We had originally planned to visit Poland back in 2022 as part of our Finland trip, but had to change our plans due to covid restrictions. With the geopolitical situation in that part of the world, we decided to go ahead and visit Poland and the Baltic countries this year while it is still relatively safe and stable, and also to check off few more countries in Europe on our bucket list.
10D9N in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia
26 May 2024 (Sun): Warsaw - Krakow - Auschwitz
After spending a day in Warsaw, it was time continue backpacking to our next city on this trip. It was an early morning start at 4.30am as we've got to catch our 5.36am train. We don't get free breakfast at Intercontinental but the hotel had some pastries and coffee at the lobby for the early birds so we grabbed some to-go for the train ride.
Early morning 'workout' walking 6 minutes with 10kg on my back and 5kg in front.
Arrived Warsaw Central train station at 5.05am with 30 minutes to spare. All announcements at the train station and in the trains were in Polish only. Glad we planned everything out in advance.
Our train IC13100 arrived on time for the 5.36am departure. The 2hr 40 min journey was smooth. We had pastries and vitamin C for light breakfast.
We booked our PKP intercity train tickets from Warsaw to Krakow online on Apr 29 (about a month before) when the schedule opened so we were able to get it at a good price of PLN 74.80 ($19) for 2.
Arried Krakow Glowny station on time at 8.15am. We decided to take an Uber to the hotel as it was too far to walk with our backpacks. It took awhile for us to figure out the Uber driver pickup location in the train station. I asked a few people who seemed to be local but none of them knew where the 'rooftop parking deck' was. =.=
I called the Uber driver and he didn't seem to speak English so I randomly asked a Polish guy who was walking by if he could help talk to the Uber driver to tell him where we were waiting. The guy was kind enough to talk to the driver and pointed us to the direction to wait for the driver. Thankfully, the driver found us.
Arrived our hotel, Sheraton Grand Krakow, at 8.50am but our room wasn't ready yet. Even though the location for this hotel wasn't as convenient, I opted for this hotel because we needed a hotel that would allow early check-in and late check-out. I was pretty certain that Sheraton would accommodate this, especially with my Marriott Titanium status. :)
Since our room wasn't ready yet, we planned to just check out the lounge and see if there was anything to eat before heading out for sightseeing. However, as we were sitting in the lobby repacking our stuffs to keep with the concierge, the staff who checked us in came over and told us that we could have free breakfast at the restaurant. Even though I get free breakfast with my status, I wasn't expeting it on check-in day so this was a good surprise!
Made a quick stop at the Sheraton Club lounge, which I was able to access with my status.
Only non-alcoholic drinks and some snacks were served in the lounge during the day.
Took an Uber back to Krakow main station to catch the train to Osweicim.
The 1-hour train ride from Krakow Glowny to Oswiecim costs PLN 30 ($7.70) for the 2 of us. This train is operated by Koleje Malopolskie, a local train. No assigned seats but there were plenty of seats. Oswiecim station is the nearest train station to Auschwitz. We arrived Oswiecim station at 11.45am with plenty of time to spare before our 1pm tour of Auschwitz.
It was possible to reach Auschwitz museum by a special "M" bus conncting the station with the main entrance of the museum and the ride takes only 5 minutes. However, since we had so much time to spare, we decided to walk 25 minutes (2km) to the museum.
Arrived the museum at 12.15pm but had to wait about 15 minutes as we could only go in 30 minutes before our scheduled tour. Glad we bought our tickets online early enough because the spots were limited for each tour and they do sell out. Our tickets cost PLN220 ($55.50) for the 2 of us.
After a quick security check, we collected the sticker for our English tour (there were many tours for different languages) and waited for our tour guide to call out the 1pm English tour.
Met our tour guide for the 1pm English tour and collected our audio devices before starting the tour. Benefit of using the audio device, we could walk at the back of the group and still hear our tour guide.
Auschwitz concentration camp was the largest concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. Over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives here.
We walked through the gate with the slogan 'Arbeit macht frei' which translates to 'Work makes you free'. All prisoners were forced to work, which killed many of them. Initially, the work was used solely as a tool of terror, which had no purpose other than to exhaust the workers. They were forced to build the camps themselves. With no tools or machines, they did everything with their hands as the overseers beat and terrorized them.
Dramatic scenes of the incoming transports during the selection process on the loading platform. Columns of women and children on their way to the gas chambers...marching to their deaths. :(
It's hard to imagine what these people went through, but Korean Englishman's episode of the Korea Navy Gas Chamber training gave us a glimpse of how it felt like being in a gas chamber.
Piles of luggages, shoes, and possessions left behind by those exterminated in the gas chambers.
For those who were not sent to the gas chambers, they were held as prisoners in bad living conditions, and most of them were killed within a few months.
Men who had been sentenced to be shot at the "Death Wall" stripped in this room. It happened that death penalty was also executed here.
The gas chamber and crematorium. From August 1940 until July 1943, this building served as a crematorium to incinerate the bodies of deceased or murdered camp's prisoners.
We finished the first part of our tour at 2.30pm. We were trying to beat the rain so we hopped on the 2.40pm shuttle to go over to another part of the concentration camp - Birkenau.
