Valentine’s Day!! It’s almost here! I’ve asked you via Facebook if you’re celebrating or boycotting it?? 🙂 Are you planning to give presents, to go out, take trip, have a romantic dinner with candles or you’re planning to do neither of these things and you’re having a regular day?
I’m not bothered by Valentine’s Day, but it’s another good excuse for a celebration, strolling and having delicious food! I can’t have enough of these pleasures! And that’s my advice on how to look at Valentine’s Day 🙂
You can have a home-made dinner, you can go out to a restaurant – you can even choose one of the spots I’ve posted about here. But it’s not easy to make a festive dinner on a weekday, after work, when you have a child, and restaurants are usually crawling with people on Valentine’s Day. So, we like to go away for Valentine’s Day – and we’re doing it this time as well, but I’ll tell you more about it soon 🙂
One of our ideas for Valentine’s Day is Cracow. For the two of us, or for the three of us, as you can celebrate with your child too! The place seems popular and unoriginal, but its really charming, so many lovely places, that every visit is an opportunity to experience something new!
How to spend two days in Cracow? Is it a short or a long stay?? Is it enough for all attractions? Unfortunately, two days turned out to be not enough for us, but of course that’s what you get if you go away for a weekend, because you leave on a Friday after work, you have to go though the traffic, and it’s really late at night! So, come and visit Cracow in two days! 🙂
Let’s start with places absolutely mandatory and probably well-known to all of you. But maybe they’re not…? 🙂
1) OLD SQUARE, CLOTH HALL (SUKIENNICE), ST. MARY’S BASILICA, TOWN HALL TOWER
Cloth Hall
the mandatory Wawel dragon – a figurine or a mascot?
You cannot go to Cracow and not walk around the old square, visit the Cloth Hall, chase pigeons, if you are with children 🙂 I’d visited Cracow on business a couple of times and I haven’t had the time to go to the old square. And I’ve aways felt unpleasantly unsatisfied afterwards!
Thankfully, this time we managed to spend a lot of time on the old square and the neighbouring streets, we visited the peaceful Little Square and the Szczepański Square. We managed to stroll the teeming Grodzka St., Szewska St. and Św. Tomasza St. with a quite lovely and tasty small Italian restaurant Del Papa just off Szczepański Square. We didn’t have the time to visit it this time but I know it well from my previous visits to Cracow – especially in the summer because it has a small, picturesque patio.
Of course you can climb the St. Mary’s Basilica Tower and listen to the Trumpet Call that resounds through the Old Square every hour.
I learned which one is the Town Hall Tower 🙂 I’ve always associated the Old Square with the Clothe Hall, St. Mary’s Basilica, loads of pigeons, crowds of tourists and many restaurants. This time we were having a child-journey-blog meeting with a team behind the TupTam blog and they chose the Town Hall Tower as our meeting point. “It’s on the Old Square, you’ll find it without a problem!” We did find it but to tell you the truth I had to google the tower – although I’ve seen it probably every time I was in Cracow, I’ve completely forgotten about it!
St. Mary’s Basilica – one of the symbols
Town Hall Tower
2) A STROLL DOWN THE BOULEVARDS AND BABY SWANS, BABY SWANS!
Of course “Baby swans, baby swans” are Maks’s favourites during our stay in Cracow. Loads of swans, swimming by, eating, lurking under water constituted a great entertainment for him. And it’s a prefect jogging spot – on the Vistula river boulevards. If you’re going for a romantic journey, you have to stroll down the boulevards. It’s filled with people, children, buggies and joggers during the day, and quiet, calm and almost empty during the evening…
We had the pleasure of promenading there at least twice a day! Our hotel – Niebieski Art Hotel & SPA on 3 Flisackiej St. is located next to Vistula river, it has a nice view and you can stroll down the boulevards as soon as you leave the hotel until Wawel! We decided that it’s a perfect choice because it’s great to take a walk ben after a delicious, filling dinner!
LITTLE SWANS!!!!
