Most trips to Poland start in Kraków. Very few stop there.
Which Auschwitz-Birkenau visit takes the time it deserves. Whether the salt mine earns a half day. Every guided day in Poland, priced and timed.
KrakówThe old town, Kazimierz, and every day trip that leaves from itfrom $3
Auschwitz-BirkenauGuided visits to the Memorial, with transport from Kraków
WieliczkaChapels and a green lake cut into rock salt, well under the fieldsfrom $16
WarsawA rebuilt old town, the Vistula, and Chopin after darkfrom $12
GdańskBrick gables, amber, and the cranes along the Motławafrom $7
The Memorial, the salt mine, the Tatras and an hour of Chopin.
The four bookings a first Polish week hangs off, and what each asks of your day.
- 01The MemorialAuschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour & Hotel PickupBoth parts of the site with a guide, and the coach out of Kraków. Give it the whole day and plan nothing after it.
- 02UndergroundWieliczka Salt Mine TourChambers, chapels and a green lake carved out of rock salt, down a staircase of some 380 wooden steps.
03The TatrasZakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & VodkaA cable car above Zakopane, a thermal pool at Chochołów, and smoked sheep cheese on the way back to Kraków.
04The eveningChopin Concert in the Old TownAn hour of Chopin in a small hall off the Old Town square. The evening that wins Warsaw a second night.
The occupation is not a side trip in Kraków. It is most of what people come to see.
The camps at Oświęcim, the factory in Zabłocie, and the quarter across the river the ghetto emptied. Each is a different kind of day, and they do not combine well. Below is how long each one takes.
Two royal capitals, a Baltic port, and the country in between.
Kraków for the old town and everything within an hour of it. Warsaw for the museums and the river. Gdańsk for brick and amber, Wrocław for its bridges, Zakopane for the Tatras, and Wieliczka for what sits under the fields.
Kraków: the square in the morning, Kazimierz when it cools down.
Everything in Kraków →
The largest medieval square in Europe sits at the middle of it, with the Cloth Hall in the centre and the bugle call from the tower every hour. Wawel is ten minutes uphill, Kazimierz twenty minutes the other way, and almost every famous day trip in Poland leaves from the same few streets.
The old town, walked properly
The square, the Cloth Hall, St Mary’s and the Barbican, with the Planty gardens filling the ring where the walls used to stand. The version that explains what you are looking at.
Wawel, and which ticket you actually need
The Royal Hill is free to walk. The State Rooms, the cathedral and the bell tower are separate tickets with their own daily caps, which is where most of the queuing happens.
Kraków by electric buggy
A driver, a small electric cart and a loop through the old town, Kazimierz and the former ghetto. It covers in an hour what takes a morning to walk.
The days out that more travellers take than any other.
Every Polish tour we have reviewed →Ordered by how many people have been. The Memorial and the salt mine sit at the top of this list by a distance, and have done for years.
1
Auschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour & Hotel Pickup
Visit Auschwitz and Birkenau from Krakow with hotel pickup, a licensed guide, air-conditioned transport, and a moving 3.5-hour tour.
From · $21
Read our review →
2
Auschwitz Guided Tour with Optional Hotel Pickup
from $69
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
Krakow to Auschwitz Birkenau Guided Tour with Transfer and Ticket
from $36
7
Wieliczka Salt Mine Guided Tour with Transport
from $55
8
Evening or Night River Cruise
from $24
Both of Kraków’s big day trips point away from the city.
One goes down a shaft into a salt mine that has been worked since the thirteenth century. The other goes south into the Tatras, where the cable cars run and the thermal pools stay open in the snow. Neither needs a car.
Three things Poland has that nowhere else does.
Old towns and mountain cable cars exist all over Europe. A cathedral carved out of salt, a highland town built entirely of larch, and a vodka served warm with apple juice do not.
The Chapel of St Kinga
Miners spent decades carving a church out of the rock salt, 101 metres under the fields at Wieliczka. The floor, the altarpieces, the reliefs on the walls and the chandeliers overhead are all salt, cut by men who did it after their shifts. It is still consecrated, and people still get married in it.
- 1Wieliczka Salt Mine Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 9,393 reviews
- 2Wieliczka Salt Mine Guided Tour with Transport★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 7,429 reviews
- 3Wieliczka Salt Mine Fast-Track Ticket & Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 5,872 reviews
Zakopane and the Witkiewicz houses
At the end of the nineteenth century Stanisław Witkiewicz decided the local larch cottages were the basis of a national architecture, and built villas to prove it. The steep shingled roofs and carved gables all over Zakopane come from that argument. The smoked sheep cheese sold on Krupówki is grilled and served with cranberry.
- 1Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 10,720 reviews
- 2Zakopane, Thermal Springs, Cable Car, Local Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 5,419 reviews
- 3Zakopane & Hot Springs Tour with Cable Car & Pickup★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 2,837 reviews
Flavoured vodka, taken seriously
Polish vodka is not one drink. There is the rye and potato distillate, the hazelnut and the honey, the bison-grass żubrówka drunk with cloudy apple juice, and the sour cherry that tastes like dessert. A tasting flight runs cold, in order, with something to eat between each one.
- 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
Poland is where the famous days out are still the cheap ones.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. The gap between the cheapest old-town walk and the dearest private day is narrower here than almost anywhere else in Europe.
Old-town walks, museum entries, the buggy loop, most of the salt-mine tickets and a good part of the Memorial coaches.
The full days: the Tatras with a cable car and a thermal pool, the Memorial with lunch, the salt mine and Auschwitz together.
Private guides, cars with drivers, and the small-group days that keep the group genuinely small.
Four things in Poland that run on somebody else’s clock.
Most of this country can be sorted out the night before over a plate of pierogi. These four cannot. Each one runs on timed entry, a daily cap or a fixed calendar, and each one is the reason people arrive and find the day already full.
- 01Auschwitz-Birkenau Guided Tour & Hotel PickupEntry to the Memorial is by timed slot, and in summer the guided slots in English are taken well in advance.
- 02Wieliczka Salt Mine TourThe mine admits visitors in guided groups at fixed times, and the English-language departures are a fraction of the day’s total.
- 03Wawel Castle & Cathedral Guided TourWawel sells the State Rooms, the cathedral and the tower as separate tickets, each with its own daily cap.
- 04Chopin Piano Recital at Chopin Concert HallThe recitals run to a printed calendar in small rooms. When a night is full, it is full.
Poland from November to March, when it is dark by four.
The cold is not the problem. The short afternoon is. Polish cities are built for it: enormous museums, cellars that have been bars since the war, a salt mine that sits at fourteen degrees all year, and thermal pools in the mountains that are better with snow falling into them.
Gdańsk is the one Polish city that faces outwards.
A merchant port for six hundred years, rebuilt gable by gable after 1945 from paintings and photographs. Amber is worked and sold along Mariacka, the shipyard where Solidarity started is a short walk north, and the Motława carries boats all day.
Every day out in Gdańsk →
By place
Kraków, Oświęcim, Wieliczka, Zakopane, Warsaw, Gdańsk.
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