Best of Poland Tour Review + Extras Sept 2022

Saturday 9/10/22 Flight Depart: LAX to FRA, layover 1 hr 20min, FRA to GDN

Sunday 9/11/22 Gdansk (pre-tour): We arrived to Gdansk GDN around 1:40pm, attempted to use Uber to get into town but settled for a taxi. I probably ended up paying too much for the 25min taxi ride (100zl when I had read that it should be around 60zl), but when I questioned it he said it was Sunday and costs were higher. We had booked an Aparthotel Airbnb for our 2-nights pre-tour ($111/nt) and was so glad that we did this rather than use the RS hotel. We stayed in one of the new granary island apartment buildings Deo Plaza with a 2nd floor balcony that faced the old town with sweeping canal views that could not be beat. The room had twin beads, a full kitchen and plenty of space. After settling in a little, we took a long walk around the islands and then found our stop for a ~45min sunset river boat cruise I had pre-purchased for $12/ea. Although windy, the boat ride was a nice quick orientation to the views of Gdansk by water. We were given English cards to read about the buildings we passed since the boat narration was in polish. After our boat ride we were ready for dinner at Gdanski Bowke right along the promenade, which turns out was also the same restaurant as our Tour welcome dinner just a few nights later. With drinks and desert, this turned out to be one of our pricier dinner nights (~130zl/pp), but the food quality and service was good. We made it back to our apartment by 9pm and turned in early. Fitbit: 10,000 steps

Monday 9/12/22 Gdansk (pre-tour): Due to lack of sleep on the plane rides (a first for me), we both ended up sleeping-in till almost 11am. This turned out fine because our plan for the day was to visit all the Museum of Gdansk sites which on Monday’s were all free (saving us around 68zl each) but were only open from noon-6pm. We roughly followed the RS Gdansk book walk in reverse; visiting all the main sites along Dlugi Targ in this order: Artus Court, Main town hall & tower climb (lovely views), had a quick lunch at Bar Neptun milk bar, Uphagen house, detoured for some ice cream, then ended at the Amber museum. We also visited several of the nearby churches; St. Nicolas, St. Catherine, and St. Bridget with the modern amber alter piece before closing times. We took several laps up and down some of the nearby streets then settled on Pierogarna stary mlyn for dinner and ate our first pierogi of the trip, but not our last (75zl/pp). Fitbit: 12,685 steps

Tuesday 9/13/22 Gdansk (pre-tour): Still fighting some jet lag issues, I allowed us to have another lazy sleep-in morning before we had to transfer to the tour hotel. We checked-out of the apartment around 10:30am and had brunch at nearby Bar Mleczny Stagiewna, and then walked with our bags to Hotel Admiral Gdansk (~12 min along cobblestones). This ended up being our least favorite hotel of the trip; completely adequate but dated interiors and nothing more than necessity provided. Our room was ready early so we were able to store our bags before taking off for our planned activities before the start of tour later that afternoon. Our plan was to spend all afternoon at the WWII museum, which was also free on Tuesdays (otherwise 25zl). However, upon arrival we were met with a sign “Closed for the day” with no other explanation. This really put a wrench in our plans (and many others from our tour group who had also arrived early) knowing that we would be visiting the Solidarity museum on Wednesday as part of the tour and didn’t want to necessarily visit two heavy museums back to back. Oh well, that’s what we would have to do now. So with our new free time we instead made our way back into old town exploring side streets along the way and toured St Mary’s Cathedral in depth (we did not climb the tower), back tracked any missed sites from the RS Gdansk walk part 1 & 2, and did some shopping along the main pedestrian street. This left us enough time for a rest at the hotel before our 5pm tour meet up together.

Looking forward to reading all of this. We are booked for September, 2023.
Did your Aparthotel in Gdańsk have a washing machine?
Thanks in advance for doing this! Can’t wait to read the rest.

Pierogarna Stary Mlyn is one of my favorite pierogi chain restaurants in Poland, they have several locations in most of the major cities.

Excited to see the rest of the trip report!

No washing machine in our apartment in Gdansk. But this was the beginning of our tour, so there was no need either.

Over our 18 days traveling we did two sink washes for socks and underwear, and once my mom washed a pair of leggings in a garbage bin bucket in the shower (it did the trick). We froze out butts off for most of this trip, so we layered up and wore jackets so we didn’t really get our clothes dirty or sweaty. I think 1 or 2 couples on tour ended up doing laundry in Warsaw that had a drop off place about 10 min walk from the hotel.

Can’t wait to read the rest. We visited Poland back in 2017. Just like you we have no Polish ancestors just an interest in a beautiful country. We visited in July and it was cool even then. I don’t remember ever being hot and looking over my pictures we have long sleeves on and a light sweater/jacket most days.

Lol! I agree it was chilly some days in September! And rainier than usual, I hear. I was prepared, but it was definitely a bit cooler than I expected.

