Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Caffe Avec.... Part4! Cafe Camelot in Krakow

It wasn't untill our last day in Krakow that we discovered this small cafe which we completely fell in love with. I had found the address somewhere online, and had to trust Terje's map reading to find it (he is a map reader expert though....). It wasn't hard to find though, just around a couple of corners from the Market Square. Once inside. we found a small table in a corner, sat down, looked around, looked at each other, big smiles on our faces. This place looked like cafe heaven.

 If......if I ever end up writing my coffee house book, this is the place I want to sit when I write. Drinking coffee, sipping a glass of wine, eating a pastry, ordering a light lunch when I get hungry. Look at the people, try to understand, or at least figure out the conversations, breath the atmosphere and the romantic pink, enjoy the handcarved wooden dolls.

I could follow the world reading one or more of the many international newspapers offered in the cafe, or I could not........

  
From our corner, it was nice to sit and chat about our days in Krakow. The city we knew almost nothing about when we came, the city we knew we would wrap up and keep in our hearts.... unwrap again and again......as memories and  hopefully as more visits in the future.

I hope you have enjoyed my Caffe Avec posts from Krakow. The next post in this series will be from Prague/Praha. Another city with great coffee houses.

 
 A directory of Krakow's coffee houses

Cafe Camelot's website

Which one of the four coffee houses in Krakow I've written about would you like to visit?

Caffe Avec.... Part3! Wedel's Chocolate Lounge and Colours in Krakow

We met old friends at the airport when we landed in Krakow. We changed cellphone numbers and one afternoon decided to meet for coffee. When we met we had already realised that Krakow is a coffee shop heaven, but still we were unprepared conserning the chocolate and dessert heaven inside Wedel Chocolate Lounge at the Market Square. Our friends had had an early dinner and wanted dessert. terje and I had planned a late dinner and ended up with our desserts first. I don't need to write that we were not very hungry when we finally sat down for our dinner.

Five people and quite a dessert table!

While eating we exchanged stories from the student days we shared as students in Trondheim in the late 70ies, early 80ies. Laughter, do you remember........are you still in contect with him.....with her......what happend to....... The hours passed too quickly.

The stories we shared are not blog stories.......I do have some fun for you though. A colour walk in Krakow. I bought Krakow, A City of Colors during our first day there. Wonderful title, but though the book was okay I didn't find mych colours in it. Krakow do have colours though. A rainbow full. Come along on my colour walk.

 

 

 

Green Krakow, The Planty Walk

"Now I am here, in Krakow, where my life began. I stand on my small balcony, looking out over the Vistula, ready for my morning walk.

It is spring, a mild and sunny day, with the gentle, filtered light of the Old World........I usually walk along Planty Park, sometimes stopping to sit on a bench for a while......

 
A few weeks ago I found two interesting books at the bookshop at Oslo Airport. Both were by Linda Olsson. I started to read the first one, Astrid & Veronica right away (on the train up to Lillehammer) and knew alresady after the first few pages that I had found a treasure. It took only a couple of days to finished the book, and I decided to save the next one for our upcoming travel to Krakow. On the plane down to Krakow I was busy reading The Trumpeter of Krakow, but finally it was time to start my next Linda Olsson; Sonata for Miriam. I opened the book and started to read........now I am here, in Krakow.......

I almost fell down from the bench where I was sitting.......here, in Krakow.

The Planty is several gardens, shaped like a horse shoe surrounding the old part of Krakow. Nice to walk at all times of the day. We prefered the quiet of the early mornings, the light of the fading days.

The Planty gardens were created back in the 1820ies, and along the walk you can still see foundations of the original city walks.

Everywhere there are benches. Everywhere you can sit down, to read Linda Olsson, to watch life, to be quiet.

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The Grand Finale - Wierzynek

A couple of weeks ago Terje came home from work and offered me a small yellow piece of paper with just one work written on, Wierzynek.

"What is this?" I asked.

"The name of the best restaurant in Krakow" Terje replied. "There is a man from POland in my office and he told me this is a place we must visit."

I had alreday booked a table for our first night at another "must visit" restaurant, which I hope to write about later, and was not quite sure how many nights I wanted to book even before leaving Norway. But terje looked so eager, so happy. I googled Wierzynek, and started to change my mind. yes, this was surely a place I would love to visit. A couple of nights later I wrote an email to the restaurant, giving them a link to my blog, telling that we would visit Krakow and Poland for the first time and wondered if they could tell us about their menue, may be recommend some food. Already the next morning an email was waiting in my inbox; "Dear Mrs. Lindland. We will be very pleased to have you as our guests. We will book a table for you and also please accept........." and then followed a very generous offer.

Saturday night, our last night in Krakow, came almost too fast. We found ourselves in Wierzynek and were taken to the very best table in the restaurant, with a view right across the Market Square and to the Maria Church and the tower with the trumpeter.

Let me quite from what Wierzynek write about themselves:

We invite you to a magical place, that will charm you with its atmosphere and history........At Wierzynek you can try the very best of polish cuisine......Wierzunek is also frequented by Polish as well as international celebritis among others........

We had an unforgettable night. The waitress all smiloes and hospitality, the food superb, the atmosphere romantic. Many of the other tables in the room where we sat were filled with Finish men. No women. After several bottles of wine, glasses of beer, vodka and probably alot of other fluids, a couple of the men set their eyes on me, as the only woman in the room. But they soon realised that The Only Man for me was the one right across my table :-)

A song is making itself up in my heart these days. The words go like this:

How lovely life is when you love and are loved!

