Holocaust Study Visit: Day 5!

Welcome back to my blog covering Bann Maine West's Holocaust Study Visit to Krakow Poland. Kindly funded by Triangle Housing. In today's blog I will be covering our fifth and final day in Poland, were we had some free time and got to explore more of the incredible city before flying home!

8.30AM:

I was down in the Lobby brave and sharp on the final day as some of us had planned on going into the centre of the city early to try and do a bit more sight seeing. I had made sure to pack the night before so once I was out of the room that was me ready to go. So we left our bags at reception and headed into the city.

10:00AM:

We arrived in the centre of the city around 10 and we walked about for a bit and then remembered that Joanna had mentioned visiting the old city walls so we went over and it was really interesting. Their is only a very small section left of the old medieval wall and you can go right up to the top of one of the towers where it played a video of it raining fire down on the city during the Austro-Hungarian invasion. The walls were then destroyed a short while after by the Austro-Hungarians due to high maintence. We then walked across the wall to the next bit which had a lot of religious imagery, however when you turned around and walked back outside it had a gorgeous view of St Marys. Once we got to to the end of the wall the security guard told us about a free art gallery that was open today so we walked out round to this magnificent building and got all sorted and went through. We didn't get any headsets but we walked around and the place was massive you just kept going into these rooms that never seemed to end. Then we found the main attraction which was Leonardo Da Vinci's 'The lady with the Ermine', Alastair then continued to say he took Leonard to see a Leonardo. However my favourite part of the museum was the Greek and Egyptian section as I am currently studying Greek Theatre and they often make references to the gods and their statues like Athena and it great to see sculptures of these statues and even some real Greek statues and slightly creeper real Egyptian mummy's. We then tried to get out of the museum which was a challenge within itself as the place was massive but we did find our way out and decided that we would go to the big shopping centre for lunch!

So we made our way across the city to the shopping centre which was massive. Definitely put the Tower Centre and Fairhill a bit to shame! But we went up to the food court and got a Pizza Hut and it was lovely. Then next we knew it was time to head back to the hotel and head home.

3.00PM:

At 3 we all got back into our taxis and headed to the airport. The airport in Krakow is very small and very busy however we all managed to sit brave and close near a window and I enjoyed a bit of plane spotting and plenty of chit-chat.

6.00PM:

Then we board the flight home. It was sad leaving, we all had such great fun and made amazing memories and most importantly, we all learnt so much more about Poland and its long and dark history. On the plane home I was sat in a row with only me from my group. So I just sat and read my book looking back on an amazing 5 days and struggling to fully understand how it could be over so quick. While I was sad about leaving I was also really excited about the opportunity's that have came and will arise following our study visit. We already have so many ideas of how we want to go and share our experience with the community and can't wait to continue this journey 2026.

Thank you very much as always for reading my blog, The last day was a wee bit different and a lot short to previous but I hope I was still able to showcase the incredible experience that was our visit to Poland! As always I would like to thank Triangle Housing for the funding, Bann Maine West for facilitating, Prime tours for looking after us and most importantly to the people I got to share this amazing experience with. Thank You.

Lenny.