York

Even though we've lived in the UK for 7 and a half years now, we've never managed to make it up to York - we decided that before we left for good, that we should remediate this serious flaw.

We jumped on a train from Kings Cross station (which has recently been renovated by the way, and it's incredible!), and caught the train up to York. Once we got off the train, we checked out the station quickly. We proceeded to make our way to our hotel, stopping briefly by the river to sit down on a pier to have our sandwiches. After this we decided to go for a wander and check out the Old Town. There is a tiny street in the centre of the town called "The Shambles" which we went and checked out, then went to the York Minster. What an amazing structure. I would suggest it is one of the most fantastic churches I have ever set foot in, perhaps only beaten by St. Peter's. It was amazingly impressive. The undercroft tells a great story of the foundations of the building back to Roman times, and the relatively recent refooting of the building to support the weight of it. We both managed to get a cheap and quick Arch-bishopship. :-)

I went for a walk to the top of the tower and climbed 275 steps up a VERY narrow winding staircase. It was a lovely walk, and actually didn't take as long as they suggested. The view from the top was absolutely stunning, but the weather was a bit average, so the pics didn't work out so great. But hey-ho - it was a great walk.

The rest of it was brilliant.

The following day, we got up in the morning and went to the National Railway Museum. So awesome. It is such a fantastic museum. If you ever get the chance to go, you really should - entry is a 3 pound suggested donation, considering this it's an absolute bargain. I reckon it must have taken us a few hours to get through - checking out all the old royal carriages, and the massive Steam train collection. So cool. In the museum they have a heap of trains including the Mallard - the world's Steam Train speed record holder to this day. Also they usually have The Flying Scotsman, and have a large display on it, but it's off being completely restored at another workshop, so they have The Green Arrow in it's place, which was another train of the same type that ran the same route - interestingly there is no real answer to the question as to why the Flying Scotsman is as famous as it is, other than it was the first to run the non-stop London to Edinburgh route. But apart from these particularly famous ones, there's a whole bunch of other cool stuff to check out too.

Following this we decided to stop in the park nearby for a bite to eat. We ended up having leftover egg and chip sandwiches which was awesome - and as an added bonus I found 4 pounds on the ground near our park bench! Jackpot.

We then went for a walk around the town walls, around to the other side of the city, and went to a place called Clifford Tower which was an old fortress and was nice too.

Following this we went to a pub for dinner - Thomas's of York - and finally got our Beef and Ale pie we'd both been craving and it was epic!

Krakow Christmas Markets

Very late November we decided to go to Krakow - the main reason for this was that neither of us had never been to Poland before, and we really wanted to check out Auschwitz prior to us leaving Europe. It also just happened to coincide with the Christmas Markets - what a shame... ;-)

One thing that we learnt was that Krakow is an absolutely beautiful city. Stunning, in fact. And with so much history how could you not love the place.

Nikki hadn't been feeling very well prior to us going, so we were always going to take Krakow at a slightly slower pace than we would otherwise, but it has potentially taught us a thing or two about the way we go travelling anyway - slow down and smell the roses a little.

We managed to see the Christmas Markets, go for a walking tour of the Old Town, and went out to Auschwitz on a day tour. 

Auschwitz - What a fascinating place. There's an old saying that goes something like "bad things happen when good people stand back and do nothing" that I think is one of the most pertinent things I could take away from visiting. The ridiculousness and horror of what went on in Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau is so staggering that it is often hard to fathom that this ACTUALLY happened. From seeing a room full of human hair (removed from the ladies), to another room that was full of children's shoes, it was incredibly sobering to be in the actual place that these atrocities took place.

I would have to say that visiting Auschwitz was something that must be done - we had previously visited Dachau, but even though that was quite a touching experience, the sheer magnitude of Auschwitz was hard to imagine. Visiting was also something of a bizarre contrast to the rest of our trip, though, as the remainder of the trip was one of enjoying the Christmas Markets and general sight-seeing.

The main square in Krakow is the largest square in continental Europe, and is very stunning. The history of Poland of a country is particularly interesting, and was very much brought to life by Alicjia, our incredibly fantastic free walking tour guide.

The Christmas Markets were not particularly large, but were definitely sufficient for a couple of nights of slow meandering and drinking glühwein, eating kielbasa, pierogi, funnel cake and the contents of the markets themselves were fantastic.

All in all, Krakow was a massive surprise - such an incredible, beautiful place. If anyone ever gets the opportunity to visit, I couldn't recommend it more highly.