called Alter Ego

Cafe which turned out to be awesome and insanely cheap. Lunch was 14 Zloty, which translates to $3.50, After lunch we walked around the old city for a while and stumbled in to St. Mary's Basilica, which was beautiful. Every hour a trumpeter plays to announce the time from the top of the bell tower and cuts off abrubtly to remember a trumpeter who was killed in 1211 while notifying the people of Krakow of an invasion. The invasion was stopped because of this trumpeter and he is still honored today.

After we finally got into our hostel we showered and headed over to the train station to buy our tickets to Auschwitz and Prague. We walked around the old city a bit more, and eventually ended up at a restaurant called Kuchina u Babci, which had amazing food and perogies that were like nothing you've ever tasted. We went to a grocery store and bought some PB&J yo make sandwiches for Auschwitz,

and went to an amazing coffee shop. We were

thinking about going out to a club that was recommended to us called Prozak, but it was closed so we went back to Alter Ego Cafe and sat at the bar for the rest of the night. We tried

quite a few new drinks, one of which was hot beer. Yes, hot beer. It's amazing, and I have placed the recipe below:

1/2 Liter of Zywiec Beer

3 Squirts of Raspberry or Ginger Syrup

Cloves

Nutmeg

Cinnamon

Microwave until hot

Serve with a straw - DO NOT STIR or it will overflow!

After a while we became pretty tired and decided to head back to the hostel since we had to get up at 6:45 to go to Auschwitz. This day marked our one week mark, and so far we've been having a great time. I can't wait to see what the rest of the trip brings!

**For Auschwitz see separate post above**

We decided to sleep in our third day in Krakow since we were still beat from Auschweitz. We walked to Wawel Castle which had beautiful views of the city. The castle was huge, and the fresh falling snow made it absolutely beautiful. We each bought a ticket that got us into the cathedral, bell tower, and crypt. The cathedral was beautiful, and the tower had amazing views but was a very interesting climb as it clearly was not made for public access. When we got to the bell we couldn't believe how massive it was (12 tons). The crypts were of the royal family of Poland, and were beautiful as well. We walked around for a little while more and saw a statue honoring Pope John Paul II, who was from Poland and is very respected by the people.

We got some coffee on the way back to the hostel, and chilled until we went out to dinner. After dinner we came

across a Hookah bar, and had a lot of fun until they started charging for everything including tap water. At 9:00 we left

for the train station to catch our 10:15 overnight train for Prague. Once we got on the train, we realized that this ride was going to be different as we had an awesome conductor. He thought the four of us were really cool, and kept kicking other people out of our cabin so we had our own. He brought us free food and drinks, and even gave us a newspaper listing for prostitutes for when we got to Prague which was a little creepy. The train was delayed 75 minutes due to a snowstorm, so we went to bed and enjoyed the ride.