WordPress seem to go to a lot of trouble to convince users that ‘Freshly Pressed’ is fair, impartial and based on critical selection.
Consider this then from a blog page I chanced upon…
It has been interesting to look back over 2012 to see which posts were the most popular. Bagni di Lucca and Beyond has been Freshly Pressed twice this year, which has been great fun. Thank you WordPress for choosing.
It is a nice blog but it isn’t brilliant (sorry).
I say no more…
Posted in Africa, Arts and Crafts, Athens, Austria, back packing, backpacking, Beaches, Bratislava, Budapest, Cantabria, Cathedrals, Childhood, Croatia, Cyclades, Czech Republic, dubrovnik, El Cid, Estonia, Europe, Food, France, Galicia, Germany, Grand Canyon, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, Hotels, Hungary, Iceland, island hopping, Italy, Krakow, Latvia, Literature, Malta, Marrakech, Morocco, Natural Environment, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Prague, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sorrento, Spain, Suez Canal, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Travel, Turkey, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, USA, Vikings, Wales, World Heritage
Tagged blogging, Culture, Favouritism, Freshly Pressed, Life
On the final morning we enjoyed our continental breakfast at the Ester, packed our bags and checked out and planned a morning around the Jewish quarter and the Second-World-War ghetto area in the Podgórze district across the river. On the previous day we had made arrangements for a city guide in an electric street vehicle to meet us at ten o’clock and just ahead of schedule he arrived at the front of the hotel. His name was Andrew and he explained that he would show us the principal sights of the area but this being Saturday the synagogues would be closed.
Posted in Europe, History, Hotels, Krakow, Poland, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Crocodile Bar Kazimierz, Jewish Ghetto, Kazimierz, Krakow, Nazis, Oskar Schindler, Podgórze, Poland, River Vistula, Schindler's Factory
We now had some time to spare before the others returned from their visit to Auschwitz so we walked into the market square which was now bathed in gentle central European mid March sunshine and found a café with pavement tables and a good vantage point to be able to see what was going on. As the horse drawn carriages jangled by and the place filled up with tourists I wondered how they were getting on at the concentration camp tour and I began to recollect our own visit there in 2006.
Eric was doing his best to be ‘crazy’ but I noticed that he locked the car and checked the doors in the same careful way that my dad used to lock his Ford Anglia before leaving it unattended and I was beginning to suspect that being crazy wasn’t something that actually came all that naturally to him. He had wild hair arranged in extravagant dreadlocks and an outward bohemian appearance but behind the external image he was really an educated scholar with an impressive knowledge of Krakow, word perfect English and an incisive philosophical interpretation of his subject.
On the second day of our visit to Krakow there were two groups with very different plans. Micky, Sue and Christine were going to visit Auschwitz but as we had been before Kim and I chose Mike’s Crazy Communist Tour instead. We had seen this on a Michael Palin travel programme and it looked like fun so we were keen to give it a try.
Posted in Europe, History, Hotels, Krakow, Poland, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Auschwitz, Crazy Communist Tour, Kazimierz, Krakov, Nowa Huta, People's Car, Poland, Trabant
After lunch and with the sunshine getting the upper hand over the clouds we walked around the square and past the grand St Mary’s Church which has a tower where on the hour a bugle call sounds out. We weren’t sure if there was a real bugler at the top providing the music or whether it was just a recording but there is a legend connected with this tune, which ends unexpectedly in the middle. The story says that it was played by a guard during the Tatars’ invasion in the thirteenth century, who used it to warn citizens of an attack. He was shot in mid tune and since that day the melody breaks off just at the moment he died and then starts again a few seconds later when someone else picked up his bugle and carried on in his place.
Posted in Cathedrals, History, Krakow, Poland, World Heritage
Tagged Crocodile Bar Kazimierz, Kazimierz, Poland, River Vistula, UNESCO
It wasn’t all that long ago, certainly within my lifetime, that people were sent to carry out hard labour in salt mines as a punishment. They probably still are. The Soviets especially liked compelling people to go deep underground (usually in Siberia) to mine the precious commodity but today things have changed and we were actually paying for the privilege.
The hotel clerk tried to persuade me to book a personal taxi tour but at forty zlotys more each (£10) this seemed an unnecessary expense so I booked the regular tour instead. This meant that to begin with there was a couple of shuttle bus journeys to reach the final rendezvous point across the river Vistula on the western side of the town where we separated into two groups, one for the Nazi concentration camp tour to Auschwitz and the other to the salt mines just a fifteen minute ride away on the outskirts of the city.
