Day 4: Kraków

Today was our final day. I hadn't given much thought to what we'd do, thinking that we could arrange something together whilst we were in Zakopane and knew the lay of the land. My suggestion was Nowy Sącz, on the basis that it was the nearest large town. Matt came up with a much more reasoned suggestion: 'We barely got to see Kraków and we've got to go to the airport near Kraków, so why don't we go to Kraków and see a bit more of it?' That made so much sense that it's exactly what we did.

The 65-mile drive was very easy for nearly the whole distance, since it was on a motorway, which offered occasional pretty views:

A little after 12, we'd arrived, choosing to park by Wewel Cathedral, which was immediately visible to us upon exiting the car park:

It was immediately apparent that the Vistula was a wide river: we hadn't seen it before because night had fallen when we crossed it previously:

We walked around the wall and soon encountered a dragon:

A little past him was a ramp upwards, which we followed:

Soon we saw the cathedral:

It was very pretty up close:

Around the corner was a statue of the region's Karel Wojtyła, better known as Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in over 450 years:

We were running low on time at this point (the contract with the rental company stipulates a fine of 500€ if we don't return the car on time!), so headed down rather than linger.

After roaming for a couple of minutes, we walked up a street with a pretty church on it:

Directly opposite was a lunchtime cafe, and that's where we decided to stop for a quick bite to eat.

We exited to the view of the church, retrieved the van, and returned it to the company with five minutes to spare, before walking the few minutes to the airport for our first of two flights home.