Originally posted 13/08/2013

Krakow - The city that sounds like a gunshot. In English, anyway; the Polish pronounce it more like 'Krah-kuv', with a roll on the r and the uv sounds like the u in 'put'. Sam and I visited Prague before coming here, but we didn't do anything too crazy that I didn't already cover in my Prague blog posts. Just some drinking, some walking to show Sam the can't-miss tourist stuff, and the Salvador Dali Museum. Today in Krakow we did a walking tour of the old town in the morning, and the Jewish Quarter in the arvo.

  • We hit up the Salvador Dali museum in Prague. Don't ask me why there was a Salvador Dali museum in Prague, considering he was Spanish, then lived in France. It was pretty sick anyway, we saw the famous melting clock painting along with a bunch of other warped creations.

  • After settling into Krakow, we did a bit of a walking tour. I didn't know what to expect from Krakow - indeed, we booked more days in Prague, thinking it would be better. Surprisingly, we thought Prague was pretty meh and Krakow was excellent. It was really nicely laid out, full of interesting facts, like that it has the highest pub density in Europe (over 1200 pubs!!), cheap as chips, and had an excellent nightlife.

  • There is a palace called 'Bonerowski Palace', pictured. It was originally Boner Palace but they changed the name for some strange reason...
    Krakow Bonerowski Palace

  • This is a monument honoring Chopin, a classical composer from Poland. It represents the hammers of a piano, the water streams are the strings.
    Krakow Chopin Monument

  • This statue is a guy called Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish war hero. Mt Kosciuszko in Australia is named after him! We've been pronouncing it 'wrong' the whole time though, the Polish say it more like 'keshtrushko'.
    Krakow Kościuszko Statue

  • Dragon Bones! Supposedly from the dragon that lived under the castle...
    Krakow Dragon Bones

  • When I was in high school I always wondered why history and geography were lumped in the same category even though they were totally different. It kind of clicked on this trip when I was learning about Polish history, and that at one stage Poland didn't exist, it was divided into thirds by other countries. History IS Geography - if you track the borders of countries back through the years you're looking at the histories of those countries on a broad scale.

  • Kazimierz (this one is pronounced something like 'kashimyesh') is the Jewish district of Krakow. During WW2 when the Nazis invaded, the Jewish were moved out of here into a special Jewish Ghetto, and later to Auschwitz