October 24, 2017 Krakow day 3, Day 23 of the trip

October 24, 2017 Krakow 3 and Night Train to Prague Day 23 of trip

Last day In Krakow, but we are not leaving on the overnight train until 10:00 pm and since we cannot leave our luggage in the apartment, we had to store it in lockers in the train station. So, following breakfast we carted our luggage over to the train station and stuffed it into the largest storage lockers we could find. That required lots of Polish coins which I obtained only by purchasing some unneeded, but still eaten food.

Next problem was our night train tickets to Prague. I purchased them in the US but could not print them. Instead we were instructed to provide the address of the place we were staying in Krakow for delivery 3 days prior to the train departure. However, since our Airbnb there was an apartment and the owners were nowhere to be seen, there was no one to accept delivery from DHL. After several frantic phone calls, I found the location of a DHL office just outside Krakow where our tickets were located. So, using some of our surplus zloty we took a cab to get train tickets. That trip was a real adventure since the cab driver did not speak fluent English and I was not sure that he knew exactly how to get there. After several wrong turns we finally found the small DHL office in a small strip mall. We finally got the tickets and drove back without incident through Jagiellonian University to Wawel Hill just on the outskirts of downtown.

This hilltop and its structures embodies a millennium of Polish history and we were told that to the Poles it embodies the Polish nation and is a symbol of national identity. Its great castle was the seat of Polish kings for almost 500 years from the beginning of the Polish state. Even after the capital was moved to Warsaw, the Cathedral remained the site of royal coronations and burials.  

It is now a museum which contains five separate sections, each requiring a separate admission. We climbed the ramp and visited the Royal Cathedral first. This is the third church on this site, the first dating to the 11^th century. The current Cathedral is a gothic structure with lots of chapels and crypts that surround the basic structure. We entered through a massive iron door manned by a guard dressed in medieval garb. Adjacent to the door were huge prehistoric bones. Inside the cathedral there were lots of sarcophagi, tombstones and altarpieces. I ascended the tower which had 70 steps and the Sigismund Bell. That was cast in 1520. It is massive, 2m high and 2.5 m wide and weights 11 tons. It takes 8 men to ring it which happens only on important church holidays or state events. Impressive views from the top. We also descended into the Crypt of St. Leonard, which is the only remaining part of the 12^th century cathedral, and the Royal Crypts which contains, among many, the body of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who fought in the American Revolution, lead an unsuccessful revolt against the Austrians and has a statute of himself on horseback outside the Castle complex. The last chapel we saw was the Holy Cross Chapel that had 15h century frescoes and a big red marble sarcophagus.

Next, we went to the Royal Palace. The Renaissance building we toured was built in the 16^th century. A palace occupied this site as early as the 11^th century. It is a three-story structure that surrounds a large courtyard. The facility was repeatedly sacked and vandalized by the Swedish and Prussian armies until the 19^th century when it was occupied by the Austrians who converted it into a military barracks and hospital. Restoration commenced after WWI when Poland became an independent state but was interrupted during WWII when the Nazis made it their headquarters. The State Rooms are a never-ending chain of restored rooms and chambers that are crammed with period furniture, paintings, tapestries and works of art. The Halls of Senators and Deputies had impressive and ornate interiors. We skipped the Royal Private Apartments and Crown Treasury.

The Wawel Cathedral Museum contained lots of treasury and religious objects, but not a single crown. The Prussians made off with them and melted them down. We went to the edge of the grounds and peered down at the Vistula River and a fire spitting bronze dragon.

We descended the ramp at the bottom of which I negotiated with a street artist for a picture. I caved on the final price when he pointed out how little 10 zloty meant to me but meant a lot to him. We took a trolley into Kazimierz to the Ethnographic Museum. It is housed in a building that was originally constructed in the 14^th century and previously served as the Town Hall for Kazimierz. The exhibits showcased traditional Polish villages, costumes, crafts and religious customs.

We attempted to go to a few restaurants in Kazimierz, but the wait times were too long, so we took the trolley back to old town and ate the upscale restaurant that we were unable to get into the first night we were in Krakow. The service was very impressive, and the food was very good, but the drawn-out process left us short of time and we had to race to the train station. We made it with 6 minutes to spare boarding our sleeper train after freeing our luggage from the lockers.  