Arrived Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp II at 2.50pm for our 2nd part of the tour. Our tour guide tried to speed up the tour as it was going to rain and there wasn't much shelter in this area.
Birkenau was the largest of the more than 40 camps and sub-camps that made up the Auschwitz complex. The majority (about 90%) of the victims of Auschwitz Concentraion Camp died in Birkenau. This means approximately a million people. The majority, more than 9 out of every 10, were Jews.
Our group did a pretty good job walking fast and keeping up with our tour guide. Our guide completed the rest of our tour here as it started raining outside. A lot of buildings on the other side of the camp were destroyed already but this brick barrack that we were in is one of the original ones.
We were free to walk around the area ourselves after the guided tour ended, but we decided to wrap up our tour at 3.45pm as it was raining and took the shuttle back to camp 1.
We got back to camp 1 around 4pm and literally ran 2km to Oswiecim train station to catch the 4.18pm train back to Krakow as we didn't want to wait another hour for the next train at 5.32pm.
Made it back to our hotel at 6pm and got the keys to our room 201 and the hotel staff had already brought our bags to the room. There was also a plate of desserts in the room for us. :)
Our room for 1 night in Krakow - Grand Deluxe Suite with Wawel Castle and Vistula River View.
Booked this room with my Marriott 40K Free Night Certificate and also used one of my Marriott NIghly Upgrade Awards for this huge suite that costs $739/night.
View of Wawel Castle and Vistula River from our suite.
The lounge had complimentary Happy Hour from 6-8pm. We were impressed by the food options.
Drink options were pretty good too.
The food served in the lounge was good enough for our dinner. :)
27 May 2024 (Mon): Krakow - Warsaw
Complimentary buffet breakfast at the hotel before starting day 4 of our trip.
Walked to the bus stop near our hotel to catch bus 304 to Wieliczka Salt Mine at 8.30am. The public transport system in Poland was good and easy to use. There was a ticket machine on the bus and we were able to buy the bus ticket using credit card on the bus. The cost of this 25 minutes bus ride wasr PLN6 ($1.50) per person.
Our itinerary for the morning was visiting Wieliczka Salt Mine, a World Heritage Site. We bought our tickets online for PLN 268 ($68) for the 2 of us and booked the 9.30am English tour.
Wieliczka is a bizarre, 700-year old, underground salt mine, with a mind-blowing size of 300kms! Via a 2-hour tour, we visited enormous chapels carved out of the rock, chambers, and clear lakes!
The start of our tour was to walk down an endless flight of stairs to get to level 1 - 64 meters deep.
We walked through many corridors and stairs like these during the tour. It was hard to imagine how big this salt mine was because our tour only took us below the ground to 135 meters for a length of 3kms, which is just 1% of the entire size of the mine!
Impressive carvings all around the salt mine.
It was like a whole different world undergroud. I must say the mine was very well maintained.
This was one of the coolest chambers in the salt mine.
There was even a banquet hall in the salt mine where people can organize events here.
Finished our salt mine tour at 12pm and took the 12.40pm train back to Krakow city.
Made it back to Krakow train station at 1pm. Bought some pretzels before continuing our sightseeing around Krakow Old Town.
Weather was pretty but it was quite hot.
Krakow Barbican - defense gateway from 1490s, once linked to the city walls.
St. Florian Gate - Medieval Gothic gate tower dating from the 14th century & adjoining the city's fortified walls.
Took some photos at the Old Town Main Square. This was our third Old Town on this trip and definitely getting the 'same same but different' vibes.
Walked 30 minutes from Krakow Old Town back to our hotel, and passed by this park
Final sightseeing stop in Krakow at Wawel Castle, which was located next to our hotel. It was definitely field trip season there. We saw so many student groups.
Made it back to our hotel at 2.30pm with 1.5 hours to pack and shower before checking out at 4pm. Our train to Warsaw wasn't until 7pm so we asked the hotel if we could still hang out at the lounge until about 6pm and they were kind enough to give us access to the lounge even after checkout.
The lounge staff was also nice enough to get the Happy Hour started few minutes earlier so we were able to grab dinner (and champagne) at the lounge before leaving at 6.15pm.
Time to continue our journey to the next stop. We finally figured out where all the Ubers were dropping off and picking up people.
Back in Krakow Main Station to catch our train at 7.05pm back to Warsaw.
We booked our PKP intercity train tickets from Krakow to Warsaw online on Apr 29 (about a month before) when the schedule opened so we were able to get it at a good price of PLN 142 ($35) for 2.
This EIP train was supposed to be slightly nicer than the 2 earlier train rides we had but the overhead compartment was smaller so our backpacks had to be stored in the luggage rack. Beautiful sunset on our 2.5 hours journey. After traveling around Poland the past 4 days, we can confidently say that the public transportation in Poland is very good, convenient, and cheap.
Arrived Warsaw Central station at 9.30pm and we had 2.5 hours to wait here until our 12am overnight bus to our next country, Lithuania. We found this nice spot in the station to hangout. Not that it wasn't safe but since we were in the public area, we were definitely a bit more cautious of our surroundings. It did make me feel a bit safer seeing 2 police/security walking around watching.
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