Back from Krakow

Wow. We just spent 5 days in Krakow! Glorious sunny weather: 5 days: 1 castle, 6 churches, 6 museums/art galleries, a salt mine, and our own bodyweight in chocolate and cake.

We also visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, but I'll post those photos - if at all - separately.

Krakow is a gracious, historic old city full of baroque buildings, ornate churches and tiny bars. It's very easy to walk around. This is a shot of the main square:

It was Spring, celebrated with colourful arrangements of dyed grasses, much folk-dancing and, it seems, a massive pillowfight. That's feathers, not snow:

Here's a traditional meal of the type consumed by tourists:

Oh, the drinking-chocolate bars of Krakow! Words cannot do them justice!

This is the cathedral, which is part of the Wawel Castle complex:


And these are the bones of a medieval dragon, kept chained outside the cathedral door:

Yes of course it was a real dragon! In fact its statue still breathes fire:

We saw a great deal of religious art - Poland is an intensely Catholic country of course. My favourite was the Art Nouveau work of Stanislaw Wyspianski (d.1907). Here's his "Creation" from the Franscican Basilica:


And some more Art Nouveau stained glass:

And here's a chapel 100 metres below the surface of the earth. It's in the famous Wieliczka Salt mine and took 3 miners 70 years to hand-carve from solid rocksalt in their spare time:

Yes, everthing is made from salt - including crystal chandeliers, statues and wall reliefs of the Last Supper etc.

And here's me with cake and beer 123m below the surface of the earth. The efforts I go to for my research, *ahem*. Please don't tell my Wii Fit...