If you ever decide to take a trip to Krakow, Poland, you HAVE to stay at the Mosquito Hostel.

It was soooo nice! Usually hostels are sorta tacky and dirty, but not this one. The people who worked there were sooooo nice, and it was clean, and they offered different activities each night, free tea, free Internet, had a huge tv. It was just really cosy and cute. The colour scheme was blue, orange, gray and white, but they made it work.

This is one of the walls in our room. They had that cute little mosquito painted everywhere.

MMmmmm.....! Breakfast!! It was actually really good

The first day we got there, we ate at a traditional Polish place. It was crazy weird. The decor was, interesting, and EVERYTHING was in Polish. We even had to order in Polski because the lady taking the orders didn't speak English. I swear. No one spoke English. It was rather ridiculous

Rumproast, onions, and mash. It was REALLY good. But, unfortunately for me, this was not my meal. I WAS going to get it, but Travis wanted it as well. I thought that we should get different meals, since we were in a different county. So I maned up and picked something else....

I got some sort of ravioli thing. But. It was WEIRD. It was filled with this white stuff and raisins. It was sweet. The cream stuff on top, I think it was watery/melted sour cream? Sour cream, and sweet doesn't mix in my book. I ate about three of them before I had to give up. Sorta felt like I was going to puke.

We decided that we wanted to try some 'Polish Alkohole'. This is a random beer that we picked off the shelf.

This is St. Mary's Cathedral. The inside was SO pretty. It was unlike any church I've ever seen. Beautiful paintings were everywhere, amongst the intricate carvings, the various chapels (small alters to pray at) around the church.  If you look at the picture below, we climbed around 239steps to the tower that is on the left.

Here are a couple views from the top of St. Mary's Tower:

St. Mary's Tower is also known as the Watch Tower, Wake, Alarm, or Bugle Tower. I would have to agree with the name 'Bugle Tower'. For over 600 years, every hour, on the hour, a bugle has been played from the windows.  This guy played this short excerpt 4 times from 4 different windows. It was a rather stupid song, but it was still pretty cool...

This is the Barbican. It was the forward defence tower for Krakow way back in the day. We got to go inside and explore it, as well as some of the old walls of Krakow.

Behind us is where the draw bridge used to be. There used to be a huge moat around it.

Here is part of the castle. It was too hard to get the whole thing in a picture because it was just so big. We didn't go inside, because there was a HUGE line and it was sorta expensive, but walking around it was enough.

Once upon a time, in the old city of Krakow, when the land was owned by a King and a Queen, there lived a dragon.  This dragon made his home at the bottom of the castle. The people of the town feared his fire breath and scaly skin. Knights from around the land came to earn their honor by killing the Dragon. None had any luck. They were each burned to a crisp and eaten by the mighty dragon.  One day, a young boy, a shoe maker, came to the King and told him that he himself could rid of the Dragon. The King just laughed and told him to leave. Again, the boy begged the King to let him try. He told the King of his plan. Intrigued, the King decided to give him a chance.  That night, the boy worked by candle light in his shoe shop, sewing sulphur and mustard seed inside a fake lamb that he made. The next day, he went to the dragons lair, placed the lamb in front of his cave, and waited behind the trees. The dragon, greedy and hungry, saw the lamb and ate it in one gulp. The sulphur and mustard seed, reacting with the dragons stomach, burned his insides. He went to the near by river and began to drink the water. He drank and drank and drank and could not stop the burning.  Finally, it exploded inside him and he was no more.

The End

No, but seriously. That is the legend of the Dragon of Krakow. I was rather upset... the dragon's cave was closed because of flooding from the river. :(

There WAS a cool statue of him though!

Just some random piano we found chilling in the MIDDLE of the street... not too sure why...

The whole point of going to Poland was not to see the Dragon, and was not to eat gross Polish food. It was to go to Auschwitz. My post of that experience will come next... I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures there, but Travis took a few. I will post some so you too can see what it was like to walk the streets of those involved in the Holocaust