Good times in Kraków

The train was scheduled to take 7.5 hours to get from Prague to Kraków. I think that even included the time for transferring. Well, our train from Prague to the first transfer, Ostrava was right on time. Also, it was a "fancy" train, operated by Czech Airlines. It cost about $8 to reserve seats on this train (high priced considering most reservations are about $1.50). But, we zoomed through the countryside, looking at all the flooding in the fields near the rivers and entertaining ourselves for the first four-hour segment of our trip. Emrys and I played cribbage. Sara cross-stitched. Geo studied. Everything was swell. When we arrived in Ostrava, we found out our train would be 45 minutes late, in addition to our 25 minute layover. The incoming train was running late because of flooding in Austria. Well, it arrived, we went straight to the dinner car for a nice Polish meal and enjoyed the hour and a half journey to Katowice, Poland. That was our next scheduled stop, but because we were so late on this train, we missed the train to Kraków that we had wanted to take that would finish our journey in the 7.5 hours scheduled. Instead, we were on the next train that didn't get us in til about 2 and a half hours after we should have been there. That means we would be getting in around 23:30. And with a 30 minute walk ahead of us to our hostel (quite charming though!) that meant a long day...several hours more than we had signed up for. Oh well, what can you do?
We took off early the next morning (um, 10:30 is early, right?) and enjoyed learning everything we could about Kraków. You can read Sara and Emrys's blog for a nice commentary on the trip.
Meanwhile, we walked about 5 or 6 miles and did almost everything Rick Steves recommended for the day. And the weather was gorgeous! That was the best part. When Andie and I were there about 3 weeks ago, it was so cold and snowy. This time I actually got a bit of a tan! There were so many people out enjoying the good weather along the river...I was so jealous of those with bikes and rollerblades.
On Sunday, Geo and I split up from Sara and Emrys. They went to Auschwitz for the day. We headed back for Prague. Another uneventful 7.5 hour train ride put us in to Prague on time (actually 4 minutes early this time) but we still had to wait an hour for our little train back to Čelákovice. We had drinks again at the Marriott (right next to our train station) and enjoyed a few minutes of free internet. Awesome.