Tuesday 9/13/22 Gdansk Cont’d - Start of Tour: Our group ended up being only 20 people to start, with one couple having to drop out last minute due to testing positive. We were also one couple shy that first night due to a late plane arrival. We spent about 1.5 hrs together at the hotel getting to know each other and discussing expectations and plans for the tour. As became the norm on this tour, snacks and beverages were plentiful. Our tour guide was Agnes, who was new to Rick Steves this year specifically for the Best of Poland tour, and this was her 4th and final tour of the season. Agnes was born and raised in Gdansk, and was now raising her own family here, so she was also our “local” guide for these first couple days. Our group had a couple RS tour newbies, with much of the rest being experienced veterans. Nearly all of our tour members had some sort of family history tie to Poland, and a couple people could actually converse in the Polish language which was a great surprise to Agnes. Besides one other young man traveling solo, my mother and I were the youngest in the group, haha. Around 6:30pm our orientation walk led us from the hotel to Restaurant Gdanski Bowke (which we had ate at two nights before). Our dinner meal came with an option of beer or wine and a set dish of potato salad, fish, salad, and plum cake for dessert. After dinner, my mother and I took an evening walk back to the main pedestrian street to see all the lights and then eventually made our way back to the hotel for bed. Fitbit: 13,785 steps

Wednesday 9/14/22 Gdansk: There was a decent selection of breakfast items to choose from before our 9am meet-up to start our walking tour together. Most of the walk covered paths and sites that we had already visited in our pre-tour days, but Agnes had great commentary and stories that added layers to what we had already seen. The walk started at the hotel, walked along and crossed the canal, then more or less following most of route of the Part 1 & 2 book walk, a visit inside St Mary’s, and eventually ending at the shipyards and Solidarity museum at noon. There was a rest break provided mid-walk (15-20min) and we had paczki (polish donuts) along the way as well. Some in our group needed to take a taxi to cover the distance to the shipyards instead of walking, which Agnes helped to arrange. The Solidarity museum is explored on your own with no tour guide, and you will need to specifically ask for an audioguide if you want one. If I had known ahead of time that we would be on our own for this museum I probably would have opted to visit the Solidarity museum on Tuesday (and paid for it ourselves) just to spread out the museums. Since we knew we were going to go straight to the WWII museum afterwards, we chose not to use an audioguide and kinda rushed ourselves through, but we still ended up spending a good 1.5hrs at the Solidarity museum. We then walked to the WWII museum (~15min), got the audioguide, and we spent from 2pm till after 5pm exploring that massive museum. This museum is a must-see while in Gdansk. Since our feet were killing us by this point and we were starving (we didn’t stop for lunch), we choose to skip-out on the included tour group vodka tasting at 5:45pm and we instead went straight to a very nice dinner on our own at Gvaro (150z/pp). The vodka tasting included 5 vodka samples, 3 food tastings, and 1 hot dish tasting. Please be sure to include at least 1 or 2 days pre-tour in Gdansk so you can enjoy both the WWII museum and the City museums without feeling completely rushed or overwhelmed. Fitbit: 16,700 steps

Marking this to read tomorrow. Thank you for your report!

Thursday 9/15/22 Malbork to Torun: Our time in Gdansk was over, and we met up at 8:30am to walk to our nearby bus that would take us to Malbork Castle and then on to Torun in the afternoon. The drive to Malbork was only about 35min, and Agnes led our tour of the castle from about 10am-noon. I am a sucker for castles and history, so this was one of my favorite stops of the entire tour. We only had about 15 min of free time at the end of the castle tour for a restroom or a quick souvenir store stop, then we walked together across the bridge to head towards our lunch restaurant, and Agnes played photo taker for all those who wanted pictures with the castle in the background. The restaurant was about 10min walking off-property. The served lunch was a large pork cutlet with two types of slaw salads and boiled potatoes. In my opinion this was much too early to eat lunch together, since we had just eaten a large breakfast at the hotel a few hours before. But overfeeding us became the norm for this tour. After lunch we boarded the bus again and headed to Torun, arriving around 3pm with not much traffic. We had to do a precision dump a couple blocks away from the hotel since the historic core was car free. We quickly checked into Hotel Solaris located right behind the main square, and since we only had such a short amount of time to enjoy the medieval town of Torun, my mother and I headed right out to see some sights before we were to meet-up with the group again. We quickly toured St. Mary church right across the street from the hotel, climbed the Town hall tower (lovely views), and toured inside St. Johns Cathedral before rejoining the group at 4:15pm for an orientation walk. The Torun orientation walk was not part of the regular tour schedule, but Agnes felt that we would be missing out on seeing some of the must-see spots without this walk; and I totally agree. We quickly made a loop through town (mostly following the RS Torun walk) and Agnes shared history context before ending at the Gingerbread museum at 5pm for a quick demo. We each got to kneed, roll-out and cut our own shape gingerbread ornament. The whole experience took about 30 min, then we were free to visit the one room museum upstairs or leave to spend the rest of the evening on our own. Agnes stayed to collect our baked ornaments and gave them to us on the bus the next day. Since by this time all the major sights and museums were closed around town, we spent the rest of the day-light hours walking around town to complete the RS Torun walk, walked along the river (not as picturesque as I had thought), and of course visiting little stores and shops to buy our share of gingerbread cookies before ending with a lite dinner at Hotel 1231 near the castle ruins (60z/pp). Make it a point to buy your gingerbread cookies in Torun and not to wait until later in the trip (cheaper and much more fresh selections). Looking back, I would have considered skipping out on the gingerbread demo to allow time to visit more sights and museums before they close. Several in our group felt that future revisions of this tour should strive to include more time in lovely Torun. Even opting to skip-out on the lunch after Malbork would have provided more daylight hours to explore Torun (hint hint RS office). Fitbit: 18,200 steps