Sigismund Bell

Royal castle

View from Wawel Hill

Auschwitz/Birkenau, October 23, 2017

October 23, 2017 Oswiecim/Auschwitz-Biekenau

We had pre-purchased round-trip train tickets for our trip to Auschwitz (that is the German name for the medium sized industrial Polish town near the camp). I had read that the bus trip was more efficient, but that the train trip was more scenic and provided a more realistic view of Poland. It was a short walk to the train station, Krakow Gtowny which was well laid out and easy to navigate. We quickly found our platform and were early, so we waited a while on the platform. The train was quite old fashioned. The rest room was an enclosure with a hole emptying onto the track. The countryside that we traveled through appeared to be decidedly less prosperous that the Krakow area. Very old looking tractors, few motorized vehicles, some animal pulled carts and farm equipment and lots of thatched roofed structures. Perhaps this apparent lessor economic condition in the countryside is a reason for the election of the nationalist, euro skeptic Polish government.

It took about two hours to get to the Oswiecim train station. Not very large or impressive. We then had a pleasant walk of about 1.5km to the Auschwitz museum site.  

I had very mixed feelings walking into the Auschwitz complex. For almost all my life I had heard about the Holocaust, grown up with people who had been in this or other concentration camps, read and seen movies and TV shows about the millions of Jews and others killed as part of what was the largest attempt at genocide in human history and been both mortified by the result and mystified/fascinated by the motives of the leaders of this activity and how the people who had actually carried it out could have done it. Alternately I hated Germans for doing this but reminded myself that most current Germans were not even alive when this happened. But all that was academic. I wondered how I would have reacted if I had been placed in such a position. Would I have resisted carrying out such orders? Would I have fought against such actions?  Although I anticipated a grim experience, I felt that visiting this site could be an essential element in better understanding the full evil of the Holocaust.

Before our 12:30 pre-reserved, compulsory English language tour we checked our bags and toured the outside museum exhibits. Initially we viewed a movie that primarily focused on the liberation of the camps by the Russians in January 1945.

The tour guide was excellent. Much of the following was what I learned from her, a collage educated descendent of Holocaust survivors, but also from Bloodlands, a book on the killings in Eastern Europe between 1933 and 1945 by Timothy Snyder, a Yale History professor. Auschwitz I, where we were, was established by the Germans occupiers in 1940 on the site of a former Polish army barracks. It was originally intended as a prison for Polish political prisoners and was essentially a work camp. The Nazi plan to exterminate all the Jews was in full swing then, but it initially was being conducted by special units within the German SS that following the German army who were charged with killing Jews in the areas conquered and occupied by the Germans. This was accomplished primarily by shooting and to a lessor extent, physical violence. About 2 million Jews were killed in this manner in eastern Europe during the first two years of the war. However, this process proved both to be too inefficient and physiologically damaging both to some of the German soldiers who carried out this task and to the people they were corresponding with back in Germany. (I wonder if anyone in the German army was missing those millions of bullets as it ran out of ammunition at Stalingrad.) In response, the German leadership decided to establish mass, industrial scale extermination camps to kill the Jews and others on the Nazi undesirable lists.

That lead to an upgrading of Auschwitz I by adding gas chambers and crematoriums, but the real expansion took place with the building of a much larger, new, second camp at Birkenau about 2km west of Auschwitz I.  Birkenau was massive and built as an efficient, industrial killing facility. It had 300 prison barracks each of which was built to accommodate 300 people, 4 very large gas chambers that could asphyxiate 2000 people at a time and electric lifts to transport the bodies to the accompanying crematoria. Eerily the train tracks, which were a spur from the same train line we rode on, ran directly into the gas chambers. It was at Birkenau where most of the killing of the estimated one million Jews and one million other victims occurred. Ironically, most of the Jews killed at Birkenau were not Polish, but rather from western Europe and other eastern European countries, most notably Hungary in late 1944 after the Germans installed a puppet government there.

The tour began in Auschwitz I. When the Germans fled in early 1945 before the advancing Red Army they only partially destroyed Auschwitz I, although succeeding in destroying most of Birkenau.   There are about 30 remaining two story, red, brick buildings in Auschwitz I. The tour took us through 13 of them, all which house museum exhibits. After completing that tour, we took a bus to Birkenau. That was very bleak. There was a huge area surrounded by barbed wire and lots of guard towers that stretched as far as the eye could see. There were some surviving wooden barracks that were crudely constructed that gave testimony to the harsh conditions the prisoners were held in.

At one end, near the site of a crematorium, there is a large memorial. At the time we were visiting there was a school group from Israel that was holding a memorial service. The guide told us that German school groups are frequent visitors, but that was not true for Polish children. She discussed that while many/most Poles did not participate in the Holocaust activities, there were many who collaborated with the Germans in these activities. I left feeling emotionally exhausted.

