Kraków and Auschwitz

Yesterday was Tuesday and we took a bus ride from Gdansk to Kraków. If you look on a map you can see that we basically drove the length of the entire country. We left around 9am and did not get to the hotel until after 7. It was a very long ride. We had dinner at our hotel/hostile. It is actually an old dorm that has been converted into a hotel. We got to sleep and there some sort of chorus concert or something going on outside and it was really loud. We couldn't close the windows though because there is no air conditioning in the room and it was too hot. So we got sung so sleep. JoEllen and I could have sworn they were singing about potatoes, but we don't speak Polish so I don't know. 

Today we left the hotel at 8:30 to have a walking tour of Kraków. We saw the palace and the Wawel Royal Cathedral. Inside was where Pope John Paul II often prayed and some of his blood was inside the church. We also learned about the symbol of Kraków which is a dragon. The story is actually pretty funny so you should look up why the symbol of Kraków is a dragon. After we walked around the old town and got on a bus to Auschwitz. 

We had lunch and then walked to the concentration camp. We spent a good probably 5 hours at Auschwitz and Birkenau. I am not going to blog much about the tour. Standing next to the train tracks was terrifying. It was a very overwhelming day and a lot to process. Although it was a lot to take in, it was a really incredible experience to visit the camps.