Friday 9/16/22 To Warsaw: Our 1-night stay at Hotal Solaris was uneventful and pleasant. I heard that some folks had unique historic rooms, but ours was more modern and spacious. After breakfast we met up at 9am to walk back to our precision bus pick-up area with our luggage. It was about a 2-hr drive to Sierpc where we would visit an open air Skansen type folk museum and have lunch together again. We had a local tour guide that walked us around the park to different style houses representing polish culture and regions thru the centuries. We walked around the make-shift village area in the park for around 1-1.5hrs. Then we backtracked to a main hall where a peasant lunch was served family style to each table; homemade bread with lard and pickles, sausage with onions, salad. This was another day where I felt like we were completely overfed between breakfast, lunch & dinner together. After lunch we grouped together outside for the dreaded “name game”, but Agnes made it quick and painless by also including shots of Goldwasser to entice us 😉 We reboarded the bus and made our way to Warsaw, arriving around 4pm with not much traffic. Our hotel for the next 3 nights was Chopin Boutique B&B, and this venue would end up serving a very important part of our Warsaw experience. All rooms are unique in size and layout, and instead of numbers each room is a name of a famous or historic Warsawian. Our room was very large, had a small balcony, a separate sitting room, but the bathroom was in a small closest. Give and take. My mother and I headed out for a quick walk down a few blocks of the royal way before meeting-up for group dinner at 5:45pm. Dinner was just around the corner at Kamahda Lwowska, and in addition to shared salad, bread, lard and pickles, we had our choice of zureck or mushroom soup and mixed pierogie or pork cutlet. Several wine bottles were on the table for all to enjoy. Immediately after dinner we returned to the hotel where there was an intimate concert room set-up where more wine was served and a slice of plum cake for dessert. The hotel hosts a group of Ukrainian music students who both work at the hotel during the day and perform at these small concerts. The concert lasted for about an hour, and had several acts including vocals, piano, violin, guitar, and included both classical and more modern variants. My favorite was the quartet of young women singing Ukrainian folk and national songs. Our night was still not complete after the concert, as we were invited up to the hotel rooftop to view the night scene of modern Warsaw. It was very cold and windy but was a lovely vista for a couple minutes. Fitbit: 13,650 steps

Really enjoying your trip report, looking forward to more.

Saturday 9/17/22 Warsaw: It felt like the seasons changed on us overnight, as the temperatures dropped at least 10-15 degrees for most of the remainder of the trip. Breakfast at the hotel was delicious and filling, and offering loads of options including hot egg dishes, hot breakfast meats, a chief special dish each morning, cold cut meats and fruits, organic honey (from bees kept on the roof) and special brewed coffee. We saw some of the same young women who performed in the concert last night also worked in the breakfast room. After breakfast attempting to bundle up as best we could, we started out on our 9am Historic Warsaw walking tour with local guide Dagmara. Our morning walk would take us up the Royal way along Nowy Swiat from Palm tree circle to Warsaw Old town, following the RS Royal Way book walk Part 1 & 2 and speaking about all the sights and buildings along the way. Since this was a weekend, the main road was closed to traffic and very few people were out and about until later in the morning. We made a visit into the Church of the Holy Cross, and we had a 15 min coffee and bathroom break mid-walk. Many of us purchased cups of hot melting chocolate at the café, which became a favorite of ours in every city. We passed the Royal Castle, weaved through some of the Old town streets, and our group walk ended in the incredibly picturesque Old Town Market Square just before noon. The rest of the day would be ours to continue exploring Old Town and other sights. My mother and I continued exploring Old Town then walked across the Barbican and into New Town, where we popped into several different churches and then had a quick lunch at a small milk bar we found along the way (we loved all the soup varieties). We made our way back into Old Town and spent close to 2.5 hours visiting the Museum of Warsaw (happened to be free for the day, regularly 20zl), there was a lot more to see than I realized, and then toured the Royal Castle (40zl) late in the afternoon. It was nearing sunset so our last stop was the short climb up St. Anne’s view tower (10zl) for marvelous sweeping views of the Royal Castle and Old Town contrasted with modern downtown Warsaw in the background. We made the long walk back down the Royal Way, stopping at a sweet store to bring dessert back to our room, and we had a delicious Italian dinner at Chianti very near to where we ate the night before (65zl/pp). Even once back at the hotel for the evening resting it was hard to fully comprehend that nearly everything we had walked and seen all day had been entirety re-built from rubble after the war. The re-building efforts occurred all during Soviet times, with some areas not finishing until well into the 90s which invited more and more tourists to come back to visit this historic city. Fitbit 19,300 steps