When we finished it was about an hour before our train departure, so we took a waiting bus back to Krakow. The vistas from that trip were not quite as depressing as from the train, but they were not uplifting either. The bus dropped us off next to the train station we had departed from 10 hours earlier and we marched back downtown to again checkout the main square at night and again go through Cloth Hall. There we stopped in at a cafe and had some drinks while we watched the world pass by.  

We had dinner at a small Polish restaurant off the square. No pirogis, but Polish stew and beef. Walked back to the apartment along the usual route. Getting very familiar with the art exhibit.

P.S.I wonder if the law passed in Poland after my visit that precludes and makes it a crime for anyone to speak negatively about the Polish role in the Holocaust or to attribute any Polish complicity in the killings will preclude the Auschwitz guides from freely discussing this subject during their tours.          

Krakow train station

Auschwitz Barracks

Birkenau Barracks

Birkenau Train spur

Krakow Day 2 October 22, 2017

October 22, 2107 Krakow 2 Day 21 of the trip

We had breakfast in the apartment from the food provided by the hosts. Eggs, sausages, bread etc.

The first activity was to go over to the very nearby train station, Krakow Gtowny, to do a dry run for the next days train trip to Auschwitz. It was well maintained and easy to navigate. It had lots of shops, ample ticket counters and importantly for our last day, large luggage lockers.

We set out for old town, this time in the daylight without any wrong turns. On the way to old town we passed through a park that was illuminated with a carpet of fallen autumn leaves and had a memorial to Pope John II. We then turned down Lubicz, this time the right way, walked passed a model shoot on a pedestrian bridge, under a large overpass and along the remaining city Defense Walls. The Barbican is a circular bastion with seven turrets that was part of the wall structure. We toured a small museum there. It used to be connected to the Florian Gate by a narrow passageway over a moat. Now we just walked through the gate into the old town. I was hoping to go to an art Museum that is along the Wall, which housed da Vinci’s painting, Lady with an Ermine, the city’s most valuable painting, but it was closed for renovation.

We entered old town by walking down Florianska St to the northeast corner of the square where St. Mary’s Basilica is located. Its two red brick towers of different heights dominate the square. There has been a church on this site since the 1220s, but construction of the current structure was begun after the Tarter invasion 30 years later. The main church entrance can be used only by worshippers. Tourists such as us had to enter through a side door on the southeast side. We did not climb the towers, from the tallest of which there is an hourly bugle call, but the interior had many stained-glass windows and colorful wall paintings. There was a large organ.

We then crossed to middle of the square to Cloth Hall. This building was once the center of Krakow’s medieval clothing trade. It was created in the 14^th century when a roof was put over rows of stalls. Following fires, it was rebuilt first as a Gothic structure and then in Renaissance style. In the 19^th century exterior arcades were added. The ground floor is now a very busy market for food, crafts and souvenirs.  The outdoor area under the arcades house lots of cafes.

When we emerged, it had begun to rain. I had planned to go into the Rynek Underground, but contrary to the guidebook’s description it was closed on Sunday. While we took umbrellas on the trip, we neglected to bring them with us that day.  Instead we decided to go to the Jewish Quarter in the Kazimierz neighborhood. As we walked down Sienna to the trolley stop it began to rain harder. We were approached by a driver of a clear plastic, enclosed, electric powered small vehicle who offered to provide a two-hour tour of the Jewish Quarter and Kazimierz. She agreed at the end of the tour to cross the river and drop us off at Schindler’s Factory so I agreed to the tour. I suspected that we were paying too much, 200 zoylets, but it was raining and there were lots of blankets in the vehicle.

Kazimierz, formally a city, now a part of Krakow, was founded in 1335 on the south side of Krakow by Kazimierz III Wielki one of Poland’s greatest kings. He not only greatly expanded Poland’s territory, but he also laid down solid legal, economic and educational foundations for the country. Also passed laws making Poland a haven for Jews for centuries.  Thanks to his patronage Kazimierz grew rapidly to the point that it rivaled Krakow in importance. There was a plaque which said that Kazimierz found Poland built of wood and left it built of stone.

Initially not many Jews moved to Kazimierz, but in 1492 the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal and many found their way to Krakow. However, two years later they were expelled from the walls surrounding Krakow by the then Polish king, Jan Olbracht, and tens of thousands moved to Kazimierz. They were required to live in a proscribed area, adjacent to, but separated by a wall, from the Christian area. Over the next few centuries Jews from all corners of Europe settled in Kazimierz and it became one of the largest Jewish community in Poland. When the walls were torn down in the early 19^th century Kazimierz became a predominately Jewish neighborhood.   

