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| Famous Polish statue in Old Town |
It was nice to be able to wake up and then
not be rushed to get on a bus. This time
we were able to eat breakfast and really enjoy it. Today we went on a walking tour in the
morning and then on a Jewish quarter tour in the afternoon. It was a lot of walking. According to my Jawbone we walked about 14
miles today. We were pretty tired.
To be honest I don’t remember much of what
was shared in either tour. It would have
been nice to have seen Schindler’s List before going on the Jewish Quarter tour
because that was referenced a bunch in the tour. It was nice to learn about the dragon of
Krakow in the first tour. There was this
cool statue of a dragon that literally breathes fire that Nika (tour guide)
explained the legend behind.
The story was that there was a dragon that
was terrorizing a village. The dragon
would demand young girls and the king was afraid that his daughter was going to
be next. So, the king of the village
offered a reward of half the village to the person that got rid of the dragon. There was a humble farmer who had an idea of
how to get rid of the dragon. He
captured a sheep and then gutted the sheep.
Then the farmer put sulfur in the center of the sheep and then set the
sheep out for the dragon to eat. The
dragon did eat the sheep and then the Sulphur started to react inside the
dragon’s belly. The dragon went into the
river to see if that would satiate whatever was happening in his stomach. That didn’t help. When Sulphur and water mix they explode and
that is what happened inside the dragon.
So then the dragon was vanquished.
The builders of Krakow had the good idea of
not having the multiple gates in a straight line. But they were offset. That was an attacking
army had to rotate their battering rams in order to attack different gates.
Also as part of the Jewish Quarter tour we
also saw the “bridge of love” for Krakow.
It was a very big bridge. Some of
the locks were old and others were newer.
There was this one lock (not pictured) pointed out by the other tour
guide was a combination lock. The tour
guide didn’t really like the idea of locking his love on a bridge. He said people change so that is why there a
combination lock so that in a while they could take the lock off.
Before buildings had numbers they had animals above the doors. We were shown a peacock above one of the doors.
In the evening we were going to go to the
food court in the shopping mall but turns out that the shopping mall, along
with a lot of other business, closed fairly early on Saturday being the day
before Easter. We decided it would be a
good idea to go back to the center of tourism which is the Old Town
Square. That was a great idea because we
found a lot of people and went inside St Mary’s church. The cool thing was that they were having
Easter Mass when we walked in. That was
interesting. Completely foreign because
it was in Polish but it was still cool to experience for like 5 minutes.
For dinner we decided that we wanted to
some American food. Since there were a
ton of KFC restaurants everywhere that we would get dinner there. I thought it was a great idea. I ended up getting a chicken wrap with fries
and a Pepsi (free refills) and a shake thing.
It tasted pretty American and I was glad. The rest of the trip we have been doing
native things (trying pirogy, pasta, soups) and now it was time to get something
that was familiar.
We walked around for a while longer around
Old Town Square. I picked up a Krakow
shirt and also a collectors coin. Then
we went for dessert. Unfortunately the
place that we really wanted was closing and so they weren’t accepting more
people and so we had to find another place.
I ended up getting this Italian dessert that I didn’t like that much
along with a chocolate.
On the way back to the hostel we stopped by a convenience store and picked up some last things before going back to the hostel and getting everything packed up and ready to wake up and leave the hostel for the bus.
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