Wednesday 1st December 2021

Chania, Crete to Krakow, Poland – Old Town

Well, it’s 6.10pm and we are seated on a Ryan Air flight due to depart from Athens airport to Krakow, Poland.  The boarding passengers are shoving and pushing their oversized hand luggage into impossible small spaces. Another traveller comes along and turns someone’s bag around and around in an attempt to squeeze his holdall into the space as well, it won’t be possible. Someone else has already tried it!

There was no alarm rudely awaking us before dawn for this adventure, we left Chania, Crete, mid afternoon for the short forty minute hop to Athens.

This holiday has been put together to celebrate my 60th birthday.  Krakow has long been on our bucket list and I recently read the book ‘Long Way Round’ which tells of the epic motorcycle journey from London to New York by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman.  The book mentioned the medieval town of Lviv in Ukraine.

Their descriptions first whet my appetite.  Michael Palin’s ‘New Europe’ also mentions Lviv.  A little research and I learnt that Lviv could be reached by train from Krakow in around seven hours. Dave and I enjoy travelling by train so it seemed like a good idea to see a little more of Poland and continue, crossing the border into Ukraine.  The obvious choice after Lviv is to go to the country’s capital, Kiev.

Once we had this brief outline, I started researching the sightseeing options.

We sent an email to our friends and previous travel companions, outlining our plans and asking if they fancied joining us.  I’m pleased to say that they said yes!

Further research from all of us has given us a list of ‘must sees’ in each of the three cities where we will stay for three nights.  We are going to be busy!

Originally, we had planned to get the train into the city centre to where our hotel was situated.  However due to a. the wet weather when we landed, b. the time, it was almost 8pm and we were hoping for dinner somewhere and c. we figured that it wouldn’t be much more expensive than the train fares with us sharing the cost; we changed our mind and jumped into one of the waiting cabs.

Our instructions were to collect our room keys from the reception at the rather posh looking 4* Hotel Polonia.  The Aparthotel Bastowitz was just next door, where our rooms were located.  I suspect some of the residence is actually private apartments.

We agreed to dump our luggage and meet up again in five minutes, we were hungry.  Setting off in the direction of the Barbican, we then walked through one of the city’s medieval gothic gates, St. Florian’s, which we knew would lead us to the old town and hopefully dinner.

A few steps further and the sound of music enticed us into an eatery to inspect the menu.  The music was actually coming from a cellar bar, a restaurant, however was on the ground floor and we all agreed the menu looked good.

It was a traditional restaurant and rather oldie worldly.  Pretty waitresses dressed in traditional dress brought our menus. The mouth watering selection of Polish dishes we ordered to share is as follows:

Dumplings with chanterelle mushrooms & mozzarella.

Beef goulash served with potato pancakes.

Chicken roulade with mashed potatoes & mushrooms.

Side dishes of browned cabbage and broccoli with black seeds.

A few glasses of the homemade fruity and viscous red wine accompanied the delicious choice of food.  Around 10.45pm, the bill was presented to us and we were informed that they would be closing at 11pm.

Retracing our steps through St Florian’s gate we noticed a colourful model of a church in a glass case. The model had Christmas decorations and we later learnt that there were a few of these ‘Christmas Churches with Nativity Scenes’ throughout the city.

As we headed back to our accommodation, we took a couple of selfies and generally had a laugh, it was our first night on holiday together for quite some time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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