Sunday 9/18/22 Warsaw: After another lovely breakfast at the hotel, our group re-boarded the bus at 9am for a hop-on and off journey around Warsaw to learn about the Warsaw Ghetto and the Warsaw uprising. Since the sights are too spread out, the bus was an efficient way to get us as close to locations as we could and then we infilled with shorter walks. This also proved helpful for us since the day called for scattered showers. Our local guide was Hubert, who I’m sorry to say I did not like at all. His speaking style was very jarring, he was much too loud (even with volume turned down), and he rushed the group between sights which was hard for some of the older tour members to keep up. Between 9am-11:30am our hop-on and off tour included short stops at the Palace of Culture and Science, remaining sections of the Ghetto wall and important areas within the Ghetto, the location of an underground uprising bunker, and ended at Ghetto Heroes square just in front of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Polin museum). We were given a 15-20 break inside the museum for restrooms, café and giftshop before we started our guided tour of the museum. We split our group between Hubert and a women guide from the museum (who was very good, I jumped over to her group right away), and we spent the next ~1.5hrs guided through the Polin museum at a brisk pace. I felt that our museum guide did a good job summarizing and explaining the museum contents in an efficient manner for a group of this size, but if by oneself you could have spent much more time reading all the various exhibits for even more understanding. Around 1:30pm we re-boarded the bus, and we were provided with two drop-off options; choice of going to back to the hotel or being dropped off at the Warsaw uprising Museum to tour on our own. Most all choose to go to the Warsaw uprising Museum, and before we were left on our own Agnes gave us each a transit ticket that could be used on the metro or tram to get us back to the hotel and instructions of how to do this. I think we all managed to get back without getting lost 😉 The uprising museum was another heavy content museum similar to the Solidarity and WWII museums in Gdansk, but unlike those other museums the layout of this one was not as clearly defined so it was a bit confusing making your way around in an efficient manner. My favorite parts of the museum were listening to the self-commentaries from people who experienced aspects of the uprising personally, and the 3D fly-through video City of Ruins that showed what Warsaw looked like after the destruction of 1945. Later this evening I found myself again struggling to fully comprehend the magnitude of events that this City and its people went through during the war; it seems unimaginable to the typical American who has not ever had to experience or witness this kind of destruction. When we were ready to leave the museum, I lead a group of us to the metro stop just around the corner (very clean and efficient) and for the short walk down the Royal Way again to the hotel. Since we had not stopped for lunch, my mother and I grabbed a quick slice of take-away pizza on our walk back, then back at the hotel we had a rest and warmed up before the evening group activities. If it wasn’t so cold and damp I would have liked to try taking a tram to Łazienki Park to explore, but we were tired anyways so returning to the hotel wasn’t a bad decision.

To be cont'd

Cont'd Sunday 9/18/22 Warsaw:

There was a 5:30pm meet-up at the hotel patio for what was advertised as a Happy hour/Q&A before a 7pm dinner together in the hotel breakfast room. Thinking this was just a normal happy hour, I was late to the meet-up and didn’t join until after 6pm. But this turned out to be more of a casual group discussion of modern-day politics and context led by the Hotel Owner, who shared his story about growing up under communism in Poland and his passions as an adult to make things better even among modern day global challenges and the Ukraine war. It was inspiring to hear his passion and commitment to do all that he could to support the Ukrainian music students he took in, and to hear his strong views about the shortcomings of the Polish state government that he will continue to speak against and try to improve. While I’m not at all political by nature or have strong opinions one way or the other, there is a chance that some tour members could find this discussion and openly voiced opinions to be too radical for their liking. So just a warning for future tours. Dinner together as meant to be a celebration of Ukrainian culture hosted by those working at the hotel and including more musical performances. Our delicious meal included Ukrainian borscht, Easter salad (a layered cold salad that had eggs, potatoes, herring), Golabki - stuffed cabbage rolls, and plum bread pudding. Wine was provided on the table as well. Many of us had seconds of the cabbage rolls. Fitbit: 12,800 steps

Wow - Sunday evening sounds like a wonderful opportunity! And truthfully the kind you would expect RS travelers to appreciate.

Awesome report. Thanks for inspiring me :)

Monday 9/19/22 Czestochowa to Krakow: Due to an unfortunate event, that I won’t go into in respect of others, our tour group was decreased from 20 to 18 for the rest of the tour. But I can applaud Agnes and the Chopin Boutique B&B Hotel Owner for their support provided. One last breakfast together before boarding the bus at 8:30am for our travel day to Krakow stopping along the way at Czestochowa to visit the Jasna Gora Monastery which is a massive pilgrimage site in Poland and was not damaged during the war. Agnes shared her experience participating in a walking pilgrimage trek to Jasna Gora as a teenager. We arrived at the monastery around 11:30am and had time to buy our own lunch at one of the lunch counters that serve pilgrims and visitors to the monastery. Around 12:15pm we met up with a local guide who toured us around the monastery including the treasury, a small museum, the main church (incredibly beautiful), and then to the chapel containing the unveiling of the Black Madonna painting where we had a special up close viewing area. The chapel was filled with hundreds of pilgrims and visitors awaiting the unveiling of the Black Madonna painting that happens each day at this time. I have visited other Black Madonna statues elsewhere in Europe, but this was my first time visiting a painting like this that is so revered that they even “dress-up” the painting with a delicate overlay encrusted with jewels. It was fun to see all the different types of “dresses” that have been created for the painting in the museum. After allowing some quick time in the gift shop, we reboarded the bus around 2pm for our afternoon journey to Krakow arriving around 5pm. We did a quick precision dump to unload and walk across the street to enter the historic Krakow old town center. Our last hotel of the tour was Hotel Grodek located just 4 min behind the Main Market square in Old Town. This was my favorite hotel of the trip and was easily a step above what is considered a typical Rick Steves tour hotel. We had a little bit of free time before dinner, but we choose to just rest and settle into our room. It had been sprinkling on and off all day, and there were signs that it would likely be raining for our evening dinner outing together. At 6:30pm we meet Tomasz for the first time, who is another RS Best of Poland tour guide and who would be serving as a local guide while in Krakow. Tomasz was a wealth of information and had a great personality. We all made our way to the tram station very near to the hotel and after some instructions we boarded the next tram for the short ride to the Kazimierz Jewish Quarter for an orientation walk around the area followed by 7:30pm dinner together at Klezmer-Hois Restaurant. Unfortunately, due to the cold weather, sprinkling rain, and early sunset, our walk around Kazimierz mostly in the dark was short and left us wishing we could experience the area during the day instead. At the restaurant we were packed into a small dining room where folks from a RS Best of Eastern Europe trip also joined us for dinner and the Klezmer concert that serenaded us during dinner. Dinner included vegetable soup, a beef dish with potato cake, and a poppy seed pastry for dessert. We missed the bulk of the rainstorm during dinner, but it was still sprinkling as we made our way back via tram to our hotel later that evening. Fitbit: 11,850 steps

