We started the day with a 4 hour walking tour of the city. It was fabulous and the city really is small because when we walked to the Jewish District we actually left Krakow and went into Kázimierz, the town that was given to the Jews to live in. Before WWII this was an extremely thriving Jewish community with hundreds of thousands of Jewish inhabitants. Today there are 160 Jewish people living in Krakow.
The red building is the oldest synagogue in Krakow. It hasn't been used for religious purposes since the war when the Germans used it for storage.
It's amazing how once a movie is filmed in a place it is always the first thing that is said about it. In Scotland it was, "Harry Potter was filmed on that plain..." and in Krakow it is "Schindler's List was filmed in this square." The square has been amazingly preserved and was a very quiet and rarely visited part of the city. Since the movie came out in 1993 however, tourism has made it one of THE places to see when visiting here.
A gate enclosing a park in the Jewish District.
This is the staircase that the little girl in the red coat in Schindler's List hid behind when the apartments were being raided. The actual ghettos are across the river and we didn't go there but we went to a lot of little inns and apartment buildings that show what the ghettos and neighborhoods were like.
The River Wista. (Remember that all w's are pronounced like v's.) The sun was barely rising when we set out on our tour at 9 in the morning and by 1 in the afternoon the shadows were already becoming very long. The sun was out the entire day, which was nice and helpful, but it was still in the 30's all day.
We climbed to the top of a bell tower and had a lovely view. In between the two towers is the town center square near where my hotel is.
We ran into a movie set while we were walking which was pretty cool.
Two "Polish police officers" (actors standing off on their own) from WWII times.
This is the alter at St. Mary's church and is entirely wooden. It was taken apart and hidden in pieces in Nuremberg to prevent it being taken to Berlin and in 1957, with the help of the American Secret Service, was fully restored to Krakow.
After the tour I wandered around the square and this guy was making huge bubbles for the kids to pop. It was fun to watch.
The sun setting from my balcony.
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