Day 2 Krakow's Vavel Castle

After getting off the noisiest train ever, we made our way to our hostel, the Secret Garden, hidden away in the former Jewish quarter of Krakow. It was a nice place where all the rooms had been given names pertaining to a fruit. We were in the Raspberry Elation room. We got in pretty late so we went to bed right away after a long day of travel. The next day we headed out to see downtown Krakow. The old city and market square are surrounded by a nice park, which makes a nice separation for the locals from the annoying tourists. Here is Béla sleeping next to a pretty cool fountain. It has three arms that shoot water at a big slab of cement. Slightly less conventional than the usual squirt-water-directly-up models.

Here is Julia in the market square. At two hundred meters squared (not 200m², twice the size of our apartment, but 200x200=40 000m²) it is the largest medieval town square in Europe and surrounded by beautiful buildings. In the very center is the old cloth market building, behind Julia. It now houses a bunch of souvenir shops that actually don't look all that tacky. They have a lot of traditional crafts including woodwork, amber jewelery, embroidery, and little dolls.


Here is Béla going at some corn on the cob that we bought from a vendor on the square. He did pretty well on it.

And as you can see here, he loved using the cob as a teething toy. Zombie Béla will eat your corn!
At one of the squares corners is the St. Mary's Basilica, a brick Gothic church where a trumpeter signals the hour with a song that is cut off mid note to commemorate the famous 13th century trumpeter, who was shot in the throat while sounding the alarm before the Mongol attack on the city


There were little carts all over the place selling sesame-covered bagel-like bread, which I can't bring myself to call bagels because they don't really resemble either the Montreal or the New York version of the food. Still, they were tasty, cheap, and ubiquitous, so we had a few along the way. They also sold little tiny bagels on a string, and we saw some kids wearing them, so we got a mini bagel necklace for Béla to wear. He tore into them, devouring only a few completely, but taking chunks out of almost all of them. He was quite pleased.


For lunch we found a nice place that served traditional Polish food. Julia had the perogies, I had the mixed grill and Béla had fun at a nearby fountain. There were many children playing with the several jets coming out of the ground in front of the fountain. Bela did really well with this. He is not crazy about having fun with water and is usually very cautious in a pool or the bath tub. But he went right up to these and splashed around and didn't even cry when he was accidentally splashed by other kids.






Then we made our way to Wawel (pronounced Vavel) Castle. A short walk from downtown, it is perched on a hill on the banks of the Vistula, the river that runs through Krakow, and houses a cathedral and several museums. They only let a certain number of people into the museums a day so by the time we got there we only got to see the state rooms and I went to see the cathedral. Here is the entrance to the castle, a long ramp going up onto the defensive position.

There was also a Dragon!! More on that later



Behind Julia is the cathedral, cathedral museum and parts of the rest of the castle. We stopped here to catch our breaths and let Béla sleep a little after his mini-bagel orgy. The cob is also in there somewhere. (Note from Julia: After he awoke and we took away his bagel necklace I found out that these little bagels were actually rather sweet, unlike their larger sesame-covered kin. As I'd spent the past six months carefully guarding Béla from any refined sugars, I was mortified, but I needn't have worried - by the end of the trip he'd be eating far worse...)
I went to check out the cathedral while Julia stayed with Béla since there were a lot of awkward stairs packed with tourist that we didn't feel like carrying him up. The Cathedral was nice with many gilded decoration and fancily carved wood. Then we went on to the state rooms. In each room they had a loosely wood-framed map on a lectern describing the antiques in the room. Béla loved to grab these and tear them apart from the carrier that Julia was wearing. After a couple times he wasn't allowed to go near them any more, but this also meant that Julia couldn't get near enough to read the interpretive signs, which is something that she loves. The room were pretty grandiose, often with interesting paintings and designs on the ceiling. One had deep squares cut out and squares in the middle of the room had a bunch of carved heads looking down at you, quite surprising. Another few had leather wall paper, which Julia noticed. Unfortunately we weren't permitted to take photos inside, and didn't want to push our luck after the wooden sign fiasco. Here is a picture of the courtyard.
Here's a picture from the court yard looking through the wall and over the outer wall at a few tall church steeples.
On the way to the bathrooms outside of the courtyard we saw a couple of strangely inclined benches. They were made to sit a little farther down that street where the incline is much greater but someone had dragged them up.
After all that, Julia went dragon slaying in the dragons den. I'll let Julia interject with her comments on the den, Julia:

We were all supposed to go to the Dragon's Den, but unfortunately there was an incredibly long spiral staircase heading down into it, which just wasn't practical with a stroller. I went ahead then on my own, unfortunately without the camera. As the stairs wound down it got cooler and cooler, until the walls were dripping with condensation. Eventually it led into a natural cave at the base of the hill, which exited right onto the riverbank, where I could wait for Jer and Béla. Now back to Jeremi.

Meanwhile, me and Béla went the long way out of the castle to avoid the pesky dragons. Little did we know that it was waiting outside it's den for us, where we were supposed to meet Julia. Much in the style that Béla defeats the cat, he went in to pull the fire breathing monstrosity's scaly tail. Here he is getting the drop on it (see lower left).
And, yes, it did actually breath fire. Every couple minutes a flame would burst out of it's mouth.

And the peasants rejoiced frolicking around the defeated dragon.

This is one of the castle's towers seen from the river.
Then we went back to the Raspberry Room for a diaper party/drop off our souvenir loot, before going to look for one of the kosher restaurants recommended by the hostel.
Béla didn't quite make it there and slept through the meal. Nice for us, quiet diner, but unfortunately this started a bit of a trend where Béla would fall asleep every time we stopped at a restaurant. This means that we had to find other times to feed him and that the breast milk demands went up.
We had a lovely kosher meal; Julia ordered a bean and buckwheat stew that although salty was very good not to mention that it came in a giant portion, which meant we could bring some back to the hostel for Béla to eat when he awoke. (Yes, I know, salty food is terrible for babies. Didn't you already read about the sugar-bagels? We're terrible parents!) I had goose necks stuffed with chicken livers. Julia was thrilled to have Haroseth for dessert, bringing back old Seder memories.

Also noteworthy is how hot it was, or at least how hot we thought it was. It was actually only in the low 30s that day. Little did we know what crazy temperatures would be in store for us as our trip went on. As you read the following posts, it will become apparent why I say "only in the low 30s". The next day we went mining. Stay tuned for day 3.