Kraków first. Then all of Poland.
Which salt-mine ticket actually includes a guide who talks. Which Zakopane day leaves time in the thermal water. What an hour of Chopin in a room of fifty people costs. Every bookable day in Poland, reviewed.
In Kraków almost everything is fifteen minutes from the Rynek.
The largest medieval square in Europe, a royal castle on the hill above it, Kazimierz a few streets south and the salt mine half an hour out of town. Most of what you can book in Poland leaves from here.
Six Polish days worth building a trip around.
A cathedral cut into rock salt, two Old Towns you can cross in twenty minutes, the cable car above Zakopane, a river that runs through both big cities, and the table of pierogi at the end of it.
Poland keeps its hardest history open to visitors.
Auschwitz-Birkenau is seventy kilometres west of Kraków, the ghetto was across the river in Podgórze, Stutthof is a short drive east of Gdańsk, and the Wolf's Lair still stands in the Masurian forest. Each of these is a site of memory before it is a line on an itinerary. The reviews cover guides, transport, languages and how long a visit really takes.
The Polish days out that fill up first.
Every review →More travellers take these than anything else on the site, from the salt mine lift to the highland baths under the Tatras.
1
Evening or Night River Cruise
Review of Kraków’s one-hour evening Vistula cruise, with Wawel views, lit bridges, audio guide, bar, seating tips, and honest drawbacks.
From · $24
Read our review →
2
Zakopane Tour with Chocholow Hot Baths and Cable Car
from $51
3
Wieliczka Salt Mine Fast-Track Ticket & Guided Tour
from $33
4
Zakopane, Thermal Springs, Cable Car, Local Tasting
from $16
5
Wieliczka Salt Mine Tour & Skip the Line Ticket
from $59
6
City Sightseeing Tour by Electric Golf Cart
from $13
7
Krakow to Wieliczka: Salt Mine Guided Tour with Ticket & Transfer
from $56
8
City Sightseeing Tour Eco Electric Buggy Golf Cart
from $13
Poland stays cheap until you hire a private guide.
A guided walk round the Kraków Old Town costs less than lunch in most European capitals. Here is what the rest of the country charges.
Old Town walks, museum entry, vodka benches and the evening cruise along the Vistula.
- 1Wieliczka Salt Mine Tourfrom $33
- 2Evening or Night River Cruisefrom $24
- 3Wieliczka Salt Mine Fast-Track Ticket & Guided Tourfrom $33
Full days out: Wieliczka with transport, Zakopane with the cable car, food tours with the table already booked.
Private guides, a car and driver for the day, and the long hauls out to Malbork and the mountains.
Warsaw put its Old Town back brick by brick.
The city was rubble in 1945 and the market square you walk today was rebuilt from eighteenth-century paintings. Chopin recitals in candlelit rooms, a flat-bottomed galar under the bridges, and a Trabant tour out to the concrete estates.
Three things you can only do in Poland.
Old towns and brick castles run right across central Europe. A cathedral carved out of rock salt, a steel town toured in a Trabant, and Chopin played in the city he left at twenty are Polish and nowhere else.
The Salt Cathedral
Wieliczka has been mined since the thirteenth century and the miners carved as they dug: chapels, chandeliers, altarpieces, floor tiles, all of it rock salt. St Kinga's Chapel sits 101 metres below the surface and still holds services. The visitor route covers about three kilometres of some 245 kilometres of tunnel, there are 800 steps, and it is around nine degrees down there whatever the month.
- 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
Nowa Huta by Trabant
Nowa Huta was laid out in the 1950s as a model socialist city on Kraków's eastern edge, with a steelworks