It was an extremely early start to the trip. I was on the bus to the airport at 320am!

Faye arrived at the airport shortly before me. We met up, purused the shops that were open, and had a coffee (and a panini for me) before boarding the flight.

We had booked an aisle and window seat, hoping we might get a ow of 3, but the flight was packed.

I took some pictures as we started to approach krakow.

We got a taxi from the airport to our apartment, it was around a 30-minute drive. Our apartment is very grand and right in the old part of the city.

Faye hadn’t had anything to eat, so having some lunch was our first priority. We found a little cafe called the Milk Bar and had some delicious Pierogi- a traditional polish dish of stuffed potato dumplings.

From here, it was just a short walk to the main square – Rynek Glowny. As we came up to the square, there was a huge church – St Mary’s Basillica – and just behind it, the smaller church of St Barbara.

This 14th century small gothic church used to be a cemetery chapel, and where the surrounding buildings are now standing, used to be a cemetery linked to St Mary’s Basillica. In the 18th century, it was the clinical hospital for the university, and the professor used dead bodies of poor people and executed prisoners to experiment on.

St Mary’s Basillica is huge. It was originally built in the 13th century but was destroyed and then rebuilt in the 14th century.

The two towers at the front of the Basillica are of different heights. The story goes that two brothers were engaged as architects (one on each tower), and, as one began overshadowing the other, jealousy set in. In a moment of dark inspiration, the jealous party murdered his brother but then promptly threw himself off the taller tower when he realised just what he had done.

Every hour, a man plays a bugle from the top of the tallest tower. This commemorates a polish guy who warned of a Mongol attack in the 13th century. The tune was cut short because the guy was shot in the neck by a Mongol archer, and it still stops abruptly to this day.

The inside of the church is beautiful, with a starry ceiling, amazing stained glass windows, and lots of golden decoration.

The Basillica sits on one corner of the main square . The main square is the largest in Europe, covering 40,000 square feet (around 12,000m²).

Not far from the basillica sits another small church. St Aldaberts Church is believed to be the oldest stone church in Poland. This church pre-dates the square, which explains its strange position. The floor of the church sits 2m below the surface of the main square. It has an amazing dome ceiling.

Our next stop was the cloth hall, which is in the middle of the main square. Traders have had stalls here for centuries as it dates back to the Renaissance. When Krakow received its city charter in the 13th century, the cloth hall was 2 rows of stone stalls forming a street in the middle of the square. The two gates were locked at either end at night to stop thieves. Today, the stalls mainly sell traditional polish crafts and souvenirs.

Right next to the Cloth Hall is the Town Hall Tower. There used to be a large town hall at this side of the square, which also housed a prison in its cellar, but now only the tower is left. The tower stands 70m tall and has a slight lean to it (around 50cm).

Just by the tower, there was some weird art installation of a severed head.

In the centre of the square is a large bronze statue of Adam Mickiewicz, who was a famous bard and poet. A lot of his work served as inspiration for uprisings against the influential powers at the time.

After all the walking around, it was time to rest and have a beer. We went to the sunny side of the square and sat outside, but in an enclosed area.

On the way home, I popped into the Hard Rock Cafe to get a t-shirt.

There are a lot of tourist horse and carts around the main square and the streets nearby.

We walked down to St Florians Gate. This gate was built in the 14th century from ‘wild stone’ as part of the city walls and fortifications against attacks. It stands around 34.5m tall and is the main gate of the 7 city gates. It’s also known as the Gate of Glory as it is the start of the Royal route to Wawel Castle. From 1901 – 1953 a tram used to pass through this gate.

Just down from the gate is the Barbican, a fortified outpost that used to be connected to the city gate.

We decided to walk around the ‘park’, which runs around the outer edge of the city. To be honest, it’s more of a strip of grass and trees than a park, although we may not have walked the best part of it. But there were some interesting statues and buildings to see.

We ended up back at the main square and decided to head to the Wodka Bar.

The Wodka bar is a tiny little place that sells a huge variety of different flavoured vodkas. We decided to taste 6 each. I had fig, plum, chocolate, ginger, honey and lemon. My favourite was the chocolate one.

We chatted to a few people in the bar as most of them were English.

After the vodkas, we headed to a restaurant, Czarna kacska, which translates as black duck. I had the beef goulash with potato cakes, and Faye had the duck, they were both delicious.

After dinner, we headed home as we were both really tired.