Our car smells very strongly of cheese. We've been a bit fond of picking up cheese as we travel and as it's so cool, its no problem to store it in the car - except for the smell. Greg picked up a very ripe camembert which Les Hodgson would approve of, no-one else will eat it, and we are all blaming it fair and square for the smell, but I suspect Greg's hidden sausages are also contributing. The good news is, after a few minutes of complaining and whinging, we all settle down and can barely smell it... until the next stop!
I had looked at the distance between Wroclaw and Krakow - it seemed like an easy drive, just 271 kms. Little did we know that in fact most of that 271 kms was going to be travelling at 50kms an hour!! We assumed there would be a big freeway between two large cities, but we assumed wrongly. It was in fact just a two lane (one car in each direction) road, with lots of small towns along the way. The speed limit in small towns is 50kms and while it goes up to 90km, sometimes it's just for two minutes before you hit another bloody town. It was raining, and dark by 5pm, so we were relieved that the GPS worked perfectly and led us directly to our hostel for our stay in Krakow, the 4.Friends Hostel. It's not too bad, about 20 minutes out of the old town by bus, but it had parking - I couldn't find any hostels in town with parking.
When we went in today, I could see why - there is lots of no traffic areas in the old city. It was cold, but quite lovely, and we enjoyed wandering around. We got talked into a tour by electric car - we were being endlessly harassed and it seemed the easy option to just give in. It was quite interesting, with an audio (supplemented by our pommie driver, the only problem being he spoke over the audio which made it a challenge to know what to listen to!). When we got to Wawel Castle I jumped out to buy some tickets as the guide told us that there are only limited tickets to the castle. This involved walking rapidly up a slope of around 600m to get to the gate, then to the ticket office. The good news was that the castle exhibits were free in November! The bad news was that not all the exhibits were open. We'd already decided to see the armoury and the temporary exhibit (which included the Da Vinci painting, "Lady with an Ermine") but the woman at the ticket counter told me (in a voice which didn't allow any discussion!) that we would also see the very lovely state apartments and the Lost Wawel, and here were our times. What could I say except thank you, and go down to cancel the rest of our car tour - as our first time slot was in 15 minutes!! I really enjoyed the castle and it was a bit disappointing not to be able to take any photos, not even without a flash. Look for us in the general castle shot, Greg was more interested in getting the castle in than us! Later in the day we realised we actually had more zloty than we needed. We knew we could spend it on petrol, but Bella thought one thing we should spend it on was getting her ears pierced. Yes, she has had her ears pierced twice already, but thought it would look very cool to get a third one done in the lobe of one ear, and one high up on her other ear. She was very determined but after the ear piercer had done the first hole (using a big disposable needle, not a gun!) she nearly backed out of the second one knowing it would hurt a lot more - however I encouraged her to stick with her decision, I knew she'd be disappointed if she didn't. It DID hurt but she was very brave and was delighted afterwards that she'd actually done it. I've added a pic of the needle sticking out of her ear!
Another thing we've been meaning to do is to get Liam's hair cut. Bella has been working on him since we've been away and had convinced him to have a short 'do, long on top and very short around the back. We've tried at a couple of salons but they've been full or didn't speak English, this one could fit us in and voila - see the picture for the new Liam!
We had a splurge Polish dinner at a nice restaurant in town before catching the bus back to the hostel.
Tomorrow we leave Poland and are off to Budapest in Hungary. It's not far, just 394 km, but only 41 km are on a freeway! Yes, according to the Michelin maps and routes, it will take us 6 hours 47 minutes to get there, with the majority of it travelling at 50 km an hour!! Well, at least we are prepared. Greg did try to talk me out of going to Budapest but its on my list of must dos, so we are doing it... I'll report in and let you know how bad it is and if it really was worth it!! Most of the time we are travelling in Slovakia, so I hope the roads are better than Poland. They should be - there are tolls on their roads!!
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