We stayed in Katowice which is not too far from Krakow and acted as a good base to allow us to see the area in the limited time we had. We arrived after midnight on Saturday morning and only got to bed by 2.30am. It wasn't too long until we were awake again and heading to the main train station in the city for our journey to Krakow. If there's one thing I've learned whilst travelling through Eastern Europe it is the need to be open minded when it comes to transport. Despite Katowice and Krakow being two regionally important cities and linked directly by rail it is quite staggering that there only a handful of trains a day in each direction, most of them quizzically take 4 hours or more! There is thankfully a train which left just after 9am and took a mere two hours to get to Krakow.
On arrival, as I experienced when visiting here previously, the city is quite impressive and modern, benefiting still from the investment that came when Euro 2012 was held in the country four years ago. I've shared just a few pictures from the beautiful main square and from our enjoyable and very unique carriage ride around the old town on what was a cloudy but lovely summer day.
After the ride we spent a couple of hours lying on a lovely and cosy seat big enough for all four of us and just laid back with a coffee enjoying the sights and sounds of the main square.
Due to the limited choices of train, as explained earlier, we took the bus back and compared to my other experiences of buses it was quite a surprising journey. It's safe to say this was one of the best coaches I'd travelled on and the road between Krakow and Katowice was equally nice, when we got to our final destination I was reluctant to get off and I think I would have happily stayed on for what must have been a very long ride to its last stop in Gdansk.
The final day of our trip was spent touring around the Auschwitz concentration camps in Oswiecim. I won't describe every gruesome and cruel detail of the place but having already been, needless to say it was still as shocking as it was the first time I visited. Hearing of what went on here was a dichotomy between the cruelty and mass murder that took place here and the light-heartedness we arrived with and the hot weather overhead. This chapter in history is something we don't want to remember but it's somewhere I feel everyone should visit at some point, if only to ensure we know never to let this happen again.
