Glitz of my life: Eastern Europe 2015 Day 3 Krakow [[ Main Square + Cloth Hall + St. Mary Church + KoKo + Galeria Mall]]

After an eight hours bus ride, we arrived at Krakow's bus terminal. The bus ride by Europa-Spez IC Bus was great! Unexpectedly comfortable with reclinable seats! At only €29 per pax, it was so much cheaper compared to the train. Do consider busing if you are on a budget trip. Overnight buses are not only cheaper but oh well, you get to save on one night's accommodation too! :P

Upon arrival, we changed some monies from the bus terminal since we needed to buy tram tickets to travel out to our airbnb. (Polish dollars are not available in Singapore!) The rates at the bus terminal is B.A.D. Please just change enough and go. Better rates can be found surprisingly, in the shopping mall.

After we changed the monies, we were down with another problem: big notes, the tram machine doesn't take!!! Urgh. So poor Mr Kwek went up to the supermarket to get some pastries and got scolded.... sigh. Not the best start to a city.

After getting scolded and gotten smaller change, we got our tram tickets and off we go. Tram tickets are sold by the duration of each trip. Our host had told us to get 20 minutes tickets as it is enough to travel to our accommodation and to the main square.

Tram tickets can be bought on the tram, buses or any convenient shops. But being the kaisu us, we just bought 20 at one go just to prevent situation where we can't find any machines. Tickets will have to be validated on tram/buses using the validation machine upon boarding to prevent getting fined!

Krakow has the best tram!!! Big , spacious and most importantly, air conditioned!!! Most others are not air conditioned and freak small. No joke when you have to lurge the luggage on and off in the heat wave!

We were lucky we got to check in at an unearthly early hour because the other house mate was in and woke up to open the door for us. After settling down and washing up, we headed out to Krakow main square for early lunch.

Krakow main square is small but awesomely beautiful. Surround the main squares lines rows and rows of cafes and restaurants. We headed off the main streets into one of the alley in search of the famous little eatery KoKo that serves authetic Polish home cooked meals.

KoKo is pretty easy to miss with it having no signboard and the only clue that gave them away was the little red word: "KoKo" painted on the counter wall. That is, if you happen to pop your head in to see!

Gospoda KoKo:
Gołębia 8, Kraków, Poland

Polish famous food include Pierogi, which is a steam/boil dumpling wrap with your choice of meat. We ordered one serving of pierogi and a main honeyed drumlets with fries to share. Soup/stew with potato & mushroom and preserved vegetables came with the meal as a set! Including the beer (smooth but tasteless), the meal set us back at SGD$10. Pretty awesome value since the servings were rather big. However, polish food wasn't quite our cup of tea.

After our filling lunch, we explored the main square before heading to the cloth hall in search of the Rynek Museum.

The cloth hall is a long hall with two rows of souvenir stalls. Around it consist of various museums, one of which was the Rynek Museum.

The Rynek Museum is a newly established underground museum featuring the past of the main square. Four metres underground, the exhibition took us on a walk through tour of Krakow's history in the various era. Quite a great museum for history buffers. The self walk tour needs at least an hour to complete.

We headed into the cloth hall and purchased all our needed souvenirs before heading off to visit the St. Mary's Basilica.

Standing 80 metres tall, adjacent to the main market square, the 14th century St. Mary's Basilica holds the famous wooden altar art by Veit Stoss. The altar made purely from hand craved wood, took Veit Stoss twelve years to complete refurnishing after it got destroyed during the Mongol invasion.

The wooden altar was indeed magnificent. Well worth a visit. Other then seeing the master piece, St. Mary Basilica also allows visitors to purchase a separate ticket to climb up to the top to view the main square skyline. However, there were limited tickets on sales. We did not manage to get them and hence, only saw the wooden altar piece.

After sitting and reflecting a little about life, we left the main square and headed to Galeria Mall which is 700 metres away for much needed air conditioning. The heat wave was seriously burning our heads away. I think our hair have a great risk of catching fire!

We spent the rest of our evening at the mall doing some shopping. Galeria mall is pretty impressive. It reminds me of Vivo city but probably twice its size!

The food court on the top level was great! Offering a variety of cuisines. Mr Kwek was missing rice so we ended up eating Turkish food for dinner! Pretty decent!

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Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Eastern Europe 2015 Day 3 Krakow [[ Main Square + Cloth Hall + St. Mary Church + KoKo + Galeria Mall]]

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