There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

July 30 2009

Today was castle day!


We walked to Wawel Castle around 11. Jim found a tour guide who would give us a tour of St. Stanislaus Cathedral. He was EXTREAMLY knowledgeable and really explained the cathedral well. Unfortunately, you're not allowed to take any pictures inside, but it's glitzy! Since it was the Royal Cathedral for the kings of Poland (before the capital was moved to Warsaw), it is filled with gold and silver.

There is a solid silver reliquary in the centre of the nave which holds the remains of St. Stanislaus. Our guide explained all the tombs, the history of the kings buried in them, and how Pope John Paul II (who grew up and lived in Krakow) used the cathedral. Then we went to tour the palace.

Unfortunately, you have to buy tickets in advance for things like the private rooms and such, and a lot of the tickets were sold out (as a way to keep the rooms preserved). But we did get to see the State rooms and the Armoury. Both were very impressive and again, filled with gold and colour. Next we went to climb the bell tower of the cathedral. The way up was very cool with lots of twisting stairs and ducking under large timer supports. Boy were my legs hurting afterwards!



By the time we left, we had spent 5 hours at the castle.

We left the ground via the Dragon's cave. There is an old story that Wawel Castle was terrorised by a dragon 1,000 years ago. This dragon lived under the castle grounds and would eat pretty Polish girls. One day, a clever 15 year old boy filled a sheep's fleece with sulphur and left it outside of the dragon's cave. The dragon ate it, but the sulphur started burning his stomach and he ran down to the river to drink. This caused the sulphur to react and the dragon blew up. The king was so grateful he have the boy his daughter to marry. A few hundred years later, peasants digging by the river found some large bones that they believed to be the dragon's. They hung them on the door of the Cathedral and the saying goes that the bones will hang there until the end of the world- or that if they fell, it would be the sign of the apocalypse. However, modern scientists have identified the bones to belong to a whale jaw and an ancient rhino that used. We went back to Kazimierz for a big late lunch/early dinner. Later that night we just had a wee snack of Zapiekana, a Polish grilled baguette pizza thing that you can get from vendors.