Month: June 2018

As always happens to me when I’m on holiday I awoke super early. All ready for the day to start but not even 6.30 yet I decided to go on the hunt for a coffee before my first Krakow tour starts at 8.30

A bit of pre-googling indicated that not much if anything opens before 7 but thought I’d try my luck. If nothing else the sun was out after some rain overnight so I would at least get a walk in.

I did a complete circuit of the square, with no luck. Even the main chain coffee shops like Costa, Nero and McDonalds Cafe don’t open till 7. I was resigned to the fact that today I’d have to settle for chain coffee again when I just pushed a little further down the street and found Nakielny Cafe which was open before 7.

Large coffee and pastry for 15PLN, about $AUD6. Coffee a decent 7/10. Bonus for being open before 7!!

Today was my 3rd full day of travelling and I’m finally in Krakow. By my basic estimation I’ve covered almost 20,000km to get here since I pretty much overshot it yesterday going to London. This was certainly the most interesting travel day.

I started this morning with my very early wake up and transfer from terminal 4 to terminal 3. You can read about this in an earlier post here. The plane ride was good, it was a BA “Euro Flyer” flight, which is roughly the equivalent of JetStar. No free food, seats don’t recline, no entertainment etc. although they did give out free news papers. The plane was very new and since this was only a two hour flight, very very quick compared to yesterday and Friday. It still blows my antipodean mind that I can travel such as short distance and have crossed 4 countries.

I haven’t read a proper newspaper in print form for who knows how long, and it was great to have a decent broadsheet to relive the memory. Made the digital deprivation on the fight bearable, even if it was only two hours

 

Once in Warsaw, cleared immigration and customs very quickly, the airport is well signed and I found the train station in seconds. Bought a ticket (about $2) for the ride to the main Warsaw Central station for my high speed train to Krakow. I had 1.5 hours to wait, so grabbed some lunch, which turned out to be a surprise.

Transfer train to Warsaw Central

 

At Warsaw Central I was first impressed with the platform layout as it labeled exactly where each train carriage would arrive, except it didn’t and my carriage was in a completely different location to what they specified.

 

The train arrived, found my seat and was sitting next to this lovely Polish Grandma, who from what I could gather spoke Russian, German, Spanish, Italian as well as Polish, but unfortunately no English. Even more unfortunate is that I only speak English, but with Google Translate and some photos we were able to have a conversation, even though it was a little slow and she told me about her family, the cooking she does and the most amazing looking mushrooms picked from the forest behind her house outside Krakow.

She even generously shared her pastries she had purchased for the trip with me (which were delicious). Her daughter apparently works in the shopping centre just near the train station in Krakow. I did have a carved spoon that my mate Virgil did for me, which was originally destined for Cafe Finska (a shared art cafe in Krakow) however I discovered it was permanently closed now and wasn’t quite sure what to do with the spoon. Thankfully these things sort themselves out and the spoon now has a new Polish owner who loves that she now has a souvenir from Australia. It may even end up mentioned in a Polish food blog as her daughter blogs about cooking and food here in Poland. This turned out to be an amazing train trip being able to really interact with a true local, the two hour trip seemed like it took only minutes.

 

The Airbnb apartment I have is fantastic, pretty much exactly as described online and more than large enough for my needs. Its on the third floor with no lift, so I’ll be getting my exercise in each day. Still can’t believe the value on this place. Krakow in this section is a bit of a party town, but its not as noisy or crowded as I expected. When beer can be had for around $2 a pint, its going to attract a lot of people from Western Europe

 

I think the thing that surprised me most about Krakow is that it has this fantastic old town, and right next to it, it has this thonking large shopping mall, as big as any you would see in Sydney. As its been raining, I made a trip there to find an umbrella as well as pick up a few supplies for the next few days. When I came out it was pouring, so the umbrella came in handy immediately. I did a quick circuit of the main square before heading to the shopping centre, and it lives up to its expectations. Its massive and the Cloth Hall is fantastic.

 

Of course my first dinner in Poland *had* to be Pierogi. A quick google of “Best Pierogi in Krakow” turned up a handful, with Pierogarnia Krakowiacy in the top 5 and only a few streets from me. Headed down there and had a mixed plate of Beef/Pork and Turkey/Tomato Pierogi.

The Square on the walk back to the apartment

Stats Update

• Days : 3
• Trains : 6
• Planes : 3
• Coffees : 10

 

Waiting for my train to Krakow (1.5 hrs wait) I decided to get some lunch as I remembered I didn’t actually have breakfast apart from a coffee.

Options here with available seating were slim, and Starbucks was huge with a few places left to sit. So swallowed the pride and in I went.

What could have been an ultimate fail turned into an awesome win. I asked the guy serving if he spoke English to which he responded he spoke excellent English… he was a Barista from Melbourne !

Totally last place I would have ever thought I be served by another Australian. It was only an iced coffee but it’s the best Starbucks I’ve ever had.

Remember I almost died of boredom on my Singapore to London flight due to Digital Deficiency Syndrome ?

As well as watching a metric shed load of downloaded Netflix to relieve the symptoms, I played around with iMovie on the iPad and created this:-

Day 1 Vlog

My flight today is scheduled at 7am so my plan was to be at the airport no later than 5am. TfL thwarted that plan though, as I discovered last night that whilst the Heathrow website says the transfer trains between terminals run 4 times an hour, they don’t start running till 5.20am, and the transfer time is at least 20 minutes.

Apparently there are free busses but couldn’t find it, so just cut my losses and took a cab. £37, very ouch.

Got to the airport and there was quite a queue already to check in, so was glad I did take the cab anyway. Then the airport gods intervened and the lady managing the check in line pulled me out of the queue and sent me to the first class checkin line. Have no idea why, maybe having a blue coloured passport in my hand in a sea of red coloured ones paid some sort of divine dividend.

Coffee was from the “Nero” chain here at the airport, average but welcome at 5 in the morning. I also discovered that the pound coins I had left over from last year have expired and couldn’t pay for the coffee with them.

The round gold only ones no longer legal tender in the UK

My Cab ride