My plan to leave Krakow and Hayley with a dry face proved unsuccessful. I woke Hayley as I was about to leave and we both started crying, and as much as it tore my heart out to leave my little girl alone again, I had a plane to Amsterdam to catch. So with heavy heart I headed off. As I walked to the train station to catch a train to the international airport, I realised that because of my overwhelming sadness last night, I'd forgotten to double-check my travel...

Today was our last day together, which I tried not to think about too much. I was sad to be leaving Hayley and the uncertainty of her travelling alone again began to creep back into my mind. We didn't do much, just wandered around the city, enjoying each other company and eating the occasional pretzel (the same shape as the small hard pretzels we know, but ten times as big and soft and chewy). We looked through the markets in the town square and saw many beaut...

My tourist guide, Hayley, had a choice of two things to do today, visit the Auschwitz Concentration Camps or the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Although visiting the concentration camps would have been a way to honour those murdered there and to keep their memory alive, I didn't feel in the right frame of mind for something that I knew would be very emotionally disturbing, so took the easy way out and decided on the salt mine. On entering the mine I wondered whether I'd...

Today we walked around taking in the beautiful old buildings of Krakow. As it was the beginning of winter, the majority of the trees in the parks had lost their leaves and the few remaining leaves were various shades of orange and yellow. Underneath the trees was a blanket of yellow leaves…very pretty. As it was the beginning of winter it was also VERY VERY COLD, we were rugged up in thermals, coats, gloves and scarves. Krakow Royal Castle is a very grand im...

I'm not sure why, perhaps it was knowing that we only had four days left together before I headed back to Australia and wouldn't see Hayley again for another two months; or perhaps that we'd had such a busy three weeks and just needed time to chill out, but I'd lost some enthusiasm for travel by the time we arrived in Krakow. Maybe it was because we'd left an English speaking country and were back to relying on pointing and hand signals, and butchering of the l...