Exploration

by: Emma Krummenacher

Today was our first “real” day in Krakow! We started out the day with a great breakfast at the hotel and then headed to the Jewish District in Kazimierz. It was so cool to explore the Jewish District. On all of my trips before this, I have visited so many churches, but I have never visited a Synagogue on a trip. While in the Jewish District, we visited 3 synagogues and saw a couple more. It was crazy how close they all were to each other (this is also true for the churches was saw in Old Town later today!) After lunch (where I tried some meat pierogi (dumplings) which we actually pretty good!), we headed to Old Town to visit Krakow’s National Museum and the Cloth Hall. At the Cloth Hall, there were a lot of little shops that we could buy souvenirs from. Some of them had painted woodcarvings and I was really excited to find a cute carved elephant because I collect elephants! We stayed in Old Town to explore after we finished up at the Cloth Hall. Before going to Old Town, the places we visited in Krakow had seemed much more westernized and less like other European cities I had visited, but in Old Town everything seem much more European which was really interesting.

This is a picture of a sculpture that was in the square in Old Town. We actually have the exact same head in a sculpture park in downtown St. Louis (where I am from) and it was so cool to see something that reminded me so much of home in Krakow today! I do not know the story behind the matching heads in St. Louis and Krakow, but I am definitely going to look into that!