Journey to London: Kraków

Tuesday night I left for my last trip of the semester, I went to Kraków Poland. This is definitely an underrated city. I have never heard much about it, but while being there I loved it, it was one of my favourite trips. We arrived Tuesday night to our hostel, which was in a pretty great location. That night me and Rachel just hung out and went to bed because we knew the next two days would be exhausting. Wednesday we got up and explored a bit of the city, but stayed close to the hostel because we were going on an Auschwitz tour later that day. We found the cloth hall while exploring, which came to be one of our favourite places. It was hall filled with booths where people sold handmade goods and it was all pretty cheap when converted to US dollars.

The main square of Kraków

Inside the Cloth Hall

After this we went back to the hostel to be picked up for our Auschwitz tour. We drove an hour and a half before arriving. We arrived and first had a guided tour of Auschwitz 1. We went into multiple buildings to see the living conditions, starvation chambers, cases full of belongings taken from the victims, and various other things. At the end of the tour of Auschwitz 1 we walked through a gas chamber. After this part of the tour we went to Auschwitz 2 Birkenau. I never realized how big this part of the camp was. While here we saw the living conditions, a wash room, the ruins of the biggest gas chamber, and the platform where the victims got off the train and were told where to go. The tour was very interesting, I learned a lot of things about the concentration camps. It was definitely an eye opening tour and really put the horror of this event into perspective.

Entrance into Auschwitz 1

Ruins of the largest gas chamber

After the tour we went back to the hostel ate dinner and then went out to get dessert. The next day we decided to do a walking tour of the city which was a great idea until it started raining and getting cold. We wanted to do another tour after this one but it was still raining so we did a golf cart tour which was just as good except you couldn't get as good of pictures because there was a covering over the cart to keep the rain out. After the tour we walked around a bit more and then headed back to the hostel to get our things before heading to the airport. The flight was great but once we landed I had the worse experience of my life getting back to school, but I finally made it.