Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

We got up early this morning (I'm still definitely not adjusted to the time here), and headed over to Wawel Castle again. We might have been more eager than we needed to be, since we got tickets for the very first admission time for the one timed exhibit that was open. It was the armory, which contained an interesting variety of weapons and armor. Mostly parade stuff, too big or fancy to use in battle, but there were some neat pieces. They had some crossbows with winding mechanisms for drawing them, and a number of gunswords (where a pistol is basically welded on at the hilt. They must be terrible both as guns and swords, but it's a neat idea). And, fittingly, they had an almost complete set of pole arms: halberds, glaives, voulges, glaive-guisarme, guisarme-voulges, bardiches, becs de corbin... everything except the lucern hammer.

There was also an exhibit called "Lost Wawel", which detailed some of the archaeological remains that have been found on the site. The hill has been built over many times, with new structures tacked on or completely replacing the old ones. This exhibit included things like tiles from earlier structures and recovered and recreated column details. Pretty interesting.

We split up for lunch (I wanted one more Polish meal, and Tinny's parents were interested in trying the Kebab). I did a bit more sightseeing and souvenir-shopping, and then parked myself in a park near a fountain and read for a while.

We met up with Tinny and Jarek and the twins in the late afternoon, stopped for bubble tea, and took a train to the airport. Two flights took us to Warsaw, and then Vilnius, Lithuania, where we'll spend the next few days.