We got up and headed out in search of breakfast. Milk Bar
Tomascza was our intended destination, but the sign on the door said they were
closed for the next couple weeks for some reason, so we kept walking. We ended
up sharing an omelet and a salad with chicken, along with a coffee and a
fresh-squeezed orange juice. We strolled onward around the Old Town, which is
really gorgeous, compact, and easy to navigate on foot.
We checked out the
vendors in the Market Square and the Cloth Hall, and headed south along the
main drag to Wawel Castle.
You can walk around the castle grounds for free, but you need a ticket to enter any of the buildings. We were curious about the Dragon’s Lair, which supposedly contains a dragon skeleton, but the line was really long for tickets and it had started to rain, so we skipped it and headed to Kazimierz, the former Jewish Quarter just outside the Old Town. We got a cake and coffee at a small coffee shop and strolled around for a while through the drizzle. It wasn’t as polished-up as the rest of the older part of the city, and I think that many of the businesses were more nightlife-focused and didn’t open until later in the day, but it was a very good area to walk around, as well. We strolled on the Planty, the former moat around the Old Town that the Austrians filled in and flattened after they took over Poland in the 1700s, and went in search of lunch at Pod Wawelem, which is an Austrian-style beer hall where you can get huge mugs of beer and delicious food, such as fried potato cakes with sour cream, salmon, and big ol’ salty caviar eggs the size of peas, and Hungarian goulash soup.
It was tremendous. We went in search of postcards at both the Market and a couple of museum bookstores, and stumbled upon a printmaking exhibition at a museum a couple of blocks from our hotel.
Next up was a very pleasant, very touristy drink at a café along the Square and some delightful people watching as the sun went down.
After that, we went and had a cafeteria-style meal at Chimera, which was very nice. You could have a serving of any four dishes, which was plenty of food for us. We were pretty worn out at that point, and headed back to the hotel.
You can walk around the castle grounds for free, but you need a ticket to enter any of the buildings. We were curious about the Dragon’s Lair, which supposedly contains a dragon skeleton, but the line was really long for tickets and it had started to rain, so we skipped it and headed to Kazimierz, the former Jewish Quarter just outside the Old Town. We got a cake and coffee at a small coffee shop and strolled around for a while through the drizzle. It wasn’t as polished-up as the rest of the older part of the city, and I think that many of the businesses were more nightlife-focused and didn’t open until later in the day, but it was a very good area to walk around, as well. We strolled on the Planty, the former moat around the Old Town that the Austrians filled in and flattened after they took over Poland in the 1700s, and went in search of lunch at Pod Wawelem, which is an Austrian-style beer hall where you can get huge mugs of beer and delicious food, such as fried potato cakes with sour cream, salmon, and big ol’ salty caviar eggs the size of peas, and Hungarian goulash soup.
It was tremendous. We went in search of postcards at both the Market and a couple of museum bookstores, and stumbled upon a printmaking exhibition at a museum a couple of blocks from our hotel.
Next up was a very pleasant, very touristy drink at a café along the Square and some delightful people watching as the sun went down.
After that, we went and had a cafeteria-style meal at Chimera, which was very nice. You could have a serving of any four dishes, which was plenty of food for us. We were pretty worn out at that point, and headed back to the hotel.
This is Day 6. Here's the full list of posts from this trip:
No comments:
Post a Comment