Kielbasa and Wawel Castle

I knew I wasn't going to get much sleep last night. After a brief stint of cricket yesterday afternoon, I went with my new friend Nick to the cambridge train station on my way to Kathi's house in London. I arrived at around 10:00; much later than I wished. She kindly fed me the chicken and jam that Marcia and she had made and we were off to bed, only to wake up 4 hours later at 3:30 to make our 7:30 AAA EM flight to Cracow.

We managed to drag ourselves through gatwick and onto the plane to poland. There, I was greeted by 3 young polish children, completely out of control oft their parents, who wanted to watch "Family Guy" on my laptop. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep. After our arrival, we took a typical (harrowing) european back-country drive to Cracow along a beautiful countryside. One thing I noticed is that all of the new housing being built was in the style of the old housing. No ugly mc-mansions here. Although, there IS a slight taste of fast development.

The hotel we are staying at is called Globetroter. Yes, only two 't's. It has a gorgeous garden hallway (as you can see in the album. There is no air conditioning but the weather here is great; 70 degrees and sunny. All we'll need is a fan, anyway.

We ventured out onto the main square of Cracow for some dinner, and chose semi-randomly from one of the hundred restaurants on the square. This is a movie of the sights from our table, and some pictures of the food are in this album:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ti0zB3oHTA

http://picasaweb.google.com/Nick.orlowski/Poland#

I am not familiar with authentic Polish food yet, but it was about as one would expect from a tourist-y place in a downtown restaurant. From there, we took a walk into Cloth Hall, where nearly a hundred peddlers took up shop. There were nearly a hundred but, as with most tourist markets, there were only 3 types of shops: Those selling amber jewelry, those selling chess sets and pine trinket boxes and those selling Poland t-shirts (of which I plan to buy many). Some of the amber piece were quite striking; especially those with 'fortunate' imperfections.








From Cloth Hall, we let our feet take us Southeast to Wawel Castle, on Wawel Hill. One thing that struck us as we ascended the hill was that there were nearly no Americans or even English speakers. Certainly no stereotypical Japanese tourist groups... Perhaps they were all in Warsaw or at the beach. The castle was breathtaking. The gates were closed as it was nearing dusk, but we had a glimpse at the top of Krakow, with the steeples sprouting in the distance.

From Wawel, we took a walk along the river Wisla and headed back to the main square to rest our feet. We enjoyed a chocolate dessert with figs and almonds. I think figs will become a new ingredient in my future dessert recipes.

With our feet whimpering and our legs tired, we went back to the hotel and planned tomorrows festivities. Our tentative plan is to visit the Wieliczka Salt mines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieliczka_Salt_Mine

More to come tomorrow... I'm off to bed.