Friday, June 21, 2024

Day 8 - Prague to Krakow

started out on a one way train
always knew where I was gonna go next
Steal The Show - Lauv

Day 8 I was leaving Prague for Krakow. Train was at 10:19 am so I had time. If I had been more of a morning person, I would have woken up early and since my 24-hour ticket hadn't expire, I would have explored more places. I do feel like I didn't see enough of Prague and that's a shame. However, I am not a morning person so all I could muster that day was to go back to the old town square. Perhaps if I had googled more, I could have gone back to Charles Bridge, but my googling the day before only brought to my attention that the astronomical clock performs at the hour, so the aim was to be there to see it at 09:00 am. Despite of my studying, there's still things that I got wrong and didn't understand until I was at the place. That morning I thought I had my direction correct, but I was a bit lost since I mistook a landmark near the hotel as something it was not. I did make it to the square and it wasn't as crowded as the afternoon before. Kinda nice when it's not full of people. I walked around it a bit, took some pictures. In the morning the sun direction is different.

Closer to 09:00 am, I went to see the clock. There's only a few tourists around, so that was nice. I googled on how to read the clock, but I still get confused. Anyways the performance was short. The funniest thing was at the end when the rooster was crowing. So that's end of my time in Prague. For other pictures of Prague, you can go here.

After that I started to make my way back to the hotel, stopping first at a croissant place that I found through my googling. Croissant was never really my thing, but filled croissant does win me over. Over here in Singapore, I kinda like Brother Bird. So this croissant place I wanted to go to - the street it's in happened to be under some work. Side note: I wonder if it's just in the nature of the Europeans that they would always replace cobblestone streets back with cobblestones, like they would never just pave it with asphalt even though it might make it easier for people walking. Another side note, it's always kinda impressive for me as an Indonesian when cars do stop at zebra cross. No one does this in Indonesia that I think maybe they stop making zebra cross there because cars don't stop so what's the point. When Dewi came to Singapore and I told them cars would stop at zebra cross, she said a good think she's not driving here cause she would ignore it. So in Prague, there's quite a number of zebra crosses that I encountered during my walk and cars would stop and I wondered if this was annoying to the drivers having to stop every so often, which then made me wonder why they don't have the traffic light for pedestrians crossing. I don't know, maybe the drivers are not bothered there. Back to the croissant place, I wasn't sure which side of the street it's in, so I chose a side only to find out it's on the other side, but I can't cross the street because of the work, so I had to go back to the end of the street and cross. It's a small place and based on my googling, I was looking forward for the pistachio one but it's not ready yet when I was there, so I had to settle with the coconut one and the boring (for me) pain au chocolat.

After that, I got my stuff and went to the train station. The board would only display the platform number like just 15 minutes before departure so people would stand around by the big board waiting. Obviously I waited anxiously because I had that worry that as my luck would have it, the train would be cancelled, but thank God it wasn't the case. When I saw the platform number, I dashed off like a horse off to the races. My planning came with careful studying right, but again some things you would only discover on the spot. I was pleasantly surprised that the luggage rack was really by my seat so I could always keep an eye on my luggage. Also quite lucky that there's space for my big luggage when I got on. When the train was really on the move and departed, I just couldn't stop praying thanking God that it worked out, it's happening, we're on our way. The train had a number of stops and at one stop a lady came and she sat with me for some time during the journey. The train had wifi and I spent some parts of the ride watching YouTube. By the way, does the EU have a deal with YouTube or some sort that limit the ads that can be shown? I rarely got ads when I was watching YouTube there. Like videos after videos just started without ad. No ad during the video too. It happened so often that it couldn't be a coincidence. It's so different compared to here in Singapore when I would be so lucky if a video starts without an ad. There's too much ads here. Anyways, it's a long train ride. The train did have some delays, arriving and departing later in the stops but I didn't mind it because the train was actually going. Delay is way much better than cancellation. I had my croissants as snack. I was apprehensive about the coconut one, but it's not bad. Pain au chocolat as expected was boring for me. At one point, I tried to find if there's a snack bar, there should be one, but I couldn't find it, maybe I didn't walk further enough. There's no security check between The Czech Republic and Poland, if fact if I hadn't checked Google maps, I wouldn't have known we had entered Poland.

