Further Krakow

Having now had a chance to walk around in Krakow, I must say I'm duly impressed. Walking between the Rynek Glowny and the Wawel Castle was beautiful, even though by the time I got up to Wawel all the buildings were closed. If I have time I'll try to get back up there to have a proper look around, but the truth is I'm more interested in going out to see Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mines, so it may have to fall by the wayside unless I want to cut short my time in Budapest or Vienna.

After walking around for a while, I was dead tired and retreated back to the hostel for what's becoming my usual evening nap. Around 8 I roused myself and forced myself to head back outside for dinner, and found a nice, simple restaurant a few blocks away. I headed back early fully intending to catch an early sleep, but instead got sucked into a game of Trivial Pursuit with a group of Canadians, Aussies, and Americans. Unfortunately, it was a British edition of TP, so we were at somewhat of a disadvantage on all the rugby, BBC, and prime minister questions. After jumping in mid-game to help my fellow Canucks who were down 4 pipieces to 1, I managed to rally us to a 5-5 tie that stalemated for a long time while we couldn't answer history questions and they couldn't answer sports questions. Finally, we gave up the pretense of rolling the dice and moving the token and went to sudden-death, then it sort of fell apart as we started digging for funny or weird questions rather than actually playing the game. (Real Question: What is the price of a traditional monkey? Answer: 500 pounds. I don't get it either.)

Now, off to bed, a couple of hours later than I'd anticipated, but hopefully I'll still be able to get it together to visit Auschwitz tomorrow morning.