Less than 10% of Krakow’s Jewish community survived WWII and the Kazimierz district fell into disrepair under the communist rule. Now the district has regained some of its Jewish character, but seemingly primarily as a tourist attraction. On the tour we visited 4 of the 7 surviving synagogues, but all seemed to have none or a very small membership and seemingly depended upon entry fees by tourists to survive. The Old Synagogue is the oldest in the country dating to 1557. It has been rebuilt several times, most recently after WWII. Still raining, we next went to the Remuh Synagogue. This was established in 1558, and it is the smallest, yet it is one of two that are still active synagogues. Attached to this synagogue is a cemetery established in the mid-16^th century which contains hundreds of restored Renaissance era tombstones. Next was the High Synagogue, so named because the ground floor is occupied by shops, including a large bookstore, and the prayer hall is on the second (the Europeans call it the first) floor. This was built in 1560. Klezmer concerts are held here nightly. Finally, the Isaac Synagogue is a large building that was constructed in 1644. It has stucco walls that are decorated with wall paintings. There was an interesting exhibit on Polish Jews here. We drove through the ul Szeroka, an elongated square that is rimmed by restaurants, bookshops and tourist shops. I imagine in better weather it is busy, but today there were few people around.

We then crossed the river Vistula into the Podgorez neighborhood. This is still largely a working-class neighborhood, but it was here that the Germans herded Krakow’s 60,000 Jews into a newly constructed ghetto, before ultimately shipping most of them to death camps. The ghetto was centered around what is now Plac Bohaterow, Ghetto Hero’s Square, a memorial park, which has lots of empty chairs representing victims, including small chairs for children. On the edge of the park is the Pharmacy Under the Eagle. This museum recreates a former pharmacy whose owner, a non-Jew, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, protected Jews during WWII and provided medications to ghetto inmates.

We were then dropped off at Schindler’s factory.  This is the former enamel factory of Oskar Schindler which is now an impressive interactive museum that covers the Nazi occupation of Krakow from 1939 to 1945 and Schindler’s efforts to protect his Jewish (unpaid) workers. It was a fabulous, well organized and very informative museum that we stayed in for 6 hours until closing at 8.

When we emerged, it was till raining and cold, so we took a cab back to the city. The driver had his wife in the front seat and we had a running commentary about the city and its neighborhoods. We wanted to go to the Milk Bar for dinner, but it was closed on Sunday evening, so we ended up at the driver’s recommendation at a very small all pierogi restaurant off the main square. Lots of locals and it was a tasty and filling meal at a small price. It finally stopped raining so walked back to the apartment along the usual route past the art exhibit, through the underpass, along Lubicz and through the park.     

Park near our apartment

Cloth Hall

High Synagogue

Ghetto Hero's Square

Krakow, Day 1 October 21, 2017

October 21, 2017 Krakow 1 Day 20 of trip

We arrived in Krakow about 3:30. That made us about 16 hours late. The airport is named John Paul II, originally Karol Wojtyla, after Krakow’s most famous modern citizen. The people in the airport were overwhelmingly white, a sharp contrast to the diversity in our prior stops.

Our baggage came quickly and while waiting I found an ATM to get Polish money, zloty. With people waiting in line behind me I got confused about the exchange rate and withdrew too much money.

The airport was easy to navigate and after collecting our bags and money, we went out to the reception area to find the ride that I thought had been arranged for us by the Airbnb host. It was not to be found, probably due to our delayed arrival. A driver approached us and initially I turned him down, expecting that we had a ride. The airport is about 15 km west of the town center and I had read that there was a train connection to town. I briefly considered using it, but we had lots of luggage and I was not certain where our lodging was, so when the driver later came back to us, I spoke with him. He initially wanted 150 zlotys, but I negotiated him down to 90, the same price I was told to pay by the Airbnb host. Turned out he was not a licensed taxi driver. We walked to the parking garage to get into his well-maintained, late model German vehicle and I was instructed to sit in the front, I assumed to make it appear as if he was not carrying passengers for hire.

The drive into town took us along a modern highway that went through a wooded area. As we approached the town we initially passed neighborhoods of two story row houses and then entering the town there were lots of mid-sized office and apartment buildings.

