Pole position ;-)

So we know we keep harping on about Lonely Planet getting its facts wrong, but this time it really screwed with us. The 'bible' swore we could get a connection into Poland from several lovely towns in Eastern Slovakia - it lied!!!! Meaning we had to backtrack across the country on a 10 hour trip to arrive in Krakow at 11pm. While the train trip was very long, there were moments of hilarity - the jovial Slovakian woman who offered to swap her daughters boyfriend for Jules, (I turned her down), and the realisation we were the only people on the train for long stretches.

Travel weary we walked into the main square of Krakow and were blown away - so impressive! Our hostel was right on the main sq (the largest medieval square in Europe) and there were so many tourists. After our travels through rural Eastern Europe we had sort of forgotten there were other tourists about! We inhaled kebabs for our late dinner and crashed out to the sounds of the bugler in the tower and the hordes of happy tourists.

Krakow castle was our first stop for sightseeing, we skipped the overflowing tours but wandered around the grounds for free. Also got to walk out through the 'Dragons Cave' very atmospheric underground caves (like Batmans!). Onto the main square to climb the old town hall tower - very steep steps, just like Bianca loves. The afternoon was spent wandering the Jewish ghetto which used to be a separate town. We visited a few synagoges where Jules got to wear the Jewish cap, and saw a renaissance era cemetery.

We planned to just have one beer on the square before dinner, ended up staying for several and added cocktails to the mix at a cool bar later on. So the next day was a mandatory rest day, consisting of Mc Donalds, English bookshop, Terminator at the movies and a calm walk around the city's old defenses.

Managed to pronounce Wroclaw correctly to the train station attendant (its vrots-wharf of course)! Jules had an amusing conversation with a Polish girl in our carriage about the differences between countries, she liked hearing about Bulgarian's penchant for double denim. If it is possible the main square in Wroclaw is even more beautiful than Krakow's. The buildings are brightly coloured and ornately decorated with statues.

Our full day of sightseeing started with the National Museum (1 million religious icons - check) and then we ducked in and out of churches to avoid the rain. One of them had a funny little surprise where a couple of oldies had set up a room full of mechanical christmas like toys that danced around while music played. A statue of Poland's own former Pope John Paul II even popped out of a little window to wave hello. Very amusing.

The highlight of the day was a 100m long panorama painting, housed in a round building, of a famous Polish independence battle from 1794. The quality of the painting is not like a usual smaller size painting (although still very good) but the effect the you get when you walk into the middle of the room on a suspended platform made it really feel like you were in the middle of what was happening.

We took a train today to Prague and have been very fortunate again to have a hostel directly looking onto the famous Charles Bridge, with hordes of tourists swarming below. We have already sampled a couple of types of beers at lunch and plan to head out now to continue our research of looking for the best Czech beer!

PS Photos from our previous blog have now been uploaded.