With a huge radiator in the room we struggled to sleep soundly in our baking hot room but it did spur us to do our first load of washing and utilise this heat during the day to get everything dry. In the meantime we set off we a stroll around Krakow. The first impression is that this is a town made for a stag night out; lots of bars with cheap beers and cheap kebab and pizza style food. The guide book also comments on this and goes as far as to say that Krakow also offers the 'obvious' mock stag kidnapping - this service wasn't quite on my obvious list.

From the large central square we walked away from the tour touts offering us our dream drive around and headed for the Wawel castle to the south. We walked a lap of the walls to find the dragon statue which sometimes shoots flames, but today was quiet. The statue is from a local story about a dragon that used to terrorise the area, eating livestock and the odd virgin, until the founder of the city fed it a barrel of tar disguised as a sheep at which point the dragon exploded. Inside the castle was a curious collection of buildings from different time periods. In the past this area on top of the hill had been used as army barracks and the restoration has been through several phases. We got some tickets for what looked like the most interesting areas and strolled round. First up was the treasury and armoury, the latter containing some huge two handed swords which surely must have been a struggle to lift let alone fight with! From here we looked round the state rooms, each of which contained a random collection of items from all time periods making it hard to really make sense of it all.

Having left our bag in storage I went to pick it up on the way to lunch but mistook a stiff door for one that was locked. We hung around for a while not quite sure what to do when a lady walked past, gave it a shove and walked in. Needless to say I wasn't feeling too clever at this point! Lunch is worth a note, we ordered bread and mushroom soup but the novelty was that the entire bowl was bread which caught some admiring glances from the table next door.

Early afternoon we looked round the cathedral in the castle grounds, including the bell tower above where 12.5 tonne bells were waiting to be used and the royal tombs below. Everything was very impressive and we concluded our castle tour with a quick walk round the cathedral museum.

In the evening we went to see a string quintet playing in Saint Peter's and Paul's church. The location was magnificent but chilly and we arrived well wrapped up wary that the promised heaters were not going to be enough. The quintet playing a variety of music but many tunes from films to ensure the lay person recognised some music at least. My favorite player by far was the double bass who gave the impression of not really paying attention as he looked this way and that while playing flawlessly.