Breakfast at the hotel was just as amazing today as it was our first day here. Actually, it might have tasted even better just by comparison! =]

During our tour this morning we walked through the main sites of the Krakow Old Town. We met Maciek in the City Square, and from there we walked to Collegium Maius, the oldest part of the university in Krakow (which is where Maciek went to school). Then we walked to the Wawel Royal Castle, which was quite impressive. We didn't go inside, but the outside was really beautiful... and then we finally got to see the infamous dragon!

I guess I should explain first that all the souvenir stands in Krakow sell dragons. Dragon stuffed animals, dragon shot glasses, dragon t-shirts, you name it, and they probably had a dragon on it. When I asked Maciek on Friday what was up with the dragons, he elusively said "You'll have to wait and see." Well we ended up seeing the dragon at the end of our tour on our last day. It was a pretty cool metal statue, but the coolest part was that it blew fire out of its mouth every five minutes. Legend has it that once upon a time the King of Krakow was having problems with the "real dragon" (because yes, there was once a real dragon). He offered his daughter's hand in marriage as an award to anyone who could slay the dragon. Knight after knight trailed and failed until one day a common peasant came to the King and asked for his permission to try. The King was quite certain the boy would instantly be killed by the dragon, but agreed to let him try anyway. The boy tricked the dragon and ended up succeeding in slaying him, married the princess, and became king!

After the infamous dragon, we had our last lunch together at Chimera, which is a rooftop restaurant with a great view. Most of the group had earlier planes to catch, so we hurried out of the restaurant as soon as we were done. Including the guest speakers, our group was probably about 18 people all together. We took the stairs up probably around 8 or 9 flights to the restaurant, but on the way down most people wanted to take the elevator. I think about only four or five of us, myself included, took the stairs. I wanted to use the restroom really quick before we left (they're more difficult to find in Europe...) and I was expecting to have to run to catch up to the group, but they still weren't down on the ground floor yet. We waited for a good five minutes, thinking that the elevator was just taking forever to get to the top floor (1 small elevator, 8 or 9 floors...), but when an alarm went off in the elevator corridor, we realized that our group was probably stuck!

At first, it was kind of funny that they had gotten stuck in the elevator. But after a few more minutes, I was really beginning to wonder what we should do.... None of us spoke a word of Polish—I tried to learn how to say "hello" and even that I couldn't remember—and I had no idea how elevator problems in Poland were handled. Luckily our group appeared 5 or so minutes later =]

After we said our goodbyes to the group, Susan, Ashley, Gergana and I headed back to the main square to do some shopping at the Cloth Hall or Sukiennice. I bought more amber =] and a couple other little things, but we were all pretty tired and not really interested in doing too much shopping. I think we were all wishing we still had our rooms at the hotel so we could go back and take a nap, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. More over, we still had to get back to Germany! We weren't supposed to get into Leipzig until 11pmish and I had a train to catch at 5am to get back to Jena... so needless to say, I'm quite sure that the knowledge of how long my next two days were going to be was making me quite tired (especially since I knew I was leaving for Munich that Thursday!). The four of us decided that it would be much more enjoyable to grab coffee and some ice cream at one of the lovely cafes in the square. & I think it was a very good choice!

Pożegnanie!

That means goodbye...maybe you can understand now why I wasn't able to pick up any Polish! ;]