Wrocław, Pronounced Vrotswaf
After Krakow, we continued our European city tour with a visit to Wroclaw for 3 nights, and by the 3rd night I can say we actually learned how to pronounce the city’s name. We stopped there partly to break up our journey to Prague, and partly to see the city (Poland’s 4th largest) and nearby Karkonoski National Park. We were also excited to see the Jewish quarter with its synagogue, restaurants, and memorials, and (unrelated) the random dwarf statues scattered around town. We stayed in an Airbnb in the old market square, which had epic views of town hall and its surroundings.
That first night we grabbed dinner at Bernard, known for its excellent Polish/French food, beer selection, and location right in the square. We ended up liking it so much we repeated it on our third night.
The next day, Amanda came down with a migraine so she stayed home while I attended the Free Walking Tour of Jewish Wroclaw. This was the same company we used to see the Jewish quarter in Krakow, and again they did not disappoint. I learned enough that I was able to walk Amanda back through the same places 2 days later and share some fact.
The next day, we rented a car and drove 2 hours south to the resort town of Karpacz, the location of several trailheads into Karkonoski National Park. We were hoping to take the chair lift, usually running for skiers in winter and hikers all other times of year, but we apparently caught them on a maintenance day (or maybe bad weather day?) so it wasn’t running. Sadly, this meant we didn’t make it up to Mt. Snezka or the church at the summit. But we did get some exercise, got snowed on a bit, and got to binge the S-Town podcast on our roadtrip.
The next day, our last in Wroclaw, we did some dwarf hunting, walking around town, and lunching at Mleczarnia in the Jewish quarter. It turns out there are more than 350 dwarfs around town, which began as a way to commemorate the Orange Alternative anti-communist movement. Now it’s essentially a tourist attraction. Tourists can pick up a special brochure with a map of the dwarfs, along with a smartphone app. We didn’t do any of this, but it all felt very Pokemon Go-esque, which we thought was cool. Maybe next time we’ll do it for real. We did bump into a whole bunch of dwarfs on our walks.
We’re fans of Wroclaw. The old city and Jewish quarter are lovely, food and beer delicious, and our day trip to Karkonoski was one of our better outings of late. Next we’d spend Easter weekend in Prague, which we’ll have up on the blog soon.