Our driver was unable to find the exact location of the Airbnb. To be fair it was on a one block street. He was finally able to find it with assistance from the GPS on my phone. As promised we were greeted by a friend of the owners. He was a young man on roller blades. Helped carry the bags up the stairs and explained the apartment, but then he was off. The unit was a one-bedroom loft apartment on the 3^rd floor in an apartment building. The apartment was very nice, clean, spacious, a breakfast stocked kitchen and a large living/dining room. However, I was surprised that it was a unit in an apartment building. I had thought that the Airbnb units were in the owners’ homes, but that was mistaken. This clearly was an investment Airbnb unit. We never saw the owners (who on the website were described as very helpful) or the friend again.

Someone should write a history of Krakow, from what I learned it would read like an epic novel. T became the capital of Poland in 1038 but was burned to the ground by the invading Tartars in 1241. The city was revived and thrived in the 14^th century under the leadership of Kazimierz the Great who facilitated the founding of Jagiellonian University. However, its status slipped in 1596 when the capital was transferred to Warsaw. The decline accelerated in the 18th century under the Austrian empire when the city was relegated to a provincial capital. Between the world wars after Poland regained its independence Krakow thrived, but under the Nazis the city’s academic elite and Jewish community were slaughtered. Under the Communists after WWII the city was enveloped in a cloud of pollution from the massive steelworks built at Nowa Huta, only 10 km outside the city. That has now been cleaned up and Krakow is now Poland’s second largest city and rivaling Prague as an Eastern European tourist destination.

After unpacking and settling in we took off, (it was now dark) to explore Krakow and get some dinner.

We walked through a small park which had a statute and memorial to Pope John. I intended to walk to the Old Town area but turned 180 degrees the wrong way along Lubicz. When we came to the Opera Krakowska house at Mogilskie roundabout, I realized that we were going the wrong way. A very impressive, modern, red brick building, but our schedule and its programs, which advertised music from Verdi to Bernstein, did not mesh.

We then boarded a street trolley, I thought that it was going in that direction, to resume the trip to Old Town. Not many English speakers at the trolley stop. A cheap ride with fares based on time of time rather than its length, so I guessed that it would be a brief ride. The trolley line did not go into Rynek Glowny, the main square, (none of them did) but skirted the square’s east side. We got off at Sienna and walked up that street looking for food. We picked out a place that two British tourists highly recommended, but they could not accommodate us on Saturday night without a reservation.  Sienna has lots of upscale shops and restaurants, but we continued into Rynek Glowny.

This is a very large square that had lots of activity in it. It is 4,000 sq. meters and the largest medieval town square in Europe. Its layout, based on that of a castrum (Roman military camp), was drawn up in 1257 after the town was burnt to the ground in 1241 by marauding Tatars.  There were lots of horse drawn carriages going around the square which is dominated in the middle by the lit-up Cloth Hall. Overlooking the square on its northwest corner is the massive St. Mary’s Basilica. From the higher of the Basilica’s two towers there is an hourly bugle call. It has only 5 notes and breaks off in midbar. This arises from the legend that a watchman was sounding the alarm when the Tartars invaded, and he was cut off in midbar when an arrow pierced his throat.

We took a short shopping detour in the Hard Rock Café and then proceeded up Florian ska St. in search of food. It is a bit of a tourist street, but we found a small Polish restaurant and ate lots of pierogis and drank beer. These are Polish raviolis that are stuffed with a variety of fillings. Good meal at a reasonable cost.

After the Tarter invasion the city surrounded itself with a 3 km long chain of defensive double walls complete with 47 towers, eight main gates and a wide moat. In the 19^th century the moat was filled in and has become a park, the Planty, that rings the Old Town. Most of the walls have been demolished, but the gate at the end of Florianska St remains. So, we walked up to that after dinner and then along Basztowa and through a long tunnel back to Lubicz and then to our apartment by about 11.    

The Opera House

Cloth Hall in Rynek Glowny

Athens to Munich to Krakow, Oct 20-21

October 20 and 21, 2017 Final Day of the cruise, Trip days 19 and 20 Athens to Munich to Krakow

We had breakfast on the boat and then departed about 8:30. Took a cab back to the hotel. Our friends checked in and we checked our bags, we then separated as they went on a food tour (I was not interested in eating anymore) and we went to a tour of the National (formerly Royal) Gardens behind the Parliament. Nice peaceful area in the middle of Athens’ bustle. We then walked to the National Historical Museum. We caught a free day. The museum is housed at Plateia Kolokotroni in the former Parliament building on the steps of which Prime Minister Theodoros Deligiannis was assassinated in 1936 leading to a restoration of the monarchy and the installation of a right-wing military government. However, that government resisted the demands of the Italians for free passage of its troops and defeated them in a short war in 1940. However, the next year the Greeks were overwhelmed by the Germans and experienced a difficult occupation. 

