After we arrived in Kraków on the night train we headed to our hotel, or rather apartment. When I was looking for places to stay it seemed like hotels were rare, but apartments were common. I booked us at a hybrid, it is an apartment but at least there is 24 hour reception. Of course we couldn't check in because it was before 8am, but at least we could drop off our luggage. Then we headed out to find some breakfast. Unfortunately it seemed like the rain followed us from Prague.
St. Mary's basilica in Kraków square
After breakfast we headed to old town square to join a free walking tour. I thought hardly anyone would show up because it was cold and rainy (we probably wouldn't have gone if we had somewhere to stay), but there was still a big crowd of over 30 people for the tour.
We met outside St. Mary's basilica for the tour. Every hour, instead of bells a bugler plays a Polish tune from the top of the tallest tower, four times, once for each cardinal direction. The guide told us this happens every hour, so if you happened to be there at 3am you would hear it, unlike bells which don't ring at night. He also told us the bugler shift is 24 hours long.
Kraków barbican guarding the entrance to old townClock tower, the rest of the old town hall has been demolished Pope window in the Bishop's palace where Pope John Paul II stayed on visits to Kraków and addressed the crowds from this window. He went to university in Kraków as a young man.Wawel cathedral with a hodgepodge of burial chapelsYanmei with Wawel castle in the background. I believe this is the approximate spot my brother Graham proposed to his wife Jessica.
After the tour we headed back to the apartment where we could finally shower and change out of the clothes we'd been wearing for two days. The apartment was quite nice, it was large and actually had a loft with a second bedroom.
On another day we joined a tour to Auschwitz and Birkenau. This is not an enjoyable tour, but it is powerful and worthwhile. It was literally incomprehensible and unimaginable to me. You can listen to the descriptions of the conditions and activities and look around and try to picture the horror of it, but I'm sure I didn't even imagine a fraction of the reality.
The train from Vienna to Prague is about 4 hours 45 minutes. For some routes a reservation is required, but not for this one. However I suggested to Yanmei we get a reservation anyway. A reservation provides you with a seat number, otherwise you just sit wherever there is space. Our Eurail pass is for 1st class, but they ticket lady said they only had one 1st class seat left, so we reserved two 2nd class seats. I was annoyed at myself for not making the reservation the previous night when we got back from Budapest and walked past the ticket office. However the 2nd class reservation turned out to be money well spent since the train was packed. People were sitting on the floor and standing in corridors, not something we want to do for nearly 5 hours.
We went to the hotel restaurant for dinner, since it was supposed to be nice. The service was great and they had live piano music, but the food itself was just okay. I had a Czech hanger steak with dumplings and Yanmei had a mushroom risotto.
Castle gates guarded by fighting giants. Hapsburg crown in the center. Restoration going on in the first courtyard.
The next day we did a tour. We started at the Prague Castle. Inside the castle is the Saint Vitus Cathedral. The construction of the cathedral started in 1344 and was only completed in 1929, 585 later. You can see in the picture that we were under serious threat of rain.
St. Vitus Cathedral. In the bottom right you can see a direct connection to the castle complex.Close up on the gargoyles on the church. On the right you can see two men in business suits. These are the final architects indicating this part was finished in the 20th century despite the gothic style.View of Prague from the castleJohn Lenin wall
Once we got down to the river we took a 40 minute cruise on the Vltava river.
Yanmei and her Taiwanese friend she met on the tourCharles bridge in the background. It was so hot I put on sunscreen. This jinxed us and it started to rain heavily a few minutes later.Roof closed to protect from the rainCharles bridge across the Vltava. It was the only bridge across the river for 500 years until 1841.
The river floods periodically. The most recent was in 2002, which they called a thousand year flood, because it was the highest water ever recorded in the city's history. If you go to YouTube and search for Prague flood 2002 you can find some videos of it.
Markers on a building showing the flood levels. The smaller one highest up is 2002. The very small one lower is 1890.Another perspective to show how high the water was, river is on the left and the markers on the building are on the right.
Finally we walked across the famous Charles bridge.
Yay the sun came back out!Astronomical clock of Prague
As part of the tour we had a late lunch in a “medieval restaurant”, and then finished up with a quick walk through the Jewish quarter.
Since it is so close we decided to use our Eurail pass to take a day trip to Budapest. We had to get up early for this, to catch the 7:12am train to Budapest. It is about a 2.5 hour train ride.
Dense field of wind turbines in Austria. Big too, this continued for at least 10 miles.On the other side of the Danube is Slovakia. This is the closest we got this time.Budapest metro map
Our train was a little late arriving at about 10am. We planned to go on a free walking tour at 10:30am, which meant it would be a challenge to get there on time. We found the metro station outside the rail station, but there was a huge line for the single ticket machine. We decided we wouldn't make it if we waited in line, so we went outside to get a taxi. There were lots of taxis waiting outside the train station, but none of them would take us, they were all reserved. Then I noticed another ticket machine for the buses with no line, so I quickly bought us two tickets and we went back into the metro. The tickets worked and we made it to the tour starting point with 2 minutes to spare.
The Budapest metro is nice. Very clean and easy to navigate. As you can see from the metro map Budapest is made up of the Buda side and the Pest side.
I guess a lot of people had the same idea as us, because there was a huge crowd for the tour, so much so that they broke it up into 4 groups, and each group was still about 40 people. Our guide was named Zoltan and although he was Hungarian, he spoke clearly enough that Yanmei could understand him very well.
Buda Castle as viewed from the Pest side of the DanubeSt. Stephen's BasilicaOverlooking the Pest side from the Buda sideChanging of the Hungarian Presidential guard. After we watched this the guide mentioned they just started doing this 3 years ago as a tourist attraction.Matthias church
When the tour finished we had lunch. After lunch Yanmei wanted to go to a thermal bath house. Budapest is known for its mineral water hot springs even from Roman times. More recently when conquered by the Turks they started building bath houses. We went to Gellert Baths, which is not the biggest one, but is supposed to be less crowded and touristy. I wasn't too keen on the idea, but it turned out to be pretty nice.
One picture of the main pool from the entrance. After this I didn't take any more. I think it's a little rude to take photos of people bathing, although some people were doing it.
It is mixed bathing with swim suits required. First you shower, then you go into the swimming pool or thermal baths. We went to the baths. There is a certain sequence they recommend, but we just did whatever we felt like. It wasn't very crowded and sometimes there were only a couple of other people in the large thermal pools with us. I'm not sure what the age limit was, but there were no kids running around wrecking havoc, so it was easy to relax and float around in the pools. We also used the saunas. They had three levels of saunas, I tried to go in the hottest one, but the floor was so hot it burned my feet so I left after about 5 seconds. If I had flip flops and a towel to sit on so I didn't burn my legs I probably could have stayed a few minutes.
I actually enjoyed it quite a bit and would have stayed longer but we had to get back to catch our train back to Vienna. After so many days on the road, and a long walking tour it helped relax my joints and soothe my sore feet.
I know there is a Veeva office in Budapest. I looked up the address and I wore my Veeva shirt just in case, but we didn't have time for a visit this time.
Posted with Blogsy
