Krakow, Poland Day 2 Wawel Hill Krakow, Golf Cart City Tour

After a hearty delicious breakfast at a local coffee shop we headed to Wawel Hill where the Castle and Wawel Cathedral dwell. 
This castle complex is huge. As we were walking to the front gate we were stopped by a guide. He wanted to give us a private tour of the grounds. I kept asking him if he was giving us a private tour of the castle state rooms, he just kept saying “No”, this area is just furniture.” Ha! He said, we would see the castle, the bell tower, Wadel Cathedral, the Cathedral treasures, and the catacombs. Well, it sounded like a perfect tour. So we paid what he was asking and headed on our tour. Our tour guides name was Paul. He started right off answering the kids questions and showing us all the coats of armor in the stones surrounding the castle gate. He also told us about the huge bronze statue of Tadeusz Kosciuszko who contributed to the defense of West Point during the American Revolutionary wars. 
We thought that was pretty cool. 
Well, as it turned out our 90 min tour ended. What? Turns out our tour ONLY included Wawel Cathedral, it DID include tickets to the bell tower, and the treasury, However, DID NOT include the castle. I was a little bummed because I really wanted to see the Castle! However, we had already booked our Kraków city tour at 1pm we didn’t have time to explore the Castle today. (We will be back on Saturday to see the castle) We continued exploring the Cathedral and climbed to the top of the bell tower, and went to the Cathedral Museum.  
Before our tour guide gave us the tickets to the other attractions he told us the Legend of the Dragon. The Wawel Dragon lived in a cave at the foot of the Wawel Hill on the banks of he Vistula River. The Dragon terrified local villagers by destroying their houses and eating their young daughters. Desperate to solve the problem the King promised his daughter Wanda’s hand to any brave man who defeated the dragon. A cobbler named Skuba takes up the challenge and stuffs a lamb with sulphur for the dragon to eat. Skuba leaves the lamb near the dragons cave and the unwary beast devours the bait, soon after, the dragon’s thirst grows unbearable and he drinks from the River Vistula. The dragon explodes. So they have a statue of the dragon and every 4 minutes he blows fire. You can go down into the Dragon caves April 24- Sept. so we missed the caves by a few weeks. Bummer.

We walked about 10 minutes to the location of our city tour. We booked a viator golf cart tour. It was pretty amazing we had one other couple from Sweden. Our tour guide I can’t remember his name drove us all over Kraków. Jeremy and I were surprised at how big Kraków was. It was a three hour city tour. Well, two hours on the golf cart and one hour exploring around. 
We got to see some amazing places. Our guide even stopped at the same Ice cream place”Good Lood” telling us this was the best ice cream in Poland! 😂 So we got to eat yummy ice cream for a second day in a row perfect!
We got to try a local street treat called Obwarzanek A chewy dough ring sprinkled with cheese, poppy seeds, salt, sesame seed. It taste a lot like a bagel and was pretty tasty. 

We also got to see a candy making demonstration, they made blueberry hard candy with little blue berries in the middle. Jeremy and Chandler won suckers for answering the questions right. It was a lot of fun and smelled really good. 

We finished the day off doing a little shopping and eating at a local polish restaurant that our hotel recommended. We loved the polish soup Zurek it was sour and had white sausage and hard boiled egg. Yummmm we also got more Obwarzanek to dip in the soup. Delicious! 

As we walked back to the car we stopped to see the fire breathing dragon since you couldn’t really see the fire during the day. It was a perfect way to end our day in Kraków.

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Spring Break Krakow, Poland Day 1

We are stepping out of our traveling comfort zone and are flying to Kraków, Poland. We purchased the budget airfare with Ryanair, and a rental car. We (Jeremy and I ) are so nervous because we have always traveled in the comfort of our own car bringing lots of food and our own comforts to include pillows😁.

This flight to Poland is really making us pack light and we are not bringing any comforts and I’m not packing food 😬Which is a first for me. 
Day 1 Of Spring Break to Kraków, Poland 
We got up at 7am for a 8:30am departure with one stop at Kaufland for lunch.
Only when we stopped at Kaufland they didn’t have our salads for lunch 😭so very sad. So off we drove to The Frankfurt International Airport. We let Kayden run the show. He had to tell us what time we needed to leave. He was our guide in the airport leading us to our counter to check in, to security, and finally to our gate to board the plane. We had a little fun adventure going through security. So we all had our little approved luggage that went through security. I forgot about the 3oz liquid rule 🤔Because, let’s be honest this is the FIRST flight I have ever taken where I have NOT checked my bag. So this 3oz Liquid was not on my radar. So going through security they wanted to see all my liquids. So I pulled out all my liquids and the guy was like this is NOT approved. He didn’t like that my shampoo was in a clear container as well as body soap. They met the 3oz requirement. However, I lost my toothpaste. Poor Brooklyn was in a different security line and she put a whole thing of Bath and body works lotion and body mist in her bag. Brand new bottles of her favorite scent Peach. Yep, they threw both of them in the garbage. Uuuggghhh, $20.00 in the garbage because I forgot about the liquid rule. 😭 Not a huge deal just annoying! We are Ryanair rookies! 
**** Note to self check luggage!***** 
We waited about an hour to board our plane. We had a little snack and just enjoyed waiting for our flight. We had to pass through the gate and board a shuttle to the airplane. That was the hottest most crowded shuttle bus I have ever been on. Crazy!!! 
Because we purchased the cheapest flight we were just randomly put in seats all throughout the plane. Not one of us was sitting by each other. Chandler and Brooklyn were really nervous. Brooklyn was at the back of the plane. I was in the middle, the wing emergency row to be exact but hey I got a lot of leg room and didn’t pay extra for it. Ha! 😂 I also got the entire row all by myself. Sweet! Chandler was towards the front. Kayden was at the front of the plane on the second row. He thought that was pretty cool. Jeremy was towards the front of the plane on the opposite side of the boys. The flight was pretty quick only 1 hour and 15 min. Sweet! We got our rental car and headed to our hotel. 
Our hotel is amazing, it’s a two bedroom fully furnished apartment. The location is perfect 10 min walk to the Old Jewish Quarter, and 10 min walk to downtown Kraków. 
Tonight we opted to head to the Old Jewish Quarter for dinner. Our hotel recommended a little local restaurant called Mr. Vincent that specialized in a polish dish called Pierogi it’s a filled dumpling. We purchased three different plates of Pierogi; an assortment of meat to include fish, (Brooklyn and I stayed away from those) 😂 a plate of vegetarian Pierogi, and a plate of fruit Pierogi. 
They were so delicious!!! Plenty of filling and so tasty. I couldn’t believe how full we got off these little dumplings. We all agreed the dumplings were yummy but not for your entire meal. We would have liked them as an appetizer and had another polish dish for the main course. This restaurant only had dumplings. 
After dinner we continued to explore a little of the Jewish Quarter while the sun went down. 
We came upon this ice cream shop called Good Lood it had a huge line, I’m talking at least 20-30 people, we of course wanted to try this ice cream that is causing such a huge line. I looked up Good Lood on Trip advisor and all the comments said this was the BEST ice cream they had ever had. It was said to be the best Ice cream in Kraków maybe even Europe! I was skeptical because the best ice cream is Italian Gelato. 
We were all presently surprise. It was delicious and so creamy, and smooth and so much flavor. It really could be the best Ice cream in Kraków. 

We went to a grocery store to pick up some drinks and snacks for tomorrow’s adventure. The grocery store is still different than what we expected even after seeing grocery stores in Germany, France, Belgium, and Italy. Can you imagine paying $10 for a bag of M&Ms!? Still, we are loving Poland!