Three days in Kraków: what we actually did

Friday evening arrival

We landed at Balice Airport at 7pm on a Thursday — technically the evening before the three days started. The train from the airport to Kraków Główny runs every half hour, takes about 17 minutes, and costs 18 PLN (around €4.30). By 8pm we were checked into a hotel on ul. Szpitalna, five minutes’ walk from the Rynek.

The first evening we did almost nothing planned. We walked to the Rynek Główny and stood in the middle of it for a while, which I recommend as the correct way to arrive in Kraków. The square is enormous — 200 metres on each side — and at dusk with the towers of St. Mary’s Basilica lit against the sky and the Cloth Hall glowing, it’s a genuine first-impression moment.

We ate off the square, not on it. Our hotel’s receptionist had been clear: the restaurants directly under the arcades are fine but overpriced. Two streets away we found a small Polish restaurant on ul. Wiślna with tablecloths, a handwritten menu, żurek (sour rye soup with hard-boiled egg and sausage, 18 PLN / €4.30) and a plate of bigos that was worth travelling for. Total dinner for two with a beer each: 110 PLN (about €26). Equivalent food under the arcade would have been 250 PLN or more.

Day one: the Old Town

We started early. The reasoning was simple: Wawel Castle and the State Rooms have capped daily ticket allocations, and they go. We were at the Wawel ticket office at 9:05am and had no problem getting timed entry. By noon, those same tickets were gone.

The Wawel complex is larger than it looks from the outside. The Cathedral comes first — the tombs of Polish kings in the crypt, the golden Sigismund Chapel, the bell tower where the Sigismund Bell (the largest in Poland) hangs. The State Rooms contain original Renaissance tapestries commissioned by King Sigismund Augustus, woven in Brussels in the 16th century; 136 of them survive, and roughly half are displayed at any time.

Below the castle, we walked down to the Vistula bank. There’s a path that runs along the river south of Wawel, and on a warm June morning with the castle above and the river below, it was one of the nicest 30 minutes of the trip.

After lunch (Bar Mleczny Centralny, near the Barbican — żurek again, plus a plate of pierogi ruskie for 14 PLN / €3.35, total lunch under 35 PLN each), we spent the afternoon at the Rynek Underground Museum. We’d booked skip-the-line tickets the evening before; the queue otherwise was significant. The exhibition is underground, beneath the actual market square, and takes you through medieval Kraków via holograms and original trade artefacts. It’s genuinely good — not the tourist-trap-quality “museum” you find at similar sites in some European cities.

Rynek Underground Museum skip-the-line ticket

Late afternoon: a proper walk around the Planty park, the green ring that follows the line of the old medieval walls. It takes about 45 minutes to circle the full perimeter, and after a day of enclosed spaces and cobblestones it felt like the right way to decompress. The Barbican — the round fortified gatehouse at the northern end of the old town — is the most photogenic stop on the circuit.

Dinner: Pod Aniołami on ul. Grodzka. It’s in a cellar, serves traditional Polish food with an emphasis on grilled meats and game, has been there since the 1960s, and is one of those places where you make a reservation rather than hoping for a walk-in. Reservations can be made same-day in the shoulder season but not in summer. The cost is higher than the milk bars — expect 80–120 PLN per person with a drink — but it’s worth it.

Day two: Kazimierz and Podgórze

This was the day we’d planned least and enjoyed most.

Kazimierz in June is beautiful. The streets are wide enough for morning sun, the coffee shops are small and serious about coffee, and the pace is slower than the Old Town. We started at the Old Synagogue (the oldest surviving synagogue in Poland, now a branch of the Historical Museum — 18 PLN / €4.30 entry) and walked east toward Ul. Szeroka, the central street of the historic Jewish district where outdoor restaurants appear in summer.

Ul. Szeroka in the morning light, before the tour groups arrive, is the Kazimierz worth seeing. Come back later and it’s pleasant but busy; before 10am it belongs to the neighbourhood.

We then walked south across the Podgórze Bridge — about 12 minutes on foot — into Podgórze, the district across the Vistula where the wartime Jewish ghetto was established under Nazi occupation. Schindler’s enamel factory is here, now the Oskar Schindler Museum, one of the most thoughtfully designed historical museums I’ve visited. The main exhibition covers the occupation of Kraków through photographs, personal testimonies and recreated spaces. Allow two to three hours, and book timed entry in advance: the museum caps visitor numbers.

From Podgórze, we walked back across the river and spent the afternoon in Kazimierz. Plac Nowy is the working-class market square in the heart of the quarter — on Sundays it has a flea market, on other days the rotunda in the middle sells zapiekanki (long baguette halves with cheese and various toppings, closed under the grill). One zapiekanki costs 12–18 PLN (€2.85–4.30) and is legitimately delicious in an unpretentious way that I find difficult to articulate but easy to eat.

We ended the afternoon at Café Rekord on ul. Józefa — espresso and a slice of sernik (Polish cheesecake) for about 25 PLN (€5.95) combined. The bar and restaurant scene in Kazimierz in the evening is the best in the city: Alchemia is the classic choice (dark, candle-lit, great beer selection), while the newer craft beer places on ul. Brzozowa have a younger crowd.

Day three: Wieliczka

The third day we’d booked entirely in advance: the Wieliczka Salt Mine. This was the non-negotiable day trip for the visit.

Wieliczka Salt Mine tour with fast-track ticket from Kraków

We took a minibus from the designated gathering point near the Old Town — a guided tour that included transport. The journey is about 30 minutes. The mine itself is extraordinary in a way that doesn’t survive photographs. You descend 135 metres underground on a staircase of 800 steps (there’s a lift up), and what you find is a sequence of chambers carved entirely from salt — not stone, salt — over seven centuries of mining. The centrepiece is the Chapel of St. Kinga: a cathedral-sized space with salt chandeliers, salt sculptures of biblical scenes, and a salt bas-relief of the Last Supper. Everything, the sculptures, the walls, the floor, the chandeliers, is made from the material being mined.

The guided tour takes about 2.5 hours. The salt in the deeper chambers tastes of the sea.

We were back in Kraków by early afternoon. We spent the remaining hours walking the Royal Route — ul. Floriańska north from the Rynek through the Floriańska Gate and Barbican — and sitting in the Planty with coffee from one of the carts that set up near the gate in warm weather.

What we’d do differently

Not much, honestly. We’d try to get tickets to the Czartoryski Museum (home of Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, one of only 20 surviving Leonardo paintings in the world, recently returned after restoration) — it’s ticketed and we hadn’t planned ahead. We’d allow a fourth night, specifically to make the Auschwitz-Birkenau visit that we didn’t have time for.

Three days in Kraków is a very good short break. It’s not quite enough to do everything — the city has more depth than that — but it’s enough to understand why people keep coming back.

See the full three-day Kraków itinerary for a day-by-day schedule with timings, and the four-day version if you have the extra day for Auschwitz. For restaurant recommendations by neighbourhood, the food guide has what you need.