Day 105 May 30th 2017
Sometime around 9.30am we left our apartment and our endearing charge Benny. Early-ish for us as we headed to Wawel castle our destination of the day.
Wawel castle is not just one castle it has numerous buildings from the many eras of history and a variety of attractions (that you pay for) i inside its walls. From our reading it was a worthwhile visit but had a very complicated ticketing system – with each of the attractions needing a separate ticket.
We decided to just turn up and see what happened – well the big news is you don’t have to pay to get entry to the castle. We wandered around the outside until we found the visitors centre and a cafe with a view of the river. The queue for tickets was short so we went for coffee and studied the guide. On return the queue was long but we had made our ticketing decisions.
The tour with English guide was not till 2pm – the time we set ourselves to be back with Benny so we chose one exhibition called Lost Wawel. “This unique exhibition combines an archaeological-architectural reserve, architectural elements from various periods, traditionally displayed objects uncovered in archaeological excavations, and scale models of buildings. One room is devoted to the Wawel’s large collection of Renaissance tiles.” Mel was sold on the tiles.
This undersold, seemingly under-attended exhibition captured you as you entered with excavations under and around you. There were models of the original buildings, a walk through of excavations as, exhibits of findings in the archeological diggings, the stone carving, and terracotta tiles.
Pleased with ourselves we returned to the outside and walked the perimeter edging over the river. Finally found ourselves on the way down into the green belt again.
With time still up our sleeve we headed for the Jewish quarter Kazimierz. This area was a reminder of the many centuries of history and culture before the Holocaust that continues now.
Synagogues and Jewish restaurants, a cozy feeling of back streets with signs along the way reminding you what had happened here. We wandered for some time.
Hungry – so we practised our habit of not going to restaurants facing a square (in this case Plac Nowy) and found Pod 13 ka which was a “Restauracja Samoobsługowa”.That second word which I love trying to say means self-service. Not the self service we are used to meaning serve your own meal. This means you head for the cashier ask for a menu in English (not always successful) but you will get helped and then order and pay. We have now tried this several times it has always been cheap (about 10 AUD) for two main meals and soft drinks with quality varying from OK to great. Todays was high up in the latter category.
Then it was home the quickest most direct way possible. This was the Number 3 tram which brought us straight home. After a walk with Benny and we stumbled across a charming area of park with an incredible array of tiny houses with beautiful gardens walled off from the park. Little gates with street numbers on highlighted that there was a house there. The entire walk was a delight despite having no idea what it meant or where we were! HereWeGo told us the park was Stanislawa Wyspianskiego . This prompted both our discussion and research about what it all meant. While we did not find out about the tiny old house one article advocates maintaining green spaces as the city develops. As we worked around our local area green spaces are numerous.
