may 2nd, 2012 Planes, "Planty" and Perfect Pierogi

It's our first night here, and we are tired, to say the least.   The flying went o.k., actually, no glitches.
We are very impressed with our hotel, the Hotel Maltanski.  The location is perfect--walkable distance to mostly everything, yet on a quiet street across from the park.

The young people at the front desk are incredibly helpful, offering to make reservations for us for our activities or restaurants.   They arranged a box lunch for us tomorrow when we take a tour of Auschwitz.   Polite and friendly.
Impressions of Krakow---one of the cleanest cities I have ever seen!   There are horse drawn carriages everywhere, dogs everywhere, and no where do you see any droppings.   The streets, though old, are very clean.   
The Main Market place or "Rynek Glowny" is vibrant and wonderful, full of restaurants, carriages, shops, and all kinds of people babbling in many different languages.  It is constitution tomorrow so many of the statues were decorated in red and white.
To get to the square, we walked through a park, or "Planty", which circumnavigates the entire old city.   It was awash with lilacs, flowering trees, flowers, bike paths, and everybody walking.
Dinner tonight-began with a little tub of lard and bread, it seems they eat this instead of bread and butter or olive oil (not great)
--first course was a salmon tartar---very good but not as good as the one we had at a restaurant in Brooklyn with Adam and Dan's cousin, John.  
Then had Pierogi filled with farmers cheese, potatoes and onions.  The best!  Next, Dan had biga, a stew made of cabbage and wild game, and i had a mushroom soup.  Soup was great, biga was  good, according to Dan.
The meal ended with a treat-  a shot glass of freshly made mint vodka!"

We sat outside and watched the myriads  of people walking from the square to their homes or hotels, or wherever they were going---old, young,women in babushkas, babies in carriages--couples and families holding hands.
 This first picture is of a dessert cafe, typical in its old worldness and charm.
Beneath it is a shot of my pierogi, the "perfect pierogi."   

Enough for now.   Tomorrow we go to Auschwitz and I don't think I could write about today after going there tomorrow. Pat

p.s. a final comment---Poland is like the Cheers bar for Dan,  where "everybody knows his name."   No joke, EVERYONE has pronounced it correctly with no comment.















Ever whatever happened to the old Europe? It is alive and well in Krakow. Charm, service, beautiful buildings, limited Eurotrash. I was ready to be impressed but this surpasses my expectations.   I won't add much to what Pat wrote, because she covered the events of the day quite completely. I do want to share one of my first impressions of travel after not being to Europe for 4 years. Things have changed with travel. The internet and smart phones have changed the experience and much of it is good, though it's kind of weird to see the guys driving the horse carriages getting their email on their phones. No more need to carry dozens of books, all the info is on my kindle and iPhone.
Tomorrow,  Auschwitz. A day for reflecting on man's inhumanity to man.

Dan