3) WAWEL, THE DRAGON AND DŻOK THE DOG
The boulevards lead us to Wawel, another mandatory place in Cracow. I’m not going to write about Wawel itself because you’ll find some information on it in every guide! We loved the Wawel dragon, fire-breathing from time to time, or as Maks’s said “breathing the orange thing”! When you go pass Wawel and walk down the Kurlandzki Boulevard a bit further, you’ll get to Dżok the dog. It’s a modest monument of a small dog, but it is touching and it almost brings me to tears, although I’m not a big fan of dogs. What’s the story? Apparently between 1990-1991 Dżok the dog had been waiting for his master in the neighbourhood, who had fainted and passed on this spot… It’s a sad story about love and fidelity.
Wawel seen from the Czerwieński Boulevard
fire-breathing dragon
Dżok the dog
4) FOR A ROMANTIC DINNER OR A DELICIOUS LUNCH – ANCORA
Ancora on 3 Dominikańska St. is definitely one of the best restaurants in Cracow. High quality products, local ingredients, creative dishes, it seems that there’s more and more of these places, but we’re still looking for them and visit every one of them with great joy. Adam Chrząstowski is the wizard in the kitchen – we had on opportunity to talk with him during our cycle of interviews with chefs. It will soon be on the blog! Along with more of Ancora’s delicacies. Let me just say that I loved the beetroot and goat cheese salad! Small cheese balls in beetroot powder – great! Ancora is also probably number one in the category of the most surprising deserts: chocolate soufflé with blue cheese! Have you ever tried anything like this? 🙂
A pleasant interior, close to the Old Square, and I think there’s a special menu for Valentine’s Day… and it’s definitely cheaper that in similar restaurants in Warsaw 🙂 It’s mandatory!
beetroot and goat cheese – perfection in Ancora
5) FOR A COFFEE AND FUN WITH A CHILD – LIKE!KONIK
A Valentine’s Day for two… or three. So you have to find something for the little one too!
You already know that I love children-friendly places. It’s best when such a place is designed for the parent (usually mom) and the child. It’s nice, pleasant, there’s food or at least a good coffee and a cake. We visited the club-cafe LIKE!KONIK in Cracow. BTW it’s a great name, isn’t it? An association with traditions and a modern Facebook LIKE!
Nice, colourful design! A great castle for kids, blocks, little tables, for parents comfortable armchairs, coffee, tea and cakes. There could have been a bigger choice, but I still recommend it because it’s a nice place to be for the big ones and the little ones! 🙂
mr. knight in the castle 🙂
the colourful and artistic decor in Like!Konik
frenzy play
comfortable armchairs for parents
And finally, a key question: WHERE TO SLEEP?
Niebieski Art Hotel & SPA had invited us to Cracow. It turned out to be a very nice place! A peaceful hotel, new, lovely rooms, a buffet-style for breakfasts and a very pleasant restaurant. But I cannot lie, 2 things have brought us to our knees:
– pizza, that we ordered the first evening around midnight for approx. PLN 26 (and wine for approx.
PLN 55), and that entered the room on a beautifully decorated table! – wow! we spend some time in hotels, as you know, but this has been the send time we’ve come across such an attraction in our entire “career”! The first time in Dubai in a 4* hotel. A big plus for NIebieski 😉
– entertainment room with a foosball table and a small pool table that kept us busy after breakfast and Maks also when his parents were having dinner 🙂 The room is located next to the restaurant, but in a separate room, so it guarantees comfort for patents and childless guests who don’t want to listen to the sound of blocks flying around during dinner 😉
I’ve already mentioned the localisation – the view on Vistula river, a stroll to the Old Market, a nice neighbourhood…
pizza from an American film
modern Niebieski
the beautiful Cracow weather
So, these are my ideas for a weekend in Cracow! 🙂 It’s definitely enough to entertain a single day 🙂 And for the second day – maybe a stroll around the neighbourhood of Kazimierz, oriental, homemade and passionate food for lunch? 🙂 I wonder if you know: WHERE? 🙂 The answer and the review on the blog soon! 🙂
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