Krakow

Ok, Yesterday I was in Kraków for the whole day. We left by seven in the morning and it took about three hours to drive there by car. We went to Wawel castle which is huge and absolutly stunning and had two tours that I went on with my cousin Natalia and my Aunt. While we were doing this my other cousin Greg and my uncle were spending a few hours down by the river and having ice creams. Wawel castle is situated on a small hill overlooking the river Vistula and surrounded as is Krakow by miles of forest in all directions. It's just the kind of backdrop where you expect to see black wolves running through the trees and the odd vampire bat following along behind! As well as this trip to the castle we all went through the main town and had a great time shopping for very touristy things. The sheer amount of Amber here is amazing, literaly there are ropes of the stuff hanging in nearly every other shop window. I had a huge pretzle as we walked and bought a few souveniers for the family: a mug of Krakow, postcard, some bookmarks, the usual kind of things.
In addition to this I went to see the famous Krakow tower. Legend has it that hundreds of years ago when the Tarters invaded Poland the only person to see the advancing scouts was a young trumpeter that played the trumpet to call the hours for the town. He rushed up to the top of the tower and played his trumpet song over and over until the towns people realised that something was wrong and clossed the city gates, foiling the invading army and giving the Polish army time to assemble and guard the city. In doing this he made himself visible to the enemy and one of the Tarter archers shot him in the throat with an arrow halfway through his song. The trumpeter of Krakow is sill remembered to this day anf there is a statue to his honour just under the tower where he fell, saving his town. When the song is played to this day it is always stopped just where he did as he died, in memory of his brave sacrifice.