Krakow City

We slept well Wednesday night, after a lovely afternoon and evening visiting with our friends. Karen and Asha had left for school by the time we woke up. Around 10:30 we headed for the old city with Peter. We walked a few blocks to a tram station, which took us right to the main square in the center of the old walled city. It was raining lightly, just a mist, but the forecast was for more rain later in the day. The mist let up pretty early on and it only began to rain lightly again when we were on our way home.

We walked all around the main square, looked into a church, stopped in several shops and a craft market, and had an inexpensive prix fixe lunch.

Main Square, Clock Tower and Cloth House

Inside the Cloth House were many small shops on the sides of an arched arcade.

Cloth House in Main Square

St. Mary's Basilica is the cathedral on the square. At noon the bells ring and a trumpeter appears in the tower. He plays briefly in each of the four directional windows.

Below you can see the small golden dot in the upper window. That is the trumpeter playing. After he finished he waved to the crowds below.

Behind the cathedral we went into this smaller church.

After we left the church, we went through a passageway and outside the city walls. There we saw the Barbican gate, one of the old entrances to the city. It isn't connected to the walls any more.

Here is a section of the old wall. The area surrounding the walls is a park. You can walk or bike the entire way around; it is nicely lush and green with trees and shrubs.

We stopped in several shops along the way. I was impressed with this wild jewelry; it is all made of very tiny glass beads strung together.

Amber is a big thing; Poland is one of the few places in the world where it is found. The shades range from cream to very dark brown.

This pottery store was wonderful. Many of the patterns are busier than I prefer, but they are all beautiful.

There are bakeries everywhere. The bread is delicious and plentiful. I liked the scorpion in this window!

In the restaurant, we sat in a nook in the window, three steps up from the main floor.

The lunch included tomato soup and either a meat or vegetarian entree. The meat was a pork tenderloin, breaded and fried but not the least bit greasy. The salad was good, but who can eat three full potatoes for lunch!

The vegetarian dish was grilled eggplant and (supposedly) goat cheese, but the cheese was nonexistent. Delicious nevertheless.