Our third Polish city and final stop was Krakow. The direct train from Warsaw to Krakow took just 3 hours and cost $43. We arrived at 12:10 PM at Krakow’s main train station. The station reminded me of train stations in Japan, where above it is a shopping mall! We followed the signs to the “old town” direction exit. I was debating whether to Uber or walk. It was a 15-minute walk, so we decided to walk. It turned out that Krakow is not stroller-friendly….for example, a tram track runs through this main street and in order to cross it, we had to take a make a big detour to find the crossing bridge. The pedestrian sidewalk was uneven and often with big pot holes.

After the challenging walk, we arrived at our hotel – Holiday Inn Krakow City Centre located right outside the old town. Our room was ready so we dropped off the luggage and then went out for lunch. We walked to the old town to Kuku Taiwan Bistro. The restaurant was packed, luckily, we got a table in less than 5 minutes wait. We ordered Taiwanese’s famous beef noodle soup. It was spicy so we ordered another noodle soup and the fried chicken rice for the kids. The beef noodle soup’s broth was spicy and good, not too salty and flavorful.

The non-spicy noodle soup was okay.

The fried chicken wasn’t as crunchy as I would like but at least it wasn’t greasy. Our lunch total was $63.91 including 4 bubble teas!

Afterward, we walked to old town square, Rynek Główny where the Christmas market was held. The square was bigger than Warsaw’s and similar to Wroclaw’s but it wasn’t fully filled with stalls. However, Krakow’s old town wasn’t as colorful as Wroclaw’s and Warsaw’s.

The outer rows of stalls were all food stalls!!!

The inner ones were candy, sweets, jewelry, clothing, and arts & crafts.

The beautiful St. Mary’s Basilica is on the back of the square!

I tried to avoid the candy stalls but they had at least one in each row so my kids finally spotted one filled with lollipops!!! I told them they could each pick one!

My daughter quickly picked out the heart-shaped one. I hold up my son since he wasn’t tall enough and I pointed him to the Paw Patrol ones. He has his eyes on the BIGGEST of them all LOL! That lollipop cost over $10; it was so heavy and bigger than his face hahaha!

The kids were happy and we continued to check out other stalls.

Those ceramic colorful fishes caught Jason’s eyes….he ended up buying one big and one small fish. The next day, we went back and bought more! He said to make a whole school of fish LOL.

The sun was setting, it was our first time seeing the sun and blue sky in Poland.

In the middle of the old town square is an indoor market with more stalls too, I don’t know if those were during Christmas market only or year-long.

The other side of the square has the best views of St. Mary’s Basilica. There were lots of pigeons and the kids had so much fun chasing them!

I like the framing of the basilica from the indoor market.

In the square, there was a monument – the Adam Mickiewicz Monument.

It was getting cold and dark so let’s go dinner to warm up. We walked to Jinlin Dumpling after searching Google for Asian restaurants. There weren’t as many Asian restaurants in Krakow as in Wroclaw or Warsaw. As it was Monday, the restaurant was quite empty.

We ordered the cute bao (buns) for the kids and they loved them!

We ordered stir-fried lettuce with oyster sauce. It tasted good with “wok” taste.

Beef stir-fried with peppers and onions, it was too spicy for the kids but great for us.

They had our kids’ favorite – steamed eggs but with clams. It looked nice but we couldn’t taste the difference with clams.

Fish with garlic sauce.; it was okay, I generally don’t like too heavy on garlic.

Dinner was $79.88 which was on the expensive side in Poland but good value compared to in the US. After dinner, we walked back to our hotel and the room was so cold. Their heating system was super weak so I ended up complaining to the front desk. They sent a portable heater and we kept it at max the whole night!

The next morning, we walked to Bussola Coffee to buy pastries for breakfast. Once again, they have pistachio rolls! We tried the pistachio and the almond rolls and we liked the pistachio one more, less sweet.

After breakfast, our first stop was to the mall where the train station was located so Jason could check out the post office there and while we did a little bit of shopping.

They had Christmas decorations in the mall. My daughter loved this fairytale-looking book display.

After the mall, we Uber to Wawel Royal Castle. The driver dropped us off at the entrance of the long ramp up to the castle hill. The first standout structure we saw was the Wawel Cathedral.

We walked around the garden and found the tourist information center to purchase the ticket. They have different combo tickets to visit different sections of the castle. We picked the one to see the royal rooms. The tickets are timed to control capacity and ours was at 11 AM.

No stroller inside the castle so we stored our stroller and backpack at the cloakroom before entering. The courtyard inside the castle:

The first section was the art exhibition.

After the art gallery, the staff pointed us to the royal apartments.

Look at those big ceramic fireplaces, each with a different design!

Another fireplace:

Massive carpets hung on the wall.

Beautiful porcelain vases on top of that cabinet.

More beautiful ceramic plates and vases.

Next, the bedrooms:

Beautiful golden ceilings:

After the royal bedrooms, next was this massive collection of silverware and porcelain!!!

The Chinese painting on the cabinet:

This silver status is so detailed, the craftmanship is impressive!

It was a relief when we got out of that room, the glass cabinets looked fragile, I kept telling my kids don’t lean on them!

The last section was the armors and weapons.

And more beautiful vases:

After the castle visit, we walked back down to lunch. The ramen restaurant I planned to go was closed so we picked another one nearby – Doki Doki Ramen.

4 ramens for $49.02. Their broths were rich but a little bit salty after. We walked back to the hotel to warm up before going back out during nighttime to see the Christmas lights. When we got to the square, they were putting up the Christmas lights on the Christmas tree!

More people at night and with the lights on, it has more Christmas market vibes!

We could smell all those food!

We walked around the stalls one more time and Jason decided to get more of the ceramic fishes while I got boxes of Krakow cookies to bring home as gifts to the kids’ teachers, our family and friends.

Jason bought the pork knuckles and that stall was dishonest, they charged him in USD even though he said to select Polish PLN. The dynamic currency conversion and fee added at least $10 to the total bill! Those pork knuckles were expensive, by weight along with the sides!

St. Mary’s Basilica and the lighted-up Christmas tree were beautiful at night!

The back street of the old town square was quiet:

As we walked toward our hotel, we saw this colorful display. We didn’t know what it stand for but we saw a few miniatures of this at various souvenir shops and they were made out of aluminum foil. They were expensive…more than $50 for a miniature.

For dinner, we had pork knuckles but I didn’t think the kids would like it so we walked to Jinling Dumplings to order two dishes for the kids.

Overall, we had a good stay in Krakow. Their Christmas market was lively and full of food stalls. In terms of picturesque, Krakow’s old town wasn’t as colorful nor pretty as Wroclaw’s. After we visited the Christmas markets in Wroclaw, Warsaw, and Krakow, Wroclaw is the most beautiful, largest, and the best for kids in my opinion! We liked Poland, it is safe, affordable, mostly kid-friendly, has good Asian restaurants, easy to navigate, and with beautiful old towns!