Kraków

Kraków is a historic and a hip city in Poland. The Main Square, surrounding Old Town and the Wawel Castle used to be surrounded by walls. In place of walls, these days a park encircles the entirety of Old Town.

Some of the best aspects of traveling to Poland are food: high quality, huge portion sizes, and great price. Here are my recommendations:

Fancy food

Kogel Mogel Restaurant Try the soup that’s poured on mashed potatoes, I really liked the beef cheeks and Golabki made with kasza - that’s a cool twist as typically they’re made with rice.

Fast food

Bar mleczny (literally: milk bar) is a fast food cantina popular in the 20th century. You’ll get good, Polish food for cheap. Be warned, you won’t meet there a smiling server asking how’s your day been. I recommend this for all sorts of dough dishes like pierogi (dumplings) and nalesniki (crepes), and I ate lunch in these every day.

All bar mleczny are decent but I can vouch for quality of Mila, they were catering food in my elementary school.

Street food: Zapiekanka

Zapiekanka is a foot-long sandwich, a Krakow classic. You can get them from the round building Okraglak which is in the center of Kazimierz. Kazimierz used to be a run down Jewish quarters and now it’s booming as a popular diner and party destination. It’s worth a visit at day and at night.

Donuts

Krakowskie Paczki These are just the best. The biggest and fluffiest. I go for the classic with rose jam and orange glaze on top. They also serve breakfast that looked good, but I haven’t tried it. Make sure to go to this shop and not the one across the street!

Jazz bar

Harris Jazz Bar has good drinks and music, and it seems like a popular hangout for English speaking crowd.

Podgorze

Make your way across Vistula river on this pedestrian bridge. There’s a lot to see on the other side! Across the Rynek Podgorski (square) there is a striking church with a park behind and painted stairs. Nearby is my high school which for a period of time had a misfortune to be turned into a Nazi HQ.

Nowa Huta

For a complete change of scenery head over to “Plac Centralny” (“Central square”) - take a streetcar there! This was a socialist city built in 1950s to compete with burgeois Krakow. It housed people working in steel mills on the outskirts. A few low key recommendations in that area Good Lood ice cream Awiteks bakery Cafe NOWA bookstore

Enjoy!