Three Days in Krakow, Poland

I recently spent a long weekend in Krakow, Poland, my first time visiting the country.

I’ve had Krakow on my list for quite some time, as I’ve always wanted to visit Auschwitz and see it for myself, and family members of mine have always said how great the culture and food is in the city centre.

You can find my travel vlog on my YouTube channel if you’d like to follow along in person:

Arriving in Krakow, Poland

We flew out on a Friday night after work from Gatwick Airport. We booked with Wizz Air, taking only an under-the-seat bag and arrived in Krakow just before midnight.

There didn’t seem to be great public transport from the airport, but there were lines of taxis waiting to take you to your destination at the front door, along with a sign to say how much the taxis should charge you, depending on where you were going which was incredibly helpful.

With the exchange rate from GBP, it made things very cheap for us in Krakow, so our taxi to our Airbnb cost around £10.

We headed straight to our Airbnb since it was so late and had some tricky instructions to follow in order to find it. Once we discovered the back courtyard of an apartment building, we found it ok. You can see the Airbnb in my YouTube video with a tour of the place, but it was exactly what we needed for our stay.

Link to Airbnb here.

First day in Krakow

We woke up quite early on our first morning (Saturday) and headed out to grab breakfast from a popular spot nearby. Bread and Butter was a small but busy brunch spot about a ten minute walk away from our Airbnb.

We waited around 15 minutes for a table, but the servers were extremely friendly and gave us coffees while we waited. We both ordered some avocado on toast but couldn’t say no to also ordering some pancakes for dessert as the photos looked too good on their Instagram.

After filling up on some tasty breakfast, it was time to walk around the city.

This is how we both love to explore a new city, by walking endlessly around the city streets and various tourist attractions, taking everything in.

Tourist attractions

We headed to Krakow’s Main Market Square stopping in some shops along the way. Here you can find St. Mary’s Basilica and the Cloth Hall. Plus in this square you’ll find some horses and carts and market stalls trying to sell various Polish knick knacks.

We then walked further to Wawel Castle, taking in more of the amazing architecture that the city had to offer. Once we got to the castle and took in some of the surroundings, it started to rain heavily so this was our cue to go for our first round of pierogis.

Pierogi time

Himself loves pierogis and used to try to take me to Vaselka’s in New York, but I was never that much of a fan. However, after my six portions of pierogis over the weekend in Poland, I am hooked.

We dined at a highly rated spot called Kuchnia U Doroty and had both the meat pierogis and the classic cheese and potato. I was a big fan of the meat variety and ordered these each time afterwards.

After our pierogis, we walked to the Jewish Quarter, taking in the buildings and signs that appeared to resemble how they would have looked back in the early 1900s.

Following this, it began to rain even more and so we found ourselves in a pub in the Main Market Square area for a few hours.

First night in Krakow

For dinner, we had heard of a popular Italian restaurant called Mamma Mia and headed there. Like breakfast, we had to wait around 15 minutes before a table came available, showing how popular it was.

Once seated, we enjoyed starters and pasta main courses, washed down with aperol spritzes. The food was great and is definitely a spot I would recommend.

However, there didn’t seem to be many locals here but quite a few British couples that may have also spotted the restaurant on TikTok, like we did.

After this, we headed back to our Airbnb to have a night in and watch The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas which was very fitting as we were going on a tour of Auschwitz the next morning.

Second day in Krakow – Auschwitz Museum

On the Sunday morning we were collected outside of our Airbnb at 9am and taken to the Auschwitz museum about an hour outside of Krakow with seven other English-speaking tourists.

Our driver took us to our tour guide who gave us a guided tour of Auschwitz I and then after this, Auschwitz II – Birkenau.

Booking link for Auschwitz tour.

It was incredibly harrowing and emotional, walking around Auschwitz on the actual grounds where the atrocities of the concentration camps happened in WWII. Seeing where they would have lived, where some would have stayed perhaps two minutes before being sent to the gas chambers and then stepping inside the actual gas chamber itself.

There aren’t enough words to describe what it’s like to walk around the camps and to take in the numbers of atrocities and what went on at these locations.

I will say that if you ever get the chance to go to Krakow, I would 100% recommend visiting Auschwitz and taking the tour of both camps to better understand and see for yourself, such a moment in the history of the world.

While on the tour, I had received some sad news from home and so when it was time to leave and go back into Krakow city centre, we didn’t feel like doing much and weren’t feeling very upbeat to say the least.

We went for dinner in a traditional Polish cafe, Pierogarnia Krakowiacy, which was just what we needed. Warm stew and soup in huge bread bowls along with a side of perogis. Comfort food at its finest.

The food was excellent and was somewhere that I’d choose to eat at again.

Third and final day in Krakow

After checking out of our Airbnb in the morning, we made our way to breakfast, stopping for coffee from Kaffe Bageri Stockholm on the way.

We were headed to Mak, a cafe inside the Puro Hotel and a great spot for remote working or digital nomads with a lot of people working independently from laptops at a joint table that had many plug sockets for chargers.

We both chose to have shakshuka (a favourite breakfast item of ours) along with a cinnamon roll for dessert.

After this, it was time to walk around some more before heading home. We grabbed more coffee from Emigrant Coffee and then headed back to Wawel Castle to see it one last time.

Krakow was a lovely place to visit and definitely a place in Europe I would recommend visiting. If you haven’t already, do check out my YouTube channel with other travel vlogs to Bali, Marrakech, New York and more.