Hiking Trails in Krakow

THE BEST Krakow Hiking Trails

Hiking Trails in Krakow

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What travelers are saying

  • Hannelore H
    United Kingdom245 contributions
    One of the most beautiful central streets in the city, full of amazing architectural examples, monuments, just a great local feel and spirit.
    Written May 10, 2023
    This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
  • Neil K
    Liverpool, UK616,525 contributions
    The Saint Stanislaus Route is a nice walk you can take that runs roughly from the magnificent Wawel Castle to the Jewish Quarter ( Kazimierz District ) .
    The architecture along this route is magnificent ,obviously the castle is the most stunning but the innumerable churches and grand looking buildings really catch the eye,entering the Jewish Quarter the architecture changes a bit,a bit more rough and ready but no less beautiful ,it finishes at about Plac Wolnica in the Jewish Quarter I believe and is most definitely well worth checking out if you're planning a trip to Krakow,maps are available of the route in the tourist office in the city centre.
    Written August 8, 2022
    This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
  • vox69nn
    Medina, OH2,169 contributions
    We rented bikes at "Bike Trip" on Zwierzyniecka Street .near Debnicki Bridge. You begin with marvelous view of the Wawel Castle complex just to your east, and then head westward toward Tyniec. Except for one brief section when you pass through a small village you are on a dedicated bike path all the way to the Benedictine Abbey at Tyniec (about 10kms). En route you can glimpse numerous interesting landmarks including the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on a hill to the north, various fine homes and villas, an artificial river and rapids built for kayakers and of course much lovely flora. I have seen many stunning pictures of the Abbey but they all seem to be taken from up river and you will be approaching it from down river in Krakow. You can get the "beauty shot" by following a footpath a few hundred yards up river from the Abbey - definitely easier to walk than ride. There is a small area with vendors selling simple foods and beverages where the bike path ends below the abbey. We chose not to go inside the abbey although we did visit a cemetery up the hill and across the road from it. All in all it made for a very pleasant excursion and, as nice as Krakow is, it is nice to get away from the crowds for a few hours.
    Written October 1, 2019
    This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.

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Forum posts were selected by looking for forum titles asking specific questions and taking the top showtopic page by total pageviews as the optimal topic.
Has anyone done both tours before?
Do you think the former is worth doing?

I have done the tour with a guide - so i guess techncially i have gone on the "General tour 3.5h" or something similar, but i am only at Auschwitz 1 for 1.5h, and then we rushed to Auschwitz 2-Birkenau for 1h. i recently went on a organized tour from Krakow bc i couldnt secure guided tour ticket at the last minute from the website. but i think my guide may a person in training (?) cos he was guiding us with an Auschwitz educator standing beside him all the time. I still couldnt figure out whether he is a new guide in training within Auschwitz, or he needs to be chaperoned bc he is a guide hired from the 'outside' (ie not someone hired by the Aushcwitz site). I am inclined to believe it is the latter, but not sure, so would appreciate anyone with better insights. So this means there could be 2 diff guides - one is a tour agency guide from the outside, and another is a Auschwitz educator guide?
Answer: for future readers - I did the 6 hour tour and it is a better pace,smaller group and you visit a few more places in the camps. Our guide was very good. Worthwhile if you have more than a passing interest in the history. We were at Auschwitz for 3 hours and birkenau for 2.25 hours. Crowds were smaller that day so we didn’t have to stop to wait for other groups. I then returned to Auschwitz around 4pm to walk through on my own and to visit some of the country specific exhibits - Hungary’s exhibit is especially good. In order to return to camp 1, I purchased free tickets ahead of time since you have to renter the queue.

Tour vs self guided - 100% go on a tour. The guides paint a more complete picture than you will get from a guidebook. You can arrive early if you want to see birkenau before it gets crowded and walk on your own. No ticket is required to visit birkenau.

Auschwitz vs birkenau - you want to see both. Auschwitz is more intact and has almost all of the exhibits. The exhibits of luggage,eyeglasses, shoes, and human hair is overwhelming. Birkenau is 25x the size of Auschwitz camp 1. Many buildings were destroyed but you can get a better feel for the scale of the genocide. Even with most buildings destroyed you get a chill realizing how people were sorted and put to death. Many times within hours of arrival.

Krakow ghetto - to round out your experience walk through the ghetto and Jewish quarter. Visit the synagogues. Realize the size of the Jewish community that thrived in this area and then 90% of them were killed.

Last - learn about the history that led up to the holocaust. Hitler did not rise up in a vacuum. There were 20 years of anti-semitism that occurred before the death camps. The nazis were very good at isolating Jews, cutting them off from day to day community and business involvement and then eventually shipped them off to forced labor and death. Awareness of that history will help prevent this from ever happening again.
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