Monday, June 23, 2014

Poland: Wawel Castle (June 21, 2014)

I will be updating a summary of my last two weeks in Olomouc soon but because of spotting WIFI (well mostly the fact that we had to pay for it in our last hotel) I will be uploading a few posts at the same time over my stay in Poland thus far. Bear with me.

On Friday we visited Auschwitz and Birkenau and I will be uploading a separate post about that as well when I can get enough service to upload pictures. Words will not do justice so I want to share with you the pictures so you can catch a small glimpse of what I experienced.

So…Saturday June 21, 2014.

We visited the Gothic Wawel Castle in Krakow today. Although it wasn’t my favorite castle we visited on this trip, it was full of Polish history (obviously). Atop of Wawel Hill are the castle, a cathedral, a museum and the crown treasury and armory.

Our tour started with the treasury and we were able to see a few of the jewels of Poland that have survived until today. Poland is a country that has seen the pattern of independence and occupation repeat itself often, so the artifacts that have survived this remain very important to the country.

The tour of the rooms of the castle was quite interesting as well because during WWII the collection of enormous wall tapestries were removed and sent to Canada for safekeeping. We had an audio guide during our tour of the cathedral that made it more interesting because we finally knew little details about the artifacts and individuals who we were looking at.

After 5 long hours of touring, touring, and more touring, we were set free and were all pretty hungry. A delicious bowl of Beef Goloush soup, in a bread bowl I might add, and some cheese perogis were enough to recharge my tired mind and feed growling stomach. Jackie, Jake, D’Arcy, Jenna and I decided to do a little bit of shopping in the market. Most of them bought some beautiful amber jewelry pieces while I checked out the wooden pieces for my brothers.


That night we decided to try “The Mexican Restaurant” and take my advice when I saw that Poland does not know how to do Mexican! We did though decide to watch some more of the World Cup and enjoy a few drinks with our large group. I have really bonded with my peers and will truly miss them when the trip is officially over.

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