The museum’s exhibits are heavily focused on the War of Independence. It had an entire wind devoted to the British poet Byron who came to Greece to fight for the Christian Greeks against the Muslim Turks. He was killed in 1824 as part of a siege. There was an extensive collection of Greek royalty and heroes’ portraits including one of Laskarina Bouboulina. She was the only one whose name was not under the portrait. It was explained to me that as the only woman in the gallery and given her fame in Greece, it was not necessary to list her name. There was also a model of the ship she financed for the War.

We then walked to the Jewish Museum. The building was nondescript on the outside and locked. We were admitted through an intercom system. Its exhibits traced the history of the Jewish community in Greece back to the 3^rd century BC using a collection documents, religious artifacts, costumes and folk art. The Greeks largely participated in the Nazi roundup and deportation of the Jewish community and only about 10% survived WWII. There was a small reconstruction of a synagogue as well as information on the synagogues throughout Greece.

While there we met the tall man from Montana from the cruise. He greeted me, “so another member of the tribe?” We then walked back to the hotel and picked up our luggage which we dragged a few blocks to the airport bus stop at Plateia Syntagmatos. The bus ride was uneventful, but it provided a daylight view of the non-tourist part of Athens. It did not look bad.

We got to the airport early and went to an airport lounge. It was the worst lounge I have ever visited. The food was limited and mediocre. there were few electrical outlets, and some were broken, and the Internet service was weak.

I did not pay for bags on line, so Lufthansa charged us an excessive amount for the two checked bags. The flight took off on time and was uneventful until we landed in Munich. Then we were told that our connecting and the last flight to Krakow had been canceled. We learned that it was due to a heavy fog in Krakow. Lufthansa customer service booked us into a near airport hotel, arranged for transportation, gave us meal vouchers and rebooked us on an early afternoon flight to Krakow. That wasted a lot of time since we were too far from Munich to go into town, but the earlier flights were connections and would not have gotten us into Krakow much earlier. It was a big contrast to what a US domestic airline would do in a similar situation which would be to say, sorry we are not responsible for weather delays and send us on our way. The hotel was equivalent to a Marriott Courtyard. Had a buffet dinner, with no dessert, but beer was included with the voucher.

The breakfast was very good. I spent most of the morning on the hotel computer printing out the train tickets to Auschwitz and subsequent train trips. It was hard to get to English on the computer and the keyboard layout was different. We went out to the airport early since there was no mid-day transportation to the airport. The airport lounge was in a different terminal that we were able to walk to easily. The lounge was quiet, good food and drink and effective Internet. However, getting to our gate was a trial and we almost missed our flight. We were told that there was a bus to our terminal. We went to the waiting area for the bus indicated by the signs. The door was locked, but when the bus came passengers disembarked form the bus, entered the waiting area and the door quickly shut so we missed the bus. We go on the next bus and as it traveled to several stops we realized that we were locked into our compartment in the bus.  In hindsight I think that was because the bus was passing through secured and unsecured areas of the airport but as we were on it I was wondering if we would be able to get out. When we finally were able to get out of the bus we had a long walk through the terminal past lots of shops and after we got to the gate we had to take a bus to the plane. Just made it.

We arrived in Krakow about 3:30. Poland does not use the euro, so I had to change currency. I took out too much local currency.  I thought that the Airbnb had arranged airport transportation, but when none materialized we took an unlicensed taxi to the Airbnb. I realized that he was unlicensed both when he had me sit in the front seat and when he could not find the place until I gave him my GPS. (it was hard to find, and it was on a 1 block street.)

As promised, we were met at the door by a friend of the Airbnb’s owner/manager. He was on roller blades and helped carry the luggage up to the third floor on them. The apartment was good. It had a separate, spacious bedroom, a loft and separate living and kitchen areas. There were even breakfast foods for us in the refrigerator.  

