Wrocław

Wrocław is apparently known as the 'Venice of Poland.'  Well I went to Wrocław a couple of weekends ago and I've been to Venice and I can't see the similarities, for a start, I liked Wrocław.  I guess it does have one canal and a couple of islands but the similarities end there; there are no (or few) Italians, no gondolas and for a major city full of tourists, quite reasonably priced.  


For me recently it's been weekends away galore, two weekends ago a few of my lovely friends from home came to visit me and we met in Wrocław.  It took me 5 hours and 70zl by train to get there, it's over 300km from Toruń.  I arrived late so headed straight for our apartment for a catch up and sleep.

We spent Saturday and Sunday walking round the old town and exploring the centre.  It's a beautiful place, as far as Polish squares go, this one is big and beautiful and buzzing, and very colourful, definitely one of the nicest in Poland.

The atmosphere was fantastic, lots of people, lots of sunshine, lots of ice cream.  There was even a chess table set up in the middle of the square for passers by to come and play, and lots of those quite annoying still people.

We went up the church tower (the one by the square) for a great view of the square and all the city, it was worth every one of the 293 winding steps that we climbed to get there, later we went up the cathedral for, er, another good view, thankfully though this time by lift.

Nordic walker

One of the highlights for us was trying to find Wrocław's krasnale; loads of little dwarf statues all over the old town and surrounding area, we found them hanging off lamposts, passed out outside pizza hut, drinking in the park etc etc.  There's also some kind of lovers bridge, full of padlocks proclaiming couples will be 'zawsze razem.'  They made really nice and unique additions to the place.

On the whole I was really impressed, the city seems so live-in-able and friendly and I hope it isn't too long before I'm back there again.  It's big enough to have loads to offer but the centre at least felt small enough that you would never feel really lost or intimidated there.  Of course, first you need to get the pronunciation right which was a real problem amongst my friends; v-rots-wav, v-rots-wav.......