3rd time's the charm

Had a really cool night last night. After dinner at a really good pizza place Erin and I wanted to go have a drink and stumbled into a bar that was about two stories below ground. VERY COOL. I think it was an old wine cellar but it had all the old stonework and kinda looked like a crypt. Once again, the cheep bastard in me was loving the prices so 2 drinks turned into 4 and 4 drinks turned into 8 and before I knew it we had made friends with Pollock couple. (By the way, turns out Pollock is the correct way to say it. I confirmed it this time with an actual Pollock. Incidentally, a female of Polish heritage is called a Polka. I kid you not.) We learned all sorts of things about past communist pains and Poland's optimistic capitalist future. I also learned how to say jackass in Polish. It's jackass. Turns out some things don't need translating.

So we danced to the "UNSE UNSE UNSE" of the techno beat until the wee hours of the night. We walked across the square back to the hotel we heard the buglers play their hourly song (kinda like Taps) and was reminded of the story behind that I forgot to mention. So there's this big town smack dab in the middle of the square that's, I don't know, 1,500 years old. The story goes that the watchman saw the invaders coming and started bugling his alarm. About half way through the alarm he was shot in the throat with an arrow. Pretty grizzly I know, but to this day, they play the song on the hour every hour and stop it mid way through. I don't know, I kinda thought it was cool.

This morning we got up at a decent hour, switched hotels as the other one was all booked up for tonight and headed down to the Wawel Castle. There has been some sort of structure there since the beginning of recorded history! Also, (another religion tidbit) Hindus believe that there are 7 places on earth that have kick ass chakra – Jerusalem, Delhi, Delphi, Mecca, Rome, etc, etc and Wawel Castle. So you're supposed to go hug on this wall to achieve maximum chakra potential but it totally wigs the Krakowians out. If you ask a tour guide about it they start to squirm cause they're not even allowed to talk about it. So after rubbing on a wall like a bunch of cats in heat, we headed down to the garden to have a Pepsi Lite and sit in the sun. I got a back rub and a big thumbs up from some really old Pollock that could see I was in heaven. Seriously, he passed us with this group, turned around and with a big grin, gave me two big thumbs up. I agreed.

We spent the afternoon strolling through the Jewish quarter but were really unimpressed. Its not like walking into China Town or Little Italy in New York. There aren't menorahs on the street signs or dradles in the street. I don't know what I was expecting but it was just kind of a run down part of town without a whole lot going on. So we booked it back to town and discovered that a festival in the square was in full swing. We are heading back down there now for carnival food before taking it easy tonight as we are flying to London tomorrow on our way home.