Tuesday 9/20/22 Krakow: The breakfast selection at Hotel Grodek was probably the best of the trip; multiple hot meats, hot eggs, a whole table of cold salads and misc items, pastries and desserts, cereals and granola. The breakfast room was the best as well, with a glass ceiling/wall facing the garden and wall displays showcasing medieval artifacts found during excavations below the hotel. It was a gray morning and there were still chances of showers throughout the day. We met with Tomasz at 9am for our historic walking tour of Krakow by first walking along the perimeter park surrounding old town (used to be the town walls), stopped at a cart to sample the famous Krakow pretzel/bagel snack (obwarzanek Krakowski), and then made our way up the back entrance to Wawel Hill. We spent a good amount of time exploring the castle grounds and taking some group pictures. We toured Wawel Cathedral together (but not the royal crypts), and then heading down the ramp back towards Old town. We explored back lanes, made a partial loop around the main square and ended at St. Mary’s Basilica where we got seats up front for the altar opening. Just like at the Jasna Gora Monastery, the execution was perfectly timed for the unveiling main event of the huge gothic altarpiece by Veit Stoss. While we were waiting, we were told the history of the altarpiece and how it was hidden then stolen during WWII and finally restored back to its home in the Basilica. I wished we had more time to walk around and view the rest of St. Mary’s Basilica, but since it was filled with people for the unveiling, I had to settle for what I could stand and view from our seats up front. The basilica itself is simply stunning, with the blue starry ceiling reminding me a lot of the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Italy. We finished up our morning walk at noon outside the cathedral listening to the trumpet call from the tower that occurs at the top of every hour 24/7, 365 days a year. The group was given a short break for a lunch snack and then would meet up again around 1pm at the hotel for an afternoon of market shopping and pierogi making experience with a local family. Blue skies had just returned and were planning to stay for the rest of the afternoon, so my mother and I choose to skip out on the pierogi making, instead wanting to further explore Krakow to take advantage of the sun and good picture taking. Hearing a recap the following day, it seemed that everyone on the tour greatly enjoyed the pierogi making experience and came back with funny stories to tell. My mother and I further explored the main square, walked through the Cloth Market Hall then climbed the Town Hall tower (18zl). Heading back towards Wawel hill we made stops at St. Andrew and St. Peter & Paul churches that we had passed earlier in the morning. I wanted to go back up to Wawel castle to finish exploring the sites we did not get a chance to see in the morning, and to retake pictures. We visited the Cathedral museum (using the group ticket that Tomasz gave us) then purchased tickets to tour the Castle Royal state rooms (30zl). We had wanted to also visit the Lost Wawel exhibit but there was not enough time before it closed for the afternoon. Lastly, we walked around the small summer gardens (5zl) with lovely vistas, then exited Wawel hill via the Dragons Den which was very Disney-esq hooky but was a short cut to get down to the river. By this time our feet were needing a rest, so we made our way back to Old town and had an excellent early dinner at Miod Malina (110zl/pp) and brought back some dessert to the hotel for the night. Fitbit: 20,200 steps

Wednesday 9/21/22 Krakow: This was our last full day of the tour as a group, and it was slated to be gray and drizzly again. After another filling breakfast we boarded the bus at 9am for a ride just out of town to Nowa Huta, a planned communist community meant for the workers of a huge steel works plant. Although the steel plant is long closed, the community itself is in the middle of a revitalization movement inviting young families to move there with cheaper rents and more room. Tomasz lived in Nowa Huta as a child, so his stories and real-life experiences describing the various neighborhoods improved the otherwise slightly dull walking tour and various hop on-off stops. We visited a local market where we were likely the only English-speaking persons, and we each got to try a zapiekanka, a communist era pizza type snack. We also walked up close to Our Lady Queen of Poland Church, a striking ark-shaped modern church built by the locals of Nowa Huta community in the 1960s & 70s. Of all our walking tours this was my least favorite of the trip, but I understand that the main purpose of the walk was to get a better understanding of Polish communities and how they lived during the communist times. I would have much preferred to spend the morning with a walking tour around Kazimierz district since we only got to see it in the dark on our first night. After Nowa Huta the bus drove us to Podgorze across the river from Kazimierz where we ended our group tour at the Ghetto Heroes’ Square and then a walk to the nearby Schindler museum where we had timed entry tickets for 1pm. We were left on our own to tour the museum, which was very crowded and didn’t actually have a ton of exhibit content compared to many of the other excellent world class museums we had previously visited in other cities. The remaining afternoon was free until our farewell dinner together at 6:45pm. We had been given a tram ticket to make our way back to Old Town. My mother and I decided to take the tram to the Barbican & Florian gate area and then explored some side streets we had not seen yet on our walk back to the hotel where we allowed ourselves to rest-up for the evening. Our group Farewell dinner was at Restauracja pod Aniolami, where we dined on cold cuts and salad and our entrée choice of duck breast or trout each with potatoes and baked apples, and a raspberry cake for dessert. This was one of my least favorite meals of the trip (mostly due to entrée choice), but the company and ambiance of the restaurant and meal together was lovely. We were able to say goodbye to Agnes and to some of the group that would be leaving. However, many of us were staying an extra day or two in Krakow so we would continue to run into each other the next few days. All in all, I greatly enjoyed our RS Best of Poland tour and I’m positive many others will continue to enjoy it in years to come. But we were not done with our Grand Poland trip yet, keep reading for our post-tour adventures in Krakow and Wroclaw. Fitbit: 14,830 steps

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. Great that you could spend the time with your mom, double winner.

