The best start of the Easter holiday! The Girl, The Boy and his family took me and Tiny to Krakow for three days, where we visited a few museums, concentration camps and the Wieliczka salt mines.
This was Tiny’s first trip abroad, and she and the Mouse were very excited to be on a plane for the first time.
What a view!
Most of day one was spent in the air, as we went from one airport to another before we finally landed in Krakow. We were pretty tired by then, so we just checked into the hotel and went to bed.
After a nice hotel breakfast the next day we hopped on a tour to Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. The camps were an hour’s drive from the city, and from the bus we got to see a bit of the Polish countryside and wildlife. Deer and wild pheasants! It was a very cold and windy day, so the kids and I thought it best to stay in The Girl’s bag the whole time. Still, it was so cold that we had to sit on the heater for a bit to get warm again when we got home.
Brr!
Back in Krakow we had a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant, where we got much attention from the staff. I think we have some new fans from Krakow now 🙂
Tuesday was shopping day, so again we spent most of the time in the bag, sheltered from the wind and cold, but we did peek out every now and then to see the sights of the city. In front of the market building at the main square in Old Town:
Still at the square, with St. Mary’s church behind me, where someone played the trumpet out of the top window every hour:
At the bistro where we had lunch Tiny got to meet this nice little piggy where people could leave tips:
Later we visited an archaeological museum, where we found some very pretty Ancient Egyptian coffins, and also some very cool models of life in Europe in the stone age. The Girl bought herself two cute souvenir dinosaurs in the gift shop:
The last day we went to the Wieliczka salt mines just outside of Krakow. It was very dark down there, and difficult to take good pictures of everything, but at least it was nice and warm 🙂
After the mine tour we had time to visit more museums, so we went to the Natural History Museum and the aquarium. The two were kind of the same thing, but we think that most of the aquarium part was closed at the moment, as there were only a few lizards and snakes there, and no fish…
Tried my hand at snake charming! The snake didn’t seem too impressed at my efforts, though.
This millipede looked very tasty and crunchy, but it was safely locked away in its glass box…
We were very excited to see a relative in the museum! He was very quiet and didn’t say much, but we think he was happy too see us, too 🙂
There was a really interesting scene from the Cambrian oceans. I have requested that The Girl makes me an Anomalocaris friend! We looked at some cool fossils and rocks, like this pretty amethyst cave:
And some weird stone that was lit with ultraviolet light that made my eyes glow like a monster’s:
Oooo…
Being brave in front of a very scary cave bear. So many big teeth…
The last night we went out for one last dinner at a very fancy restaurant. They had the most awesome beer and a huge ice cream dessert!
The next morning we went to the airport really early, only to find that the plane was delayed. Only half an hour or so, but it was really boring. At least we got a seat to ourselves on the plane!
Finally home in our apartment it was really good to see the rest of the family, who had been hibernating for days. No fun when the people leave the house and turn all the heating off…
Home sweet home 😀
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