Day 31 - Krakow, Poland - The City of Pope John Paul II

Joan's View

It was an early start to a full day. We boarded the train to Warsaw at the train station after Tony, Bud & Theresa picked up some McDonald's food there. It was probably the nicest train that I have ridden (the bullet train in China was the fastest though).

Our guide, Alex, toured us around some key locations in Krakow. The first was St. Florian's church. St. Florian was a Roman legion officer and is the patron saint of Krakow and firefighters. A portrait of a young Pope John Paul II was there because he served as a vicar there.

As we were walking to our next stop, the Polish army was serving traditional army food and sharing the civilians. We got some free soup typical of what the soldier's eat. It was really quite tasty.

The soup trailer

Free Polish army soup

Next, we stopped at the courtyard next to St. Mary's basilica to see the trumpeter come out at 1:00. His trumpet call is always cut short to commemorate his death when he was shot in the neck with an arrow alerting the townspeople to approaching warring people. He always waves when he is down.

the trumpeter

the wave

Inside St. Mary's basilica a huge gold wall.

We then went to view the magical musical clock at the former building of Krakow University once attended by Pope John Paul II.

Following the Pope John Paul II trail, we stopped outside of the window of the building where he would talk to people when he was bishop of Krakow. The one window is covered in his image. Our guide was present many times when bishop Karol Wojtyla was talking to people.

One of the churches on our stops was celebrating a wedding between a Catholic and Jewish couple. We stayed to watch for a little from the back.

Many other stops and many other churches. These are a few more places where John Paul II lived. 

More reconstruction

We visited the old Jewish section of Krakow that was formerly on the other side of the river to see the few synagogues that are left here. It was getting late and on our walk back we stopped at another Polish restaurant. Theresa had a pigeon sit near her on the floor the entire time we were there.

Finally, we headed back to our Airbnb through market square. We caught sites of a King and Queen parade that was happening soon in the streets.