We left the apartment seeking dinner and intending to walk to the old Main Square. Instead I made a wrong turn and we were walking away from where we wanted to go. We visited the Krakow Opera House, a handsome and modern building. There was a performance that night, but it was sold out. After realizing my mistake, we took a tram back to the central area. It skirted the main square and we got off at Sierra Street. There were lots of upscale shops and restaurants there. We attempted to eat at one, but it is Saturday night and we did not have reservations. We walked up to and around the Main Market Square, Rynek Glówny. It is a very large open space that is the site of the Cloth Hall, a Renaissance-era trading outpost, and St. Mary’s Basilica, a 14th-century Gothic church. We stopped in at the Hard Rock cafe and purchased a tee shirt for my friend who collects such shirts.

We ate at a local restaurant on Florianska Street, a main shopping street. I had perogies. They were very filling.

We walked back to the apartment through an underpass and through a small park.  Tired and went right to sleep.  

Former Greek Parliament Hall

Cloth Hall, Main Market, Krakow

Jewish Museum, Athens

   

October 19 Mykonos

October 19, 2017, Cruise day 7, Trip day 18 Mykonos

We sailed all night and arrived at Mykonos at 7:30. This is the glamor island of the Cyclades area, the island with the parties, reputation and style. Very upscale and touristy.

Following breakfast, the independents were put on a small ferry for a ride across the harbor for the bigger ferry to Delos. That “complementary” ride saved us the effort of walking around the harbor. A major effort was made to get us out early so that we could avoid the crowds coming from the big cruise boats in Delos. The boat ride to Delos was a pleasant 15-minute trip. The ferry boast schedules are arranged so that you can only spend a maximum of 4 hours on the island.  There are no residents on the island nor is swimming permitted. Just touring ruins and a small museum.

Delos is the mythical birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. It was inhabited as early as the 3^rd millennium BC, but and for many centuries it was shrine to Apollo. (I never learned why his twin Artemis did not receive as much glory, although she has a big temple in Ephesus.) and the oldest temples on the island dedicated to him date back to the 8^th century BC. Athens gained full control of the island and surrounding region in the 5^th century BC. In 478 BC, following its victory over the Persians, Athens established an alliance known as the Delian League, with it as the leader and its treasury on the island. This established Athens as the leading Greek city state of the time.

During this period Delos reached the height of its powers. Its population swelled to 30,000 (half of whom were slaves) and many of its residents were wealthy merchants, bankers and mariners from lands throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Delos was not only a center of commerce, but also a religious center that welcomed foreign gods, although Apollo remained the leading deity. Athens maintained its control in part by forbidding births or deaths on the island.

Under Roman rule Delos continued to thrive and the Romans made it a duty-free port. Part of the prosperity was based on a thriving slave market in which up to 10,000 slaves were sold daily. Over the next century as Roman power declined and the importance of the ancient religions declined in the face of the growth of Christianity, Delos experienced a slow decline such that by the 3^rd century AD, the only inhabitants of the island were a Christian settlement. For several centuries thereafter, the island’s infrastructure was looted by pirates and others seeking building materials. It wasn’t until the 17th century that the antiquities of Delos were rediscovered.

Our tour took us initially to the Theatre Quarter where he wealthy resided. We walked through several houses including the Houses of Dionysus and Cleopatra where large structures surrounding peristyle courtyards that had elaborate mosaic floors.  The house of Trident was also very large and well preserved. The theatre dated to 300 BC, but was not well preserved. It contained a cistern that supplied most (the wealthy homes had their own cisterns) of the arid town with water. Beyond that on the mountain we could see, but did not go to the Sanctuaries of the Foreign Gods

We retraced our steps and walked along the Stoa of Philip V which lead to the Temple of Apollo. Opposite that is the Terrace of the Lions. The marble originals, all of which have been lost or are in the Athens and British Museums, were offerings from the people of Naxos presented in the 7^th century BC.  We saw plaster cast replacements. We then walked across the dry Sacred Lake, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis to the Museum. It had an interesting collection of relics.

We took the 12:30 ferry back to Mykonos and were on our own. We walked around and through the Church of Panagis Pareportiani. It is a rocky whitewashed building that consists of four small chapels. That lead us to the Little Venice area which had lots of narrow streets, tourist and jewelry shops and lots of water front restaurants. We continued along the waterfront to the windmills. These are thatched roofed structures which are the mostly now residences. One that was till a functioning windmill was open for a walk through. We then turned inland and stopped for coffee. Finally walked back to the boat by way of the center of the town and then along the waterfront bay. There were several people on the small beach and we viewed several murals near the boat.

We had to be back on the boat at 2:00 for lunch and the return trip to Athens. Do not know why we had to leave that early since we docked in Athens about midnight. During the afternoon we got to go on the bridge with the captain. Lots of gadgets up there. Had a sit-down dinner and then had to settle our accounts. The tours were expensive.