Thursday 9/22/22 Krakow: We had planned to spend an extra two nights in Krakow and had pre-arranged with the Hotel to allow us to keep our same room which was very comfortable and gave us plenty of space to spread out ($115/nt, deluxe twin). Today we got to sleep in a little since we had reserved Rynek Underground museum tickets for 10am (28zl). It was shaping up to be another rainy day, so we planned to spend as much time indoors as possible. We took our time exploring the Rynek, spending over 3 hours there including watching several 20-30 min long documentary style videos at the end of the museum that told the history of Krakow from the year 1000 until modern day; very interesting and educational. After the Rynek I wanted to complete certain sections of the RS book Krakow walking tour that we had not yet seen yet, including visiting the Jagiellonian university courtyard and professors garden, St. Francis Basilica, and the Dominican Holy Trinity Church. We ended up having to dodge rain/sprinkle events for most of the afternoon as we went from place to place and decided to wait out a large storm by having a casual mid-afternoon late lunch/early dinner at U Babci Maliny (50zl/pp). The rain and cold kept us in for the rest of the evening, so we decided to just rest up for our big day trip planned for our last day in Krakow. Fitbit: 8,720 steps

Friday 9/23/22 Krakow: I had booked an all-day Auschwitz and Wielickzka salt mine tour with MrShuttle (formerly KrakowShuttle) for $87/pp that included pickup and drop-off and a boxed lunch. Our pickup was at 6:45am and we were dropped off around 6pm that evening. We rode in a compact bus that fit about 25 people. Our driver/guide would walk us to the entrances of each venue and then turn us over to the local museum guide, leaving us with instructions of how to find the bus when returning. It was a very professional operation, and I would recommend this MrShuttle tour to others who are trying to fit in these two must see sights in a one-day efficient manner. The morning drive to Auschwitz was around 2 hrs and we watched an intense documentary video containing actual footage from when the soviets liberated the camp. We had a 2hr guided tour of Auschwitz I museum, then reboarded the bus for a quick transfer over to Auschwitz II Birkenau Camp for another 1hr guided tour with the same guide. Our tour in Auschwitz I included walks through 4 or 5 of the Block building exhibits (we did not visit any of the National Memorial Block buildings), and then ended with a walk through the crematorium. The tour in Auschwitz II Birkenau only covered a walk up the rail line to the ruins of the crematoriums, a walk back up the left side of the memorial back to the guard tower, and a walk through one restored sleeping barrack building. We returned to the shuttle drop-off area for Birkenau where there was a café and pay restrooms, and we were given our sack lunch and about 30min to eat and rest before the next leg of our tour to the Salt mine. Our sack lunch was more than adequate including a bowl of chicken pasta salad, a thin baguette sandwich with cheese and ham, a wafer cookie, an apple and a bottle water. We reboarded the bus and had a quiet 1.5 hr drive to Wielickzka (we napped). At the Salt mine we had a quick bathroom break before being turned over to our local guide who was very good (one of the managers). The salt mine tour lasted close to 2-2.5hrs long, lots of walking. I’ve been in cave tours before, but this was my first salt mine, and I greatly enjoyed all the carvings and rooms throughout that we visited. We got slightly lost finding our way back to the bus at the end of the tour, but I think we all made it back. The drive from the salt mine back to Krakow was a quick 30min, and we were each dropped up as close as possible to our hotels. Many warned us that combining these two sights into one day would be too much and too emotional; and while I admit it was a long day and a lot of walking, I felt that it was an efficient way to see both still allowing us to maximize the time spent in Krakow. Of the two sites, I enjoyed our tour of the Salt mine more, as I felt that I would have benefitted from more independent time in Auschwitz to explore more of the Block buildings and barracks for better context than what we saw in our quick visits. We were dropped off around 6pm and we immediately headed out to a small street fair that had been set up in Little Market square near the hotel, where we made an easy dinner of street food and regional favorites from the fair (bigos, sausage, Oscypek) and shopped among the many craft booths. We topped off our night with one more lap around the Main Market square in all its night-time glory, stopping to purchase chocolate bars and dessert before returning to our hotel to pack up for our transfer to Wroclaw in the morning. Fitbit: 20,150 steps

