Kraków fills a long weekend. Poland fills a fortnight.
What the guided route through Wieliczka costs, whether Zakopane works as a day out, and which Vistula boat runs after dark.
1Under KrakówWieliczka Salt Mine TourThe guided route through the salt chambers, 135 metres down, with transport from the Old Town.from $33
2The first morningOld Town Krakow & Wawel Castle Walking TourRynek, St Mary’s and the climb to Wawel before the square fills up.from $26
3The mountain dayZakopane Tour with Chocholow Hot Baths and Cable CarSouth to the Tatras: cable car, a thermal pool and highland sheep’s cheese on the way back.from $51
4Warsaw after darkWarsaw Concert: Chopin – Painted by Candlelights with WineChopin in a candlelit room, an hour long, a glass of wine included.from $25
5The Baltic dayGdańsk City Sights & History Guided Walking Tour in EnglishGdańsk brick and gables, the Motława waterfront and the amber lanes behind it.from $26
Kraków: the square early, Kazimierz late.
Everything in Kraków →
The Old Town is a ten-minute walk end to end and the Rynek is the biggest medieval square in Europe, which is why the guided walks start at eight. South of it, Kazimierz swaps churches for courtyards, and the drinking does not really begin until the walking tours have gone home.
Rynek, St Mary’s and the Cloth Hall
The bugle call sounds from the taller tower on the hour and stops mid-note, and someone will explain why. Book the early slot: by eleven the square belongs to the horse carriages.
Wawel: cathedral, castle, or both
The cathedral holds the royal tombs and the bell you climb to; the state rooms are a separate ticket with its own queue. Doing both properly is a morning, not an hour.
The market four metres below the market
Under the Cloth Hall the medieval trading level survives with its cellars and roadways intact, turned into a museum of holograms and glass floors. The obvious answer to a wet Kraków afternoon.
Six Polish cities, and the mountains behind Kraków.
A medieval square that never burned, a capital rebuilt brick by brick from paintings, a Hanseatic port on the Motława, an island city of bridges, and the granite range on the Slovak border. Each one leads to its own list.
The Polish sites that people come a long way to stand in.
Auschwitz-Birkenau lies 70 kilometres west of Kraków, in Oświęcim. Entry to the Memorial and Museum is free, but visits inside the busy hours are only possible with a booked educator, and the tours below include the transfer and that booking. Stutthof, near Gdańsk, works the same way. Kazimierz and Podgórze, and the factory on Lipowa Street, are walked from central Kraków.
Timed entry, and the guided slots are taken weeks ahead in summer. Allow a full day for Oświęcim, half for the Kraków walks.
- Auschwitz-BirkenauGuided visits with transfer from Kraków, both parts of the site.
- Kazimierz and the ghettoThe Jewish quarter, Podgórze, and the ghetto wall fragments.
- Schindler’s FactoryThe occupation museum in the enamel works on Lipowa Street.
- StutthofThe camp east of Gdańsk, visited from the city.
The days out most travellers in Poland book.
Every Polish tour we have reviewed →Salt chambers, mountain cable cars, river boats and long lunches, in the order Poland actually books them.
1
Auschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour & Hotel Pickup
Review of the Krakow to Auschwitz-Birkenau tour, with hotel pickup, guide quality, timing, transport, value, and practical booking advice.
From · $21
Read our review →
2
Auschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour & Hotel Pickup
from $21
3
Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka
from $54
4
Auschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour with Pickup & Lunch
from $21
5
Wieliczka Salt Mine Tour
from $33
6
Auschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour Pickup/Lunch Options
from $200
7
Auschwitz-Birkenau and Salt Mine Guided Tour
from $54
8
Krakow to Auschwitz Birkenau Guided Tour with Transfer and Ticket
from $36
Three directions out of Kraków, and what each day costs.
Almost everything sold in Kraków is a day out of Kraków. West to the salt chambers, south to the mountains, or onto the Dunajec on a raft of lashed pine. Pick by how long you want to be in a minibus.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · Wieliczka Salt Mine Guided Tour with Transport
The salt mineHalf a day. Carved chapels and green brine lakes, 30 minutes from town.