House of Dionysos

Picture of a mural of Little Venice

October 18, Santorini

October 18, 2017 Day 6 of the cruise, day 17 of the trip – Santorini

After our longest sea trip of the cruise we arrived off Santorini island about 11:30. This leg of the trip was about 14 hours across the Aegean Sea and we had been advised to expect strong waves throughout the night. There was a bit of rocking and rolling when we went to sleep, but it was not too bad and after I fell asleep I did not notice it.

Santorini is one of the jewels and most visited of the Greek islands. Even by the time we arrived there were three large cruise ships anchored in the harbor as well as many sea ferries arriving from the mainland and other islands. Cruise boats, even ones as small as ours, cannot dock at the small harbor, Athinios, because it lies on a small shelf of land which lies at the base of tall and steep cliffs. So, there are lots of small boats ferrying cruise ship passengers back and forth.

Santorini’s recorded history goes back a long way. Around 2000 BC the Minoans came over from Crete and their settlement at Akrotiri dates from the peak years of their civilization. Santorini was a round island then. However around 1613 BC there was a huge volcanic eruption that caused the center of the island to sink into the sea (this was the same phenomena that created Crater Lake in Oregon.) breaking the island into 4 islands and leaving a water filled caldera in the middle surrounded by towering cliffs along the east side, which is now Thira. It is these towering, multicolored (to me it looked like a layer cake) cliffs that are topped by white houses which in some areas spill down the cliffs that are the most striking feature of the island. From a distance they looked like icey cornices plunging down a ski mountain.

No one knows what happened to the Minoans after the eruption.  Speculation is that they fled, possibly to Crete, following the earthquake or some other signs that preceded the volcanic eruption, or that the entire population was wiped out. In any event, there have been no human remains found from this civilization. The island was repopulated by the 3rd century BC and was conquered at various times by the Venetians, the Dorians and the Turks, but it did not become a tourist hotspot, along with Mykonos until the 1970s.

The scene in the harbor of the main island, Thira, is a bit chaotic. When we got off our ferry there were lots of buses, taxis and cars jostling for position and lots of people disembarking for the ferries and on to land transportation. There are three ways up the cliffs, donkey ride, cable car or vehicles, which must negotiate the cliffs through a series of switchbacks. (I imagine one could walk up to the top, but no one suggested that and there did not seem to be a trail.) Our guide informed us that they would be offering a “complimentary “bus trip up the cliffs rather than requiring us to take and pay for the donkey or cable car, and a trip to the ancient Akrotiri archelogy site, for which we had to pay the entrance fee.

Akrotiri was unearthed in 1967 and excavations are ongoing. This Minoan city was buried beneath the volcanic ash in 1613 BC. The site is housed within a large protective structure and is cris crossed by wooden walkways that allowed us to view homes, commercial buildings, streets, drainage systems and water works, but no human remains. We spent about 2 hours there.

Next, we were bused to the town of Oia, on the northern tip of the island. This town was rebuilt after the 1956 earthquake and it is very pretty. It flows down the cliff with lots of white houses, many with blue domes on top. The narrow streets were very crowded at spots both with people and shops and we found a restaurant, Kyprida, a Cypriot eatery, a bit off the beaten path for a rushed lunch. Good fish and our friends had a multi course meal of lots of traditional foods.  We departed about 3:30.

Finally, late in the afternoon we were bused to Fira, the island’s main town. The roads on the island are very narrow and in some places adjacent to the cliffs. Our bus driver did a great job navigating the trip. Fira has some terrific views and ultimately the great sunset, but what I saw was a real tourist, albeit high end, town. The edge of the town lies on the caldera and it has layers of expensive hotels, cave apartments, restaurants, and infinity pools. The narrow streets behind that are filled with bars and more shops. We walked through the town to the edge where the Catholic Cathedral was located and walked through its interior. Beyond that the tourist part ended and we were in a working class residential neighborhood. There was a long line at the cable car station even though the cars moved n a pack of 6. Not much to do if you weren’t shopping or eating. We saw a few of our boat mates nursing drinks in bars waiting for the sunset. Looming below were the three large cruise ships. We watched the sunset for about 30 minutes shivering a bit and then met the bus for the drive back to the harbor for the ferry ride back to the boat.  We got on the boat about 7:30 and had dinner on the boat.

There was an overnight cruise to Mykonos.

The cliffs

Whitewashed homes and blue topped domes, Oia

The sunset