Nathan's Insights

Tuesday 09 April 2024
Highlights: Visiting Palace Pławniowice, Exploring Wawel Royal Castle

Today was a long travel day from Berlin, Germany to Krakow, Poland. This is a roughly 600 km trip which was originally expected to take 6 hours but leaving at 07:30 and arriving at 17:15 it took 9.5 hours. This was mostly due to road works and massive number of shipping trucks.

The journey in our private mini bus did provide great views of the countryside. We had three stops, the first just over the border into Poland for a toilet break and to get Polish money. The second was for lunch, but after a big buffet breakfast Darby and me weren’t really hungry.

The third stop however was in Pławniowice at the Palace Pławniowice. The current stunning building was built between 1882-1885 and was owned by noble families. After World War 2 the site was briefly occupied by the Soviet Army before being handed over to the Catholic Church.

We then headed onto Krakow arriving around 17:15. This gave us 30 minutes to check into our rooms and then meeting for an orientation walk of central of Krakow lead by our CEO Christin.

We visited Rynek Główny (Central Square) which has many attractive structures including Basilica of St Mary and the Town Hall Tower. The major highlight however was exploring Wawel Royal Castle.

Wawel Royal Castle was built in the 14th century, and expanded significantly over the next hundreds of years. Architectural styles used cover Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods.

For centuries the residence of the kings of Poland and the symbol of Polish statehood. It has been used as official residence of Polish leaders and Nazi Governor of Poland used it in World War 2. Today it is a museum but also used to bury notable Polish individuals.

We finished the day with a nice group dinner at Morskie Oko restaurant which included locals playing music.

A long travel day but we did get to see some impressive sights.