It was still rather overcast as we drove the short distance but it was much warmer today and the sun was beginning to compete with the milky clouds by the time that we arrived at the Wieliczka Salt Mine where we left the bus and walked to the entrance to meet our guide for the tour.
The mine is in the suburb town of Wieliczka that is now part of the greater Krakow metropolitan area and since the thirteenth century has continuously produced table salt. It has been one of the world’s oldest operating mines producing salt for seven hundred years until commercial mining was discontinued in 1996 due to low prices and flooding problems, followed by formal closure in 2007. It now produces just sixty tonnes of salt a day but this is only a by-product of routine maintenance operations.
Today the mine is a tourist attraction and about one million, two hundred thousand people visit every year. This might seem like a strange sort of place to visit but the attraction is a collection of statues and an entire cathedral that have been carved out of the rock salt by the miners over the years – presumably during their tea breaks. So impressive are the sculptures that in 1978 the Wieliczka salt mine was placed on the original UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
After we were assigned an English speaking tour guide who welcomed us in a charming lilting voice the visit began with a long descent down a vertical shaft which meant negotiating over three hundred wooden steps that zigzagged past fifty-four platforms down to the first level. From here we were about to enter a labyrinth of tunnels and interconnecting chambers that are over three hundred kilometers long and probably puzzling enough to confuse even the Minotaur of Greek legend.
We walked through disused and exhausted chambers, passing by whole forests of timber props and retaining walls and through heavy wooden doors to reach the first of the sights, the Copernicus Chamber, where for those of us who were expecting statues similar to white marble we were disappointed by the rather lack luster grey of the rock salt figure and the guide explained that this was due to clay impurities and other contamination in the rock.
Down in the mine we walked for three and a half kilometres through a succession of chambers, carved chapels and exhibits that explained the history and the operation. The route took us to a depth of three hundred and twenty-seven metres and down a precise total of eight hundred steps. Almost at the bottom was the star of the show where an entire cathedral complete with a statue of the Polish Pope, John Paul II, had been craved into one of the largest caverns where there was a light show accompanied by a rendition of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, which to all of us seemed to be a rather strange choice of music. After that there were a few remaining tunnels and chambers and the inevitable gift shops and then thankfully a lift to take us back to the surface, which was preferable of course to having to climb back up the eight hundred steps.
The sky was clearing nicely now and blue patches were rapidly replacing the unwelcome clouds and by the time the coach dropped us off on the edge of the old city centre the sun was shining and the temperature was rising.
In the square we selected a restaurant for lunch based on the contents of the menu board outside but then managed to find ourselves in the wrong place. We really wanted the Krakow specialty of soup in a hollowed out bread bun so we had to do the embarrassing thing and leave as soon as we had realised the error and relocate ourselves in the correct place next door. Here we were served our preferred lunch where it was fun trying to anticipate how long it would be before the hot liquid would leak through the crust and end up spilling spectacularly into our laps. We wondered if we could attempt this at home but I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying it with a loaf of thin crust Mother’s Pride.
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, History, Krakow, Poland, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Krakow, Poland, Pope John Paul II, UNESCO, Wieliczka Salt Mine
It was nice inside and I for one could have stayed longer but we didn’t want the girls getting drunk so after a second beer we left and walked out into the street where it was cold but not unpleasant. The area around the hotel was quite run down and the buildings looked tired with peeling facades revealing crumbling brickwork and rotting timbers beneath. After the war, under the Polish Communist regime, Kazimierz deteriorated into a seedy and disagreeable area and it is only since the mid 1990s that the district has begun to rediscover its Jewish heritage and undergo reconstruction and regeneration to become one of the main tourist centres in Krakow.
Located in the south of Poland, Krakow is historically and culturally one of the most important cities in central Europe and although we had visited before in 2006 it seemed appropriate to go again and see what we might have missed the first time. Cheap £40 return Ryanair flights made the decision an easier one and in March 2010 we left Stansted airport for the two hour flight to Poland’s second city.
Posted in Europe, History, Hotels, Krakow, Poland, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Bruno Schulz, Crocodile Kazimierz, Kazimierz, Krakow, Poland, Street of Crocodiles
