Day 32

I'll just start by saying that Krakow is absolutely amazing. This is probably my favorite city so far. I woke up at 7, and met up with another girl from WNE and another girl from Richmond at 7:30. We then walked down to the Tube station and found our way to Heathrow, arriving at about 9, a half hour before our scheduled meeting time. I ate my banana and muffin that I had stolen from the dining hall yesterday morning while we waited. We then met up with our guide, Don, who apparently had never been to Poland before, so we were all wondering at this point who was giving us a tour of the city on Sunday. He also brought his son along. There's ten of us, only one guy, and we're all American. We waited there for another guide who was late, and eventually we just asked Don if we could print our boarding tickets ourselves, because we didn't know what he was waiting for and it was getting late. We went through security, and somehow I always get wanded down, and then met up with them at the gate. The two other girls with me got Starbucks and I started reading Game of Thrones. The girl with us who isn't from WNE went to Emelia's high school, but she's super annoying and super rich and super wasteful. The girl from WNE is okay, especially compared to this other girl. We boarded the plane at 11:50, and took off without a problem. There was a group of guys on the plane celebrating a bachelor party and were all wearing deer antlers (stag party haha...) and were really loud so I didn't get any sleep. I did get far in Game of Thrones, though. They gave us a small chicken sandwich smaller than the size of my fist, and a raspberry roll thing and that was my lunch.  We got to Krakow at about 3:40, their time. The airport was super small. We didn't even pull up into a terminal and had a staircase going off the plane that made me feel all official. We waited for people to get some of the bags that they had checked, because a lot of them don't know you can't have liquids (facepalm). This was when our tour guide Don scared us as we asked him how far away our hotel was and he said he had no idea. It was only about 25 minutes, and the hotel is super nice. I originally was supposed to be with two other girls I didn't know, but luckily one of their friends offered to switch so I'm with the two girls I traveled with. The room is really big and the shower is the most beautiful thing ever compared to Richmond. We even get free breakfast. By the time we got settled, it was about 5, so all ten of us decided to stay together (because there was only one room key per three people so you have to stick together or you can't get into your room). We asked the front desk where we could get pierogies, and we walked to that place.  I got Russian style Pierogies, and they were the most delicious thing ever. Definitely not the frozen ones. Unfortunately, none of us had asked before we sat down whether they took credit cards, as none of us had taken out Polish money, so we had to leave in pairs to slip out, exchange pounds (since there was no ATM), and then pay. I'll probably need to take more pounds out from the ATM once I go back to Richmond. The exchange rate here is the best. One pound is 5 Polish currency, so dinner was actually really cheap, only about 4 pounds for ten pierogies. After dinner we walked to the main market square, which was the most amazing thing ever. It reminded me so much of the streets in Madrid with music playing, lights flashing, vendors selling food. There was a stage where men wearing traditional Polish clothes were singing and everyone was dancing and having a good time. We roamed around the little shops and I got the most adorable Polish souvenirs. By this point the group of ten had split up into two groups, so the five of us decided to split the cost of a horse and carriage ride around the city, which had us only paying about 4 pounds each, practically a steal. It was so beautiful, and they took us to Wawel Castle, which closes so early that I can't tour it, but it was amazing lit up at night. They took us past beautiful synagogues and cathedrals too, and it was a fun night and experience. We enjoyed the town center until about 9, and the ten of us met back up and walked to our hotel. Luckily, our hotel has good wifi, a lot better than Richmond.  Tomorrow we have to wake up at 6:30, and leave for Auschwitz at 7:30.  Tomorrow's going to be a super powerful and sad day, and I'm not sure I'm ready for it yet.