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The Wierzynik website 

 

Caffe Avec..... Part2! Demmer's Teahouse

Just behind Our Lady's Church in Krakow there is a small tea house. We passed it several times and I knew that I had to have a cup, a mug of tea there some time. The opportunity came one afternoon when I needed to rest my feet, needed travel diary writing time, while Terje still wanted to walk along. We decided to split (the one and only hour during our five days in Krakow), and while Terje explored "new" streets and corners, I sat down with my moleskin and my guidebooks.

From the window in Demmer's Teahouse I could see over to Our Lady's church. The beautiful church with the lovely twin towers from where I enjoyed the trumpet music at all hours of the day.

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Pages were filled in my moleskin from our visit inside the church, where the highlight is Veit Stoss' s triptych altar called The Lives of Our Lady and her Son Jesus Christ

The altar was made between  1477 and 1489, and the complete altarpiece consists of more than 200 carved figures.

 

By the way - the tea was lovely, when Terje came back I had just ended the pot, and I bought a bag of Mieszanka Wawelska to take home.

The Botanical Gardens in Krakow

 

We managed to gether several guidebooks about Krakow both before we left and in a nice bookshop the first day, and they were helful to some extent. None of them told about a botanical garden though, but if you read maps carefully, you are always in for great surprises.

 
Saturday morning was sunny and a perfect time for a long, leisurely walk in the charming gardens.

Indoors and outdoors. We loved it all.

I am amazed at how many fantastic botanicel gardens there is. Lately I've visited the ones in Padova, København (Copenhagen), Uppsala (Sweden), Roma, Trondheim of course!!!, and alot more. 

They are all different. They all have their own charm.

Here there were absolutely no information in English, and we don't understad one single Polish word. But we were charmed by the old, worn beauty of the park, combined with an explosion of colours - even in October.

I wonder if part of the charm was the walking hand in hand bit.....

 

Caffe Avec..... Part1!

If I ever end up writing a book about Krakow (unlikely, but you never know the future, do you.....) I would love to write a coffee house book. I had read somewhere before coming here that Krakow had alot of nice restaurants, coffee houses and tea houses, but never did I imagine!

It started already the first afternoon. We had had lunch outdoors at the Market Square, we had walked around, listened to the Trumpeter, enjoyed the art in Our Lady's Church and decided it was time for a coffee. We passed several places and at last found ourselves in a small place called Kawiarniw Bankowa (at least I think that's the name), where Terje had a Kawa (coffee) Murzynek, I had a Kawa Kapitaliska z rumen.

There we sat, candles on the table, a nice, quiet atmosphere, sipping our coffee, reading our guidebooks. Even dreaming of being able to read Polish.

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My Krakow Coffee House book will be a book where I combine visits to the coffee houses with walks in this beautiful city. At every new coffee house I will lay my Moleskin Travel Diary on the table and share my writing and my photos, sketches and clippings with you 

Are you ready to come along. This coffee house's travel tales will be The Trumpeter of Krakow, and the doves on the Market Square.

 The next Coffee House and the next travel tale.....well, that chapter is not written yet.

Antiques in Krakow

Lunch in Kazimierz meant nice food, a very intereting walk and many, many antique shops.

 Kazimierz is known as the Jewish center of Krakow, though the old Christian infuence is also strong. Many of the scenes from the film Schindler's List were set here.

With all the antique shops we passed, I decided I can't leave Krakow and Poland without a memory. Fabric has always been close to my heart, and now this little piece is mine. And will be cherished for years and years to come.......

  

The Trumpeter of Krakow

Ancient Oath of the Krakow Trumpeter:

I swear on my honor as a Pole, as a servant of the King of the Polish people, that I will faithfully and unto the death, if there be need, sound upon the trumpet the Heynal in honor of Our Lady each hour in the tower of the church which bears her name.

There was a young boy in Krakow around 1240. When the Tartars came to fight the city he blew his trumpet to warn the inhabitants, to defend his beloved city. He saved Krakow but himself was shot by an arrow and died in the middle of his playing. An old Krakow legend tells this story, and the American writer Eric P. Kelly has woven colours into the story.

Today day the trumpeter's old tune, Heynal, is played, every hour of the day. Always four times, to every corner of the world. From the high tower of the highest twin tower of St.Mary's church. Every time the Heynal stops abruptly, a reminder of the dead trumpeter who saved his city.

Can you see the trumpet, high, high up in the tower? Wish I could give you the sounds as well, but this is a quiet  blog :-)

The Heynal is a simple melody, and though the legend tells about the young trumpter from several hundred yeras ago, the melody played today was made by the authoress Aniela Pruszynska for Eric P. Kelly, the author of The Trumpeter of Krakow, around the time the books was published in the 1920ies. Since 1927 the melody has been broadcasted by Polish Radio at noon....in must be one of the most played melodies there is :-)

Our Lady's Church, Koskiól Mariacki, is situated in a corner of the Market Square, Rynek Glowny. The Market Square is busy all day, long into the dark night.

 
 

Music, street artist, dove feeding, horses, market stalls with handmade pieces of craft.........

Or you can sit down at one of the many cafes......with your lover, alone, with friends.

..........can you see that I have hundreds of stories to tell already.......and I still have time left here to gather more....

Back street Krakow

I have bouquets of Krakow tales to tell to fill every vase in your house.......but I also want to spend the time here in Krakow with Terje, not with the computer.......so tales will have to wait. Let me instead invite you on a walk along a few back streets of Krakow looking for growing colours.