{"id":2499,"date":"2016-09-21T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/?p=2499"},"modified":"2017-07-10T11:26:56","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T15:26:56","slug":"my-trip-to-krakow-poland-the-sights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/my-trip-to-krakow-poland-the-sights\/","title":{"rendered":"My Trip to Krakow, Poland: The Sights"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just returned from a trip to Krakow, Poland<\/a> last week where I was speaking at a software developer conference. \u00a0I posted details of that experience here<\/a>. \u00a0This post, however, is dedicated to the sightseeing I was able to squeeze in\u00a0while I was there. \u00a0I only had my iPhone 5S on this trip, so I will apologize in advance for the quality of \u00a0some of these photos.<\/p>\n

This photo sort of shows the typical countryside in Poland. \u00a0Huge historic-looking castle looking structures right next to modern looking apartments right next to small modest cottages.<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0Wawel Castle<\/a> and the Vistula River<\/a> are both important landmarks\u00a0of Krakow. \u00a0The river is the longest and largest river in the whole country and it snakes through\u00a0the entire city. \u00a0The castle sits prominently on top of Wawel Hill and is one of\u00a0the most historically and culturally important sites in all of Poland.<\/p>\n

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Here’s a close up photo of Wawel Castle at night.<\/p>\n

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And here is another photo at night, but from across the river.<\/p>\n

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In the center of Krakow city is\u00a0Rynek Gl\u00f3wny<\/a>, which means “main market” or “main square”. \u00a0It’s a large medieval town square, dating back to the 13th century, surrounded by palaces & churches. \u00a0It’s a wonderful area of town and it’s a huge draw for locals and for tourists both during the day and at night.<\/p>\n

Here is a photo of Wieza Ratuszowa<\/a>, or “town hall tower”, which is a renovated Gothic tower that used to be just one part of the town hall, but is now a museum. \u00a0I regret that I did not have time to visit any of the museums in town while I was there.<\/p>\n

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This building, also in the middle of the town square is The Cloth Hall<\/a> which is a\u00a0Renaissance-style market hall lined the entire length with stalls of locals selling goods. \u00a0It also contains a museum.<\/p>\n

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The main visual Gothic standout of the town square, though, is\u00a0St. Mary’s Basilica<\/a>, which is a huge Catholic church with 2 tall asymmetrical towers. \u00a0Every hour, a trumpet signal is played from the top of the taller of the\u00a0two towers. The tune breaks off in mid-stream, to commemorate the famous 13th century trumpeter, who was shot in the throat while sounding the alarm before the Mongol attack on the city.<\/p>\n

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This photo fails to show the size of these huge doors since no-one is in the photo for scale.<\/p>\n

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The entire perimeter of the town square is lined with outdoor seating for the various restaurants and bars that make up the majority of the storefronts.<\/p>\n

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Street performers sprinkle the town square. \u00a0All day and all night.<\/p>\n

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And also the side streets leading to and from the town square.<\/p>\n

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This is sort of random. \u00a0Meet Polish banjo playing Abe Lincoln talking on his smart phone!<\/p>\n

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I’d like to see what’s under the hood of this street performer’s act. \u00a0She just sat there motionless. \u00a0What exactly is holding her up? \u00a0She looked very stable with no noticeable wobble. \u00a0It’s a great trick.<\/p>\n

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Musicians were by far the most popular choice of street performers. \u00a0Both groups and soloists.<\/p>\n

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There were lots and lots of horse drawn carriage rides to choose from in the town square.<\/p>\n

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Here is what the inside of The Cloth Hall looked like. \u00a0Lots of trinkets and jewelry for sale.<\/p>\n

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The streets of Krakow were very interesting. \u00a0Lots of 2 or 3 story buildings of various architecture styles. \u00a0Lots of narrow streets. \u00a0Lots of odd angles and irregular streets.<\/p>\n

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Some\u00a0buildings are quite colorful. \u00a0In this photo you can see the wires that are used to power the street cars, which were sort of a cross between a bus and a train. \u00a0They looked a lot like a bus. \u00a0But they ran on a train track in the middle of the road.<\/p>\n

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This photo shows a typical street leading towards the town square. \u00a0St Mary’s is in the distance. \u00a0The streets leading to the square were full of tourist shops selling trinkets, jewelry, food, etc.<\/p>\n

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There were a few 3-dimensional bronze maps like this in\u00a0the notable historical areas. \u00a0Very cool. \u00a0 Wawel Castle is on the far end and\u00a0the Vistula river is on the other side of it. \u00a0In the middle you can see St Mary’s and The Cloth Hall and the Town Hall Tower.<\/p>\n

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We took a short 30 minute trip down the road to tour the\u00a0Wieliczka Salt Mine<\/a>. \u00a0It is really cool. \u00a0It took about 3 hours to tour it and they told us we had only seen about 1 percent of the whole mine. \u00a0It’s huge! \u00a0And it’s all hundreds of\u00a0meters below the surface!<\/p>\n

When it stopped production of salt in 2007 it was one of the world’s oldest salt mines in production. \u00a0Within the mine\u00a0there are lots and lots of statues that are carved out of rock salt and also many rooms and even chapels. \u00a0Here is a photo of a room with large logs holding up the ceiling.<\/p>\n

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This photo shows a long mine with a railway in the middle for hauling out the salt.<\/p>\n

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The walls and ceiling and floor of the mine are all rock salt. \u00a0The salt looks and feels like stone or marble. \u00a0It’s very hard stuff. \u00a0You can make out its crystalline structure in this photo. \u00a0The salt is far from pure when it’s mined. \u00a0It requires processing into table salt. \u00a0I don’t recall the details, though.<\/p>\n

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This is one of many many statues on display inside the mine that are actually carved out of rock salt. \u00a0Remember, it’s very hard … like marble.<\/p>\n

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This is pretty crazy. \u00a0It’s a huge chapel. \u00a0Underground. \u00a0Carved in the rock salt. \u00a0Walls, ceiling, floor are all rock salt. \u00a0And the stairs! \u00a0People\u00a0pay tens of thousands of US dollars to have weddings in here!<\/p>\n

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Another photo of the chapel with alter detail. \u00a0Everything is rock salt!<\/p>\n

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The most pure rock salt is actually clear. \u00a0Crystal clear. \u00a0So they carved these chandelier crystals out of that pure salt.<\/p>\n

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Here is a close up photo of some of the relief sculptures carved into the walls of the cathedral. \u00a0This photo was probably a couple feet high.<\/p>\n

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Occasional statues like this one of Mary are carved out of pure salt which is clear and looks really cool with lights inside.<\/p>\n

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There are a few\u00a0underground rivers and lakes inside the mine that are completely saturated with salt.<\/p>\n

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I have a lot more photos, but I wanted to try to minimize the selection and try to not overload my readers. \u00a0Tomorrow I\u2019ll publish a blog post about all the wonderful food\u00a0that I was able to\u00a0experience during my short time in Krakow, Poland.<\/p>\n

Thanks for your interest!<\/p>\n

Kurt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just returned from a trip to Krakow, Poland last week where I was speaking at a software developer conference. \u00a0I posted details of that experience here. \u00a0This post, however, is dedicated to the sightseeing I was able to squeeze in\u00a0while I was there. \u00a0I only had my iPhone 5S on this trip, so I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[110,109,108],"tags":[573,574,575,278,576],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2601,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions\/2601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leucht.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}