Saturday 9/24/22 Wroclaw: Leading up to the tour I had posted a couple different prompts on the Travel Forum boards and by luck was able to touch base with a couple individuals who would be on our same exact tour. This allowed us to compare vacation plans to see if there was any potential for overlap. I was enthused to discover that a pair of sisters were planning the same post days in Krakow followed by 3 nights in Wroclaw just like us, so I had proposed to jointly share the price of a shuttle service together to Wroclaw and they accepted! I reserved a private shuttle from Mr.Shuttle (formerly KrakowShuttle) for $288 total ($72/pp for the 4 of us) which I felt was worth the price to not have to hassle with getting to/from the train station in each city with luggage. We were picked up promptly at 8am in a roomy van and before we knew it, we were pulling into Wroclaw around 10:30am. We were able to check in early into our hotel room at Korona Market Square Hotel ($120/nt, superior twin with breakfast), our room was on the 2nd floor with windows directly overlooking the picturesque square and Town Hall. The room was very large, functional and modern chic. We did end up with some noise transfer coming from the main square on the busy Saturday/Sunday night, but that was the trade-off for being right on market square. After settling in for a few minutes we met up with the sisters at the TI booth to get some city maps (it was so painful not having a RS book guide with maps to follow), and then set out to explore together before a 3pm walking tour we had planned to attend. We first went to St. Mary Magdalene Church and climbed up to the unique bridge that connects the two towers for pictures (10zl), then towards the University and toured the beautiful University Church and visited the University museum (20zl) including Leopoldina Hall, Oratorium Marianum, and the Mathematical tower for city views. The conservation efforts that have occurred in recent years to preserve and restore these historical baroque and rococo halls are fantastic. It was then time to return to market square to meet up with the “free” Walkative Old Town walking tour I had reserved online ahead of time (tip based). Our walk lasted from 3pm to 5pm, and took us from market square to the University, to the market hall, across the river to Cathedral island, and ended in front of St. Johns cathedral. It was a lot of walking but covered good content and the guide was entertaining enough. We now had to continue our walking journey by returning back to Market square and headed right to dinner at the much-recommended Konispira for an excellent dinner with affordable prices and lots of food (65zl/pp). We tried to return here for dinner again, but they were closed both nights so I’m glad we at least got to eat here once. Because I hadn’t done enough walking yet (yeah right), I made it a point to make another lap around market square after dinner to see and experience the Saturday night lively atmosphere. Tons of people and families, stag and hen parties, reminded me a lot of Prague at night but well behaved. Fitbit: 21,050 steps

Sunday 9/25/22 Wroclaw: More exploring of Wroclaw awaited us today, and the sisters joined us again so I continued playing tour guide for us all. Both our days in Wroclaw were clear skies and sunny so that was very welcomed after a mostly gray and rainy experience in Krakow. After breakfast we met up at the square and then walked to the Raclawicka Panorama taking the gamble that we could get a ticket for an entry slot first thing in the morning without pre-reserving; it worked. The Panorama works on a set time clock and you only get 20 mins inside using an audio guide. Learning about the battle and how it was captured on this 360° canvas was very interesting. I had viewed a similar 360° panorama canvas in Salzburg, but this one was much larger. We continued our city stroll back down by the river and took lots of pictures of Cathedral island in the background, and popped in and out of various courtyards and side streets back to market square. My mother decided to go back to the hotel to rest but I continued with the sisters to the Wroclaw City historical museum (15zl). After the museum I was ready for a snack and a rest myself, so I said bye to the sisters and wished them the best for the rest of their trip. After a catnap I convinced my mother to head back out with me late afternoon to take the tram to Cathedral Island attempting to make it there in time to climb the St. John Cathedral tower. We navigated the tram with no problem and made it to the Cathedral, but the tower had already closed because they switched to winter hours that same day (boo), so we made a loop around Cathedral island for more pictures (the towers and river vistas were so lovely) then headed back to tram to continue on to Centennial hall to view the fountains. The Centennial Hall was definitely off the tourist path and we encountered many local families at the park and a small street fair that we browsed around and couldn’t say no to a few samples. We walked around to the front of the fountain area and took a seat to wait for the top of the hour to see the fountain show. The fountain show was okay, nothing special. I more so enjoyed viewing the unique Centennial Hall building knowing that when it was first constructed it was the largest reinforced concrete buildings of its time (the engineering nerd in me). After the show we took the tram back to our hotel and had a hard time deciding what we wanted to do for dinner. We ended up at a restaurant called Bernard’s right on the square for a lite dinner (57zl/pp) and then back to the hotel to rest our feet for the night. Fitbit: 19,550 steps

Thank you for this wonderful trip report. I have never seriously considered Poland before, but now I really want to go to there.

Glad you had a good time in Wroclaw, my favorite city in Poland! Just goes to show how easy it is to tack it on for a few days after Krakow.

Definitely agree it's like a smaller, less touristy, and more manageable Prague.

Carlos I concur, I absolutely adored Wroclaw. Both Gdansk and Wroclaw were the stand out favorites of our Poland vacation. Hopefully Cameron Hewitt will eventually get permission to include a chapter on Wroclaw to include in the Rick Steve’s Poland book.

I completely forgot to mention anything about the Wroclaw dwarves hiding in plain sight all around the city. I had purposely tried to avoid doing too much research in advance to identify where to find certain dwarves, as it ended up being way more fun to accidentally stumble upon a new dwarf as we turned a corner, walked up a new street, or paused in front of a landmark only to notice the little guy hanging out ready for us to take pictures. All the different themes, actions or occupations of the dwarves were very amusing to keep track of.

