Poland, Days 4 and 5, Saturday and Sunday, Sept 6-7

 Saturday and Sunday, Sept 6-7

Saturday, September 6

--Dinner last night at the Spiz restaurant, where I had the traditional sour rye soup in a bread bowl.

There was a hard boiled egg in the soup.

--Today was mostly a travel day, leaving Wroclaw and ending up in Krakow.

--On the way, we stopped in Częstochowa to visit the Jasna Gora Monastery. This is a pilgrimage site that includes the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, which is the home to the Black Madonna, an icon/painting with a miraculous history. The origin is uncertain before about 1382, when Prince Ladislaus of Opole brought the painting to Częstochowa and caused the monastery to be built by Pauline Monks to house the holy icon. Complicated history, including vandalism.

Crowds of pilgrims/tourists all eager to see the Black Madonna icon. The icon is the bright gold rectangle seen through the iron gate.

Zoom in on the icon. This was as close as we could get.

--We got a hotel in Old Town Warsaw. It has narrow streets, the Wawel Hotel doesn't have any parking, you can drop off, but you need to park far away and walk back. Also has a nice big town square. Restaurants, popular for walking around.

Saint Mary's Basilica on the Krakow Town Square. We'll get a tour of it tomorrow.

--Gasoline was 5.76 Zl per liter, or about $7.50 per gallon. Gas stations include gasoline, diesel, and I was surprised to see, LPG. Our guide told us about 15% of the cars on the road run on LPG, a larger percentage than electric vehicles. A large majority of vehicles use gasoline or diesel.

Sunday, Sept. 7

-- Today we had tours of the Wawel Castle, The Wawel Cathedral, and the Saint Mary's Basilica. All are in the old town. A tiring day spent on our feet.

--The Wawel Castle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawel_Castle) is on the Vistula River and is now the largest art museum in Poland. The original castle was built in the 1300's. What we see today is mostly reproduction after extensive damage from WWII, but they tell us they made great efforts to stay true to the original design. All well and good, but throughout the centuries of history the Polish, Austrian, Prussian and Swedish kings and rulers remade/renovated the castle many times as requirements changed. So there is a strange mixture of medieval, gothic, renaissance, and other building styles.

The castle is huge so no picture can begin to show it. Fortunately they have a bronze model that you can look at. The defensive ramparts are 30-50 feet high. The castle proper, what might be called the Inner Keep are the buildings in the center on the far side. The Cathedral is the big structure in the upper left part of the model (see the bell tower). The building in the foreground are "recent" administrative/government buildings added in the 17th and 18th centuries.

--Krakow in southern Poland was the capital of Poland until 1596 when King Sigismund III Vasa moved it to Warsaw, a more central location for the new Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Sigismund III was a Swedish King of Poland).

--Today Wawel Cathedral did not allow pictures inside, and the outside was too large to see in any of my pictures, so go look at the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wawel_Cathedral). Even though the capital moved to Warsaw many years ago, king's coronations, weddings and funerals were held here while Poland existed as a distinct country. It is very ornate, has lots of kings and queens buried there, and has a tall bell tower we could climb with five huge bells.

The big bell named Sigismund, 13 tons, cast in 1520. The bell tower external structure is a brick masonry shell, while the inner structure is 24 inch oak beams. There is very little space between the beams. The stairways are steep and narrow and all wood, of course. The space where a woman with hiking poles is emerging is the stairway entrance to this space. 

One of the smaller bells named for St. Stanislaus is 6.6 tons.

--Finally we toured the Saint Mary's Basilica. Only a 10 minute walk from the Wawel Cathedral, this was the parish church for the commoners while the Wawel Cathedral with more the ceremonial center for the nobility.

The altar took twelve years to make (1477-1489), considered one of the most important Gothic wood sculptures. 

The sculpture is 36 feet tall x 42 feet wide. The figures are lifesize. The actual altar table that you can't really see in this picture is made of ebony and weighs over 500 pounds.