Zakopane and the TatrasA full day. Two hours each way for granite peaks and a hot pool.
Rafting the DunajecA full day. Wooden rafts through a limestone gorge, April to October.
Highland thermal poolsHalf a day. Outdoor water at 36°C with the mountains in view.
All 1,150 tours in and around Kraków →
What a day out in Poland actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Poland is the rare European country where the good day and the cheap day are frequently the same one.
Old-town walks, museum tickets, pierogi crawls and the standard salt-mine run.
Full days: the Tatras and back, the Dunajec gorge, private drivers, Malbork from Gdańsk.
Private guides for a whole day, small-group specialist history, and cars with a driver.
Three things that only happen in Poland.
Old towns and river cruises exist everywhere. A chapel carved out of rock salt, a steelworkers’ city built as an argument, and nightly Chopin in the room the music was written for do not.
Nowa Huta
In 1949 the state dropped an entire town east of Kraków for the steelworkers of the Lenin works, with avenues wide enough to land a plane and no church at all. The residents built one anyway, after years of protest and one death. Tours run in period Trabants and Fiats, which is either honest or a joke, depending on who is driving.
- 1Nowa Huta Guided Tour in Vintage Car★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 277 reviews
- 2Legendary Private Nowa Huta Communism Tour with Crazy Guides★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 262 reviews
- 3Nowa Huta: Steelworks Administration Buildings/Shelters Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 160 reviews
Chopin in Warsaw
Chopin left Warsaw at twenty and never came back, and the city has been making up for it ever since. Recitals run most evenings in small halls, drawing rooms and the Old Town, an hour of it, usually with a glass of something. In summer the free Sunday concerts under his statue in Łazienki Park draw whole families onto the grass.
- 1Chopin Piano Recital at Chopin Concert Hall★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,330 reviews
- 2Chopin Concert in the Old Town★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,287 reviews
- 3Warsaw Concert: Chopin – Painted by Candlelights with Wine★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,442 reviews
Polish vodka, properly
Poland distils from rye and potato and drinks it cold, neat, in one, with food on the table and never on its own. Tastings run through the grain styles, the flavoured ones nobody exports, and the żubrówka that gets poured with apple juice. The good ones feed you between rounds, which is the point.
- 1Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 10,720 reviews
- 2Zakopane Cable Car, Vodka, Cheese & Hot Springs Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,832 reviews
- 3The Kraków Vodka Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 862 reviews
Four Polish bookings that run on somebody else’s clock.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four cannot: they run on timed entry, a cable-car quota, a concert calendar and a river season.
- 01Wieliczka Salt Mine TourThe mine is walked in guided groups on a fixed schedule, and the English-language slots on summer mornings go first.
- 02Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & VodkaThe Kasprowy Wierch cable car sells a capped number of return tickets each hour, and in season they are gone by mid-morning.
- 03Chopin Piano Recital at Chopin Concert HallRecital halls are small and the programme is set weeks out. Turning up on the night works in November, not in July.
- 04Traditional Dunajec River Rafting with Mountain ChairliftThe raftsmen work roughly April to October and stop when the water is too low or too high. Out of season there is no crossing.
Poland in the cold half of the year is an indoor country.
From November the light is gone by four and the wind comes off the plain. The answer is under a roof or under the ground: the salt chambers hold 14°C all winter, the highland pools run hot in the snow, and the concert and vodka calendar barely notices the season.
Pierogi by hand, milk bars, and vodka poured cold.
Polish food went from apology to export in twenty years and the tours followed. Market walks that end in a kitchen, pierogi you fold yourself, cellar tastings of rye and potato spirit, and the milk-bar canteens that have fed students since the 1960s.
By place — cities, coast and mountains
By kind of day — underground, on foot, on the water, at the table
Gdańsk to Zakopane: the run that gets Poland done properly.
Gdańsk
Malbork
Toruń
Warsaw
Wrocław
ZakopaneThe newest Polish tour reviews.
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4 hours skitour trip in Tatra Mountains for beginners with renting equipment
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Half-Day Chelmno Kulmhof Concentration Camp Private Tour
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Nowa Huta – a guided tour of a utopian socialist city
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