My last full day in Poland and I spend most of it online. The PC in the hostel was free, it was chucking it down outside and I had a bunch of emails and blog posts to get through.

I arranged to meet a couple of the girls in town again to do a last bit of wandering… and again they didn’t show up! They reappeared later in the day as I was internetting away, so at least I saw them before they got on their bus.

Myself, I was on the 22:55 train to Prague so I waved the Dodo farewell at 2200 and went via KFC to the main station. On the train I shared a carriage with two hungover Scotsmen, Phil and Dom. We had a great natter, and had just enough space for the three of us to stretch out (kind of) and kip. A shame we were woken around six times on the journey by passport control and ticket inspectors!

Today is another day where I will forget people’s names for which I apologies profusely in advance. You have the email address – pester me if I’ve forgotten or mis-spelled yours and I will correct it!

I slept later than I’d hoped (a theme in Poland – must be the water) and fell in with a small group who were walking into town for some sightseeing: Tommi and Michael from Sweden, Laura from Mexico and a lovely girl from Singapore who’s name escapes me as I write this. The Singaporean girl was so short, the hostel had to give her a ladder to get into her bunk as the beds didn’t have one attached!

Mondays are free entry to one of the areas of the castle, but only until midday and we were too late for that. Instead, we walked the streets and enjoyed the free areas of the castle grounds. There’s a good view over the river from the battlements and the weather was very favourable.

A word of warning – never let Laura try to guide you anywhere. How she gets around Mexico City astounds me because at times she ended up walking exactly the opposite direction from that which we needed to go. Tommi and I gave up and just let her wander until she realised we weren’t following any more.

From the we walked to the Jewish area and into the new cemetery. Laura tried to find the entrance for us and located a car wrecking yard instead. Back in the opposite direction we did find the way in and walked around the graveyard for maybe 20 minutes. It’s quite a creepy place – in a good way – with many atmospheric cobweb-encrusted flaky tombstones. I’m not sure if anyone would appreciate that being said about their relatives’ resting place, but I liked it. Some of the walls have been made of bits of broken old tombstones.

We decided to eat and catch a film, so walked from there to a nearby mall (by way of the rest of the Jewish area) and picked our various foodstuffs from the food court, then had an ice cream. There was still a good while to kill before the film started, so the Swedes produced a small football from their rucksack and we played kickabout for maybe thirty minutes. On the top floor of a shopping mall. I can see why Mexico are no longer a world force in footie, as Laura almost had the ball over the railings twice and did succeed in punting it down the up escalator once.

We went to see Fantastic Four 2 which was… passable. About as good (if that’s the right word) as the first one. Mr Lee – stick to Spidey, please. And another Blade would be good.

On the way back to the hostel we stopped off at a small bottle shop / market and I picked up a frozen pizza for dinner. And some more beers. We sat in the garden under an awning in lashing rain while we ate and drank and chatted. Ania suggested we go into the “chill-out room” as it would be warmer, but there were no lights. It’s supposed to be all candlelit, but someone had neglected to actually buy any. This problem lasted 10 minutes until she returned with a huge bag of tea-lights and we all hunkered down on the comfy mattresses and chatted.

I confess I was wrecked after the two previous nights with little sleep, so despite free wine from our kind hostess I headed up to bed quite early. A few people snuck in while I snoozed, including a girl from Sweden, until Tommi and two Danish girls came up to pinch some bedding so they could snuggle up downstairs. Tommi… can’t hold his beer too well, but he’s a funny drunk. Which was why I didn’t mind being woken up as he shouted “hello new girl!” at the snoozing Swedish lass. At four in the morning. As the Danes apologised, explained he was drunk and ushered him back out.

I was up pretty early this morning as Gosia wanted to show me around the town one last time before I hopped on the bus to Krakow and she was driven to Prague for her flight home. We wandered around the allotments and to where her grandfather taught her to sledge!

The bus trip was a good few hours and I arrived in Krakow a little late, though not too bad. I think it was around 9pm. The hostel was very easy to find and I got checked in and assaulted the lovely Ania with a gazillion questions before popping out for a wander and to locate food.

Krakow is a lovely city and to see it for the first time after darkness has fallen makes it all the more magical. Imagine Prague, but less grandeur and more fairy tale. There are also a lot less tourists (so far – I can see that changing) so even the main square is just pleasantly busy rather than jammed. I walked for well over an hour before settling on a stupidly cheap and stupidly large burger which I somehow managed to eat without dropping it all over the pavement.

The bottle shops are open 24 hours, so I picked up a variety of Polish beers (at around 50p for 0.5l) to try out back at the hostel. Ania had gone home for the evening and another girl was working – we ended up chatting away until around four in the morning! Unfortunately the room to my dorm creaked something rotten, but I don’t think I woke anyone up.