I think I arrived close to 5 pm. Arriving in Krakow, I was aware that I would exit out into a mall. Then I immediately found the exit to the street outside and was happy to find that my hotel was just across the street. Smooth sailing. I checked in to my hotel and the young guy receptionist told me they're upgrading me to a suite. I was like, okay. Perhaps I didn't appear excited enough that at one point he repeated that again and told me so you would be more comfortable and I was oh great, thank you. I tried to put in more excitement then :D Truly it didn't matter to me. I think the room I booked was okay enough and the hotel was not like some big 5-star hotel, so I knew the suite wouldn't be super luxurious. I got in the room and it was nice. There's a separate living room and bedroom. It wasn't very big. Reminded me of my hotel room in Vienna but the design was way nicer in here. First thing I saw was a big tv in the living room and me and my priority, I was like please let there be a tv in the bedroom too and there was so all was good :D The bed was smaller than all the beds I had in this trip though. The toilet had a bathtub which I used a few times I was there, all the while feeling rather guilty because it's like an obscene waste of water, but I could indulge sometime? Overall the room was good and I tried to lock in memories of it, of me sitting by the window looking at the people outside the mall / train station, of me eating take-outs while watching CNN. Oh a thing about the mall. It's like the most generic thing in this world, but at the same time you (or at least me) then noticed things that you come to associate with a mall but not there. The mall is very big, but I think it didn't have a cinema. Then everytime I see its facade, I felt like it's missing Uniqlo because the sign is not there. Maybe there's no Uniqlo yet in this part of Europe.

I had plan to explore the old town, so off I went. As I started my walk, there's this feeling that I love this city. I don't know maybe it's because I wasn't walking on cobblestones. Found the gate to the old town and it's a straight street to follow to the square, Rynek Główny. The church below is St. Mary's Basilica. Unfortunately, as you could see the left tower is under scaffolding. If it hadn't been, the view of it from the gate would have made a good picture.

I didn't enter St. Mary's Basilica, but I entered the smaller church nearby, Church of St. Wojciech, and said a little prayer of thanks to God. There's a few people praying inside, so I didn't feel good taking photo of its inside.

Then on I went until I could see Wawel castle. I didn't enter the compound though. I had received message that my day tour to Auschwitz for the next day had been moved to 06:20, so I thought I should just end the day early and rest.

From the castle, it's back to the square. Walked around it a bit more and took a few more pictures and decided maybe to just get take-out for dinner and enjoy my room a bit.

One thing that caught my eye as I was walking around was the Polish donut. I didn't even know what it's called, only know it now as I googled it while writing this. It's called Pączki. The dough is nothing special. I'm convinced that everywhere in this world there's some variation of fried dough. The thing that got me was that these are filled donuts. That is for me the best donut! Your original donut with hole, I don't think much of them no matter what their glazing are. Filled donut? Well that's like my thing. The Pączki are big, not really round, and they have many different fillings. It took a lot out of me not just to get many different ones at one go. I told myself you'd still be here tomorrow so you could still get them. So I bought just one. Actually I couldn't remember if I got just one or two. There's definitely one that I purposely left for the next morning since I would be leaving before hotel breakfast. Anyways as mentioned, the dough itself is nothing special but with the filling, well I just love love these things. They're not so expensive either and man if only they're available here too. My regret is I didn't manage to try all the different fillings by the time I left :( For dinner, I went with KFC. I ordered through the machine and I was curious that though they have chicken wings, they didn't seem to have other chicken parts. They had chicken tender and stuff, so perhaps the people there prefer these boneless things? Another curious thing was the drink was served in a small cup, like kids size, so I wonder what's going on. Is it some diabetes prevention thing? Anyways, I had a good day. Things worked out perfectly that day. I got a really good room. It's like God was saving the best for last.

:) eKa @ 10:36:00 PM •