A kraking weekend

I think it's fairly obvious that I have the travel bug. No, not some kind of foreign illness. The desire to travel the world and to keep going until I've seen it all - twice. This year, I've been on a mission to go on holiday every single month and I wasn't going to let a small problem like running out of annual leave days at work, stop me from fulfilling my mission. So after having an amazing time with my family in Riga earlier this year (and to thank them for all their help with my house), I started looking for somewhere that I could take them there-and-back in a weekend. I initially thought Belfast or Dublin might be good options, before deciding on Krakow. 

A little more exotic, a country that none of us had been to before and so dirt cheap that I could barely believe my eyes, it fit the bill perfectly. Because most budget airlines run their flights there-and-back (so your return flight will normally be roughly around the same time that you landed on the way there), I had to be a bit flexible with the flights, lest we have less than 24 hours in our destination. And so I paid £350 for 4 people (including priority boarding and Ryanairs new mega-annoying 2 cabin baggage privilege) to fly from East Midlands to Krakow at 09:30 on Saturday morning, and back from Krakow to Birmingham at 20:30 on Sunday evening. The most ideal flight times you could probably get when trying to cram a holiday into a standard weekend!

Obviously a 9:30am flight is nowhere near too early to start drinking so we booked the lounge to get the holiday started nicely. After I'd drank plenty of proseccos and my brother, Aidan, had pretty much eaten them out of house and home, we were off!

We arrived in Krakow at lunchtime and luckily, our apartment was already ready. I'd booked the Camera Apartments through Booking.com and it had cost me the absolutely extortionate price of... £60 for all 4 of us. The apartment was 2 bedroom, nice and modern and located right in the city centre, about a 5 minute walk from the main square. And that was still one of the mid-range priced places - I saw places only charging £30!

We had no time to waste on a holiday like this so we dumped our bags and headed straight out to explore. The first thing that struck me about Krakow was how similar it was to Riga and Prague - east Europe has a very definitive vibe to it. The buildings were all absolutely beautiful, the town had a lovely old feel to it and to make things even prettier, the Christmas decorations were already up! It was beautifully sunny in Poland but nowhere near warm, so I was wearing black tights, brown suede skirt, white bring me sunshine top, layered gold necklace, chunky black boots and leopard print coat.

Like we do in most cities, we started by searching for pizza and alcohol. My favourite thing about Krakow was the restaurants in the main square, which all had outdoor areas with fire heaters, fairy lights, and foliage. They were so well done that it didn't feel like you were outside at all! So much so that I went with practically summery menu choices; Aperol Spritz, bruschetta and pizza.

As the daylight started to fade, we explored the main square and then headed up towards Wawel Castle, which we timed perfectly, because we ended up leaving bang on 5pm, which was the time it closed. The hike up there on cobbled paths may not have been the easiest, but the view from the top was certainly worth it.

It felt weirdly late at this point (probably because we'd been up since 5am) but it wasn't even dinner time yet in reality, so we headed back to our apartment to chill for a few hours before getting ready to go out for the evening (we made the most of this time by watching Shrek). I changed into black tights, black chunky boots (I'd brought stilettos too but decided they were no match for the cobbles), cream zip skirt and black bandage long sleeve top.

As much as I loved the outdoor areas, the restaurant buildings themselves were equally as beautiful (mega old and mostly underground). Considering the temperature had dropped another couple of degrees, we opted to eat indoors this time. This time I had a 'perfect cocktail' and slow cooked beef cheeks which were lovely. I like to try the local food of wherever I am so this meal felt a little bit more authentically Polish, which was nice.

Even despite our limited time in the country, we didn't want to rush around on Sunday so we got ready leisurely and then headed out in search of breakfast. It was colder and less sunny that day, so I was glad I'd gone with black jeans and white crochet top (with the same shoes and coat). We didn't exactly have to search very far for breakfast, and ended up somewhere that was serving pancakes (like we'd all been fancying).

When we'd first got in the taxi on the way from the airport to our apartment, we'd asked the taxi driver for recommendations of what to do in Krakow when only there for 24 hours. He'd recommended all the gorgeous buildings in the main square (that we'd seen the day before) and had also said that the salt mines were a must (something I'd heard from friends too). So after brunch, we went there for a guided tour. It was 400 wooden steps down into the mines and we covered about a mile of walking down there and yet the tour guide said we'd covered less than 1% of them! The size was incomprehensible and the mines themselves were so impressive. Literally everything was made of salt (including statues that looked like marble and the floor that looked like granite) and we learnt so much about all the old processes and the history of them. The taxi driver was right - the salt mines are well worth doing.

The last main area that we hadn't really explored yet was the Jewish quarter, so we walked through it on our way back to the Old Town, passing lots of pretty buildings and edgy artwork as we went. It reminded me of Camden and it's what I imagine Berlin will be like (which I'll find out in about a month).

It was getting dark at this point and we only had a couple of hours left in Poland so we finished it how we started it; with drinks and Italian food sat outside in the main square. And to say that 6 beers, a cocktail, a glass of wine and 5 mains (we like to get a pizza in the middle) only cost £55, you can't really complain. I was shocked every time we paid for something at how dirt cheap everything was. Including 4 meals out, a tour round the mines, taxis to and from the airport, taxis to and from the mines and souvenirs, we probably only spent £100 per person. I don't think you could spend a lot if you tried! If like me, you're low on annual leave days and are willing to go from one airport and back to another, I would definitely suggest giving Krakow a visit. Even though it was short and sweet, we literally had the best time. It was even nicer as well because it was our first holiday as a family since I moved out, so it was great to catch up properly, spend some quality time together and have a laugh. And more importantly, we had time to start planning our holidays for next year!