Kicking it in Krakow

I make castles look small

Last night I had to decide where to go next, I have my schedule but I haven’t been sticking to it and figured why start now. I had three choices L’viv, Bratislava or Vienna. I plan to go to Bratislava and Vienna anyway and had decided earlier to skip L’viv, but I am the closest I will be to there in a while and I heard from another person how great it is. I have decided to take the night train on Thursday night to L’viv, Ukraine for 2 nights. The train leaves Krakow, pronounced Krakov, at 10:30 pm and arrives in L’viv at 6am, which should make for a perfect afternoon nap once I can check into my hostel.

Since I doubt I will be getting much sleep tonight I slept as late as I could to still get my free breakfast and then checked out at noon, the latest time possible. I went and walked around town to see the castle. I climbed down into The Dragon’s Den, which was actually pretty cool it’s a cave underneath the castle where legend holds a dragon once lived.

I ate lunch at a truly polish restaurant where nothing on the menu was in English and the guy working there didn’t speak English either. I just looked at what other people were eating and pointed to what I assume was pork, sauerkraut and bread. The bread in Poland has been delicious it is so light and fluffy in the middle, I love it. The lunch was really good and it’s nice to splurge on a locally prepared food to get a flavor of the country that I don’t get when I make myself pasta.

There is a giant modern mall, right next to the train station with names like H&M, Jack Wolfskin, Timberland, D&G and many others. Everything has to be imported from elsewhere so the prices are ridiculous and I am not paying those prices for anything. After wearing the same small set of clothes all the time some of them shrink too much or get holes and I am forced to throw them away. I found some second hand shops and found a tee shirt that I liked and bought it. I couldn’t read what the words were but I liked the way it looked. I brought it back to my hostel and asked the polish girl who works here what it says and found out that it is not in Polish. I looked around online and I believe that it is in Norwegian and says something similar to “Strong like a Rock” but I’m not entirely sure.

Now I am just waiting for what I suspect will be the most awful train ride of my life, I hope L’viv is worth it.

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10_22_09 Krakow small