Monday 9/26/22 Wroclaw: For our last full day in Poland I booked a day trip through Viator for a Jewels of Lower Silesia tour ($112/pp, ~8 hrs) taking us to Ksiaz palmhouse (30min), Ksiaz Castle (3 hrs, castle audioguide & Underground tour), and the Church of Peace in Swidnica (45min). It wasn’t slated to rain in Wroclaw for the day, but since we were heading further west and closer to the mountains we experienced rain and sprinkles for most of the day while touring. We met our driver at the communicated location just outside the Old Town at around 8:30am, and although I was expecting this to be shared small group tour it ended up being just us and the driver in a small car. Our driver/guide spoke good English and he was able to share some basic history/information on our ~1.5hr drive to Ksiaz. We first stopped at the palmhouse for a quick walk thru the greenhouse (a pretty normal indoor botanical garden), it was raining pretty good at this point so we didn’t explore the garden any further. Then we headed to the Castle where we had timed entry tickets for the Underground tour. We ended up being a couple minutes late for the start of the tour and had to catch up with others in the group. The Underground tour was in Polish but we were given audio language guide that was timed to change scenes as we entered into each new room. I found the Underground tour part of the castle to be rather dull, especially since they still don’t even have hard facts about what the system of underground tunnels was used for during WWII. The underground tour was about 45 min long, then we climbed our way back up to the main Castle area. We entered into the front of the lovely Ksiaz Castle, checked our coats and umbrellas and got our audioguides. We followed our audioguide thru the castle for about 1.5 hrs and there were also various museum exhibits and literature to read in some of the rooms. At the end of the castle tour we exited into the garden areas surrounding the castle at different terrace levels and made a leisurely loop around the castle for pictures. Luckily it had stopped raining by this time so we got to enjoy our views. We found our driver in the parking lot and we headed out for our next destination in Swidnica.

cont'd on next post

Cont'd Monday 9/26/22 Wroclaw: We entered Swidnica town right during afternoon rush hour and there was a lot of road construction going on, so it probably took us longer than normal to get to the Church. We parked on a side street then our driver guide escorted us to the Church of Peace explaining some of the history, walked us around the site extents and then accompanied us inside. We were given a very detailed English flyer explaining all about the Church, and there was a narration playing over a loud speaker that alternated between Polish and English. So between the flyer and the narration we got a good overview. I’ve honestly never seen anything like this Church before. We learned that the Peace Churches (the one in Swidnica being one of 3 originally built in this region) were built during a time when Protestants were not allowed to have their own places of worship, and only due to a change in governance were they allowed to finally build their own Church but it had to follow a strict set of guidelines: had to be paid for and built directly by the congregation, could only use temporary materials like wood, sod, thatch to construct the structure, no bell tower allowed, and the building had to be built in no more than 1 year. Since made of wood, the structure was not intended to last for a long period of time (fire risk and all), which makes it all the more amazing that this wooden church is still standing in its original condition over 400 years later. I found the interior to be spectacular and I couldn’t stop staring at all the intricacies of construction and architecture within. The church is 3 levels of almost solid pews, which meant that once filled with people the whole space warmed with body heat, which was a good thing since there was no other source of heat in the building (again, fire risk). We spent probably close to an hour at the Church, then headed back to Wroclaw for the evening, experiencing a lot of traffic getting back into town. It was probably close to 5pm by the time we got dropped off. We were pretty hungry by this point and wanted to have a nice last polish meal to end our vacation. We dined at Spitz, a historic tavern under the Town Hall and had a lovely filling meal (120zl/pp). After dinner we had one last spin around the square and then went back to the hotel to pack up for our flight the next morning. So sad. Fitbit: 14,550 steps

Tuesday 9/27/22 flight home: After our last breakfast at the hotel, we checked out of the hotel and waited for our private shuttle pickup which I had booked with Mr.Shuttle for $22 total. Our pickup was at 8:50am for our 10:50am flight. It only took about 25 min to get to the small WRO airport, with no security lines or impacts to worry about once we arrived. We spent the last of our polish zl at the airport convenience store before boarding our flight to Frankfort. We flew Lufthansa again WRO to FRA, 1hr30min layover, then FRA to LAX arriving back around 5pm local time.

This was an absolutely marvelous trip, and I came back with even more of an appreciation about the country, culture and people of Poland than I could have ever imagined before. For anyone who might have never had Poland on their radar of places to visit, I can fully vouch that the sights and cities live up to any other that I have experienced elsewhere in Europe, and at a fraction of the cost and less crowded!

What a wonderful report! I loved reading it and it transported me right back to all the best parts of my September trip.

Edit: I meant to comment on how many people asked me “Why Poland” also. Not just here at home (they all think I am crazy for travel anyway, so don’t bother asking.) But people from other countries, wondering why I picked Poland for a month.

This may be the best trip report I have ever read! Now I really want to go to Poland. Thank you so very much.

Thank you for your fabulous trip report! I’m going to Czechia and Poland for 16 days in May-June, and you’ve heightened my excitement about Wroclaw!!

I’m hoping to go on this tour next year in May after having my booking cancelled once by RS and once by me! I want to visit this country!
I enjoyed your report and bookmarked it for future reference. I will think about going to Wrocław too.

Thanks for all the kind words. I hoped that if anything, this review would help others gain an interest in planning their own Poland grand adventure

Let me know if there are any questions about the RS poland tour, or just poland activity planning in general.

Any chance you might share the name & contact info on your Aparthotel in Gdansk? Or how you booked it?
Your report has put Poland on our 2024 List!
Thanks for sharing!

airbnb link to Deo Plaza studio

We booked via Airbnb

Your trip report was a pure joy to read. I had planned an independent trip to Poland for 2020, which included all of the cities/sites that you visited. Maybe 2024 will be the year I can make that happen . . .I've bookmarked this page, as some of the hotels seem like they're just what I'm looking for.