02.08.2011 – 02.08.2011  18 °C

Last day in Poland today with me flying to Berlin this evening. To fill up the whole day I planned to start late and spend the afternoon at Wavell Castle.

It was a great plan except I forgot that they only sell a certain number of tickets to the castle’s exhibits so by the time I got to the castle the treasury and armoury exhibit and the royal apartment tickets had already sold out! The only tickets I was able to get (that interested me) were to the Staterooms and to the Lost Wavell (the foundations of the castle).

Unfortunately it had started to rain (again.. it has rained non-stop since Bookie and Conductor left me a week or so ago) so I decided to use the time wisely and write out the remainder of my postcards to everyone back at home.

By the time it had stopped raining I ventured across the castle surrounds to the Staterooms for a geeze. The staterooms are largely devoid of furniture (because it has all been plundered by different conquering armies) but you can tell that the Jagiellonian dynasty (who built Wavell) were not hard up for a buck! It definitely impressed me more than the Kronborg or the Swedish Royal Palace… but not quite as grandiose as the Winter or Summer Palaces in Russia… Architecturally though the Wavell is much more mediaeval than anything I had seen before and so from the outside it is very impressive castle!

After touring through the staterooms (another funny story… there isn’t really anything to look at in the rooms except some tapestries and paintings of the old kings… yet you are not allowed to take photos of the rooms… I mean what are you going to take a photo of even if you could????? I did try to take a photo of the marble staircase and copped a heap of rapid Polish which I took to mean no photos!) I went and had a squiz at the foundations of Wavell.

The foundations of the original keep were laid before 1000 AD (there is some conjecture on when they were actually laid) and you can go above the archaeological digging area to see what the archaeologists are uncovering. They have dug under the current Krakow cathedral and found many bodies of different bishops and kings (and have some bodies on display) and they have dug down into the old keep of the castle. Within this they have found many fragments of pottery (surprise, surprise) and more bodies!—these ones they aren’t really sure who they are but suspect they are probably workers who may have died at some point when building parts of the keep.

I spent the remainder of the time sitting in a McDs sorting out more of my holiday whilst I waited til it was time for me to go to airport.

One more funny story is the plane that I took from Krakow to Berlin. I was on an Air Berlin flight (which is a low cost carrier in continental Europe)… they put us on an Air Nikki flight instead… The air hosties on Air Nikki wear bright pink button up shirts with navy blue hipster skin tight jeans and a bright pink cap… It’s the funniest get-up I’ve yet seen for an air hostie… Anyone older than 40 or larger than a size 16 would look absolutely ridiculous in the outfit… I should’ve taken a photo they were pretty amusing!