We had decided that we would head to Auschwitz today. Today was going to be the coolest of the days whilst we were here so it would be the best to head there. As such we did know it would be a heavy day. We had breakfast & stopped at a bakery to grab some stuff for lunch. Arriving at the bus station we caught the 11am bus for the 1.5 hour ride to the camp. Between 10am to 3pm you have to go pay & join a guided tour which enables them to regulate the crowds during summer. The English tour ran at half past every hour so if we didn't make the 12.30pm, we would have to wait another hour. Thankfully we arrived in time & joined a great Polish lady who would be our guide. We were given headphones so we could listen to her talk without being right beside her or her needing to shout. We spent the first 2 hours at Auschwitz 1 which was the original concentration camp. It is the best preserved of all the camps & a lot of the barracks have been converted into museums showing how life was in the camp. I'm not really sure what to write about the experience. Probably the thing that really impacted us the most was the tonnes of women's hair in a display. The nazis used to shave the prisoners & then send this hair back to Germany where it would be used as fibers for products. Mattress filling, cloth sacks etc. The end of camp 1 was a walk through the only remaining gas chamber & crematorium. This is the only surviving one as it was used as an air raid shelter. They destroyed the others once they realized the war was lost. After a few hours we departed camp 1 & had some lunch in the shade to avoid the 30 degree day we were having. Then we caught a shuttle to Auschwitz 2, better known as Birkenau. This was the death camp responsible for the largest extermination of people during WW2. Arriving at the gates as millions of prisoners did we were surprised by the size. The place is many kilometers squared. We spent an hour with the guide here before she concluded the tour & Jac & I wandered for ourselves, pleased to be away from the crowds. We spent another hour here before returning to Auschwitz 1 where we could experience the museum & grounds now that the tours had left. Wandering alone through beautiful woods with birds singing, it is hard to believe that this place was part of the holocaust. In fact we commented how with the surroundings & amount of tour groups, it probably wasn't as emotional as when we visited Sausenhausen near Berlin. That time we had visited in the depth of a harsh winter & we found that trying to comprehend the horrors they faced then was very hard. This is our 3rd, & probably final ever, concentration camp. But as I said before these places must be visited & photographed & experienced. It is best that as many people as possible share the horrors that were committed here in the hope that they never happen again. We left about 6.30pm & wandered to the bus station only to discover that the last bus to Krakow had departed some 15 minutes earlier. We decided we would have to walk to the train station in the hope that we could get a train back. Thankfully there was one at 7.30pm that we boarded which returned us back to the city. It was a pretty slow old trip though. We rattled along at not a fast speed stopping here & there. The rural countryside was very pretty & we did see a deer grazing in a field, lifting her head to watch us rattle away. We finally arrived in Krakow at 9.40pm & navigated a tram to get us close to the centre square. We found a cheap perogi (Polish dumplings) cafe where we had a quick bite then caught a taxi home. After an emotionally draining day it was nice to be back in the hostel for the night. Tomorrow will be a lot more fun, but we will never forget what we have seen today.