Krakowwwwww my pancreas!

We arrived in Krakow at 7am after having an entire cabin to ourselves on the train! Love itttt! However, due to the lost cell phone in Budapest, I had no way of contacting my cousin Luis in order to meet up with him! OOPS!

Fortunately a thing called Facebook exists, so we had posted on his wall or messaged him (something like that) and things EVENTUALLY worked out... a pay phone was involved too. Using one of those kinda felt like 2001 or something.

We met with Luis just after 9am and went to his apartment where we could settle in, shower, and change our underwear (required). Some of Luis' Portuguese friends came over and we all ended up going to the Auschwitz concentration camp - all 6 of us... in a 5 person car. April had to sit on my lap for the 90 minute ride - COMFY!

Auschwitz, like Dachau near Munich, was a sad experience, but important nonetheless. Luis and his friend left us there with 2 Portuguese guys our age and the four of us wandered around 2 of the 3 camps taking photos and taking everything in. It was very unreal and shocking while we weer there as we ventured around in silence taking photos and recording videos. Hard to believe that something like that could have happened :(

But enough depressing things, we caught the mini bus/van back to Krakow that afternoon. We thought the car was full coming in - we ended up having 30 people in a 20-seater van.... a little stuffy and awkward, with an old dirty man almost sitting on my knee - he almost made me cry.

That evening, back in Krakow, Luis and Kateryna (gf) treated us and some friends to a barbecue at their apartment. We ate mounds of meat and beer and afterwards, everyone but April and I went to the bar - yes, we're old ladies.. but we spent the night before on a train (excuuuuuuuuuse us haha). Apes 'n I passed out on the couch/bed to tackle the next day.

Day 2

We spent the next day at the Wieliczka Salt Mines just outside of Krakow. Of course, there were 6 of us in the car again, but we found a more comfortable position for April to sit in on my lap. It was better for everyone.

The mines were cool.. 14 degrees cool to be exact - and we went on a THREE hour tour of the mines. The tours were mandatory... Apes 'n I don't have attention spans that last that long, but we tried our best. There were salt sculptures all over the place, many made by the miners themselves which was really neat. The best thing that we saw though was the huge church inside! There were salt chandeliers, salt sculptures of religious figures, and best of all - a 3-D salt sculpture/painting of the Last Supper... so good! Of all the churches that we've seen on our travels (trust me, there have been A LOT), the salt mine one was the coolest!

The tour finally ended and we took the elevator back up to the top as the sunlight melted my buttery skin... always.

Once back to the city, we ventured near the centre to grab some Polish food at a cheap place near te train station. I think the two meals plus drinks that April and I got cost a grand total of something like 5-7 euros.... AND we were stuffed by the end!

We went back to Luis' after getting our train tickets and scrambled to get our bags packed and board our sketchy sketchy sketchy Polish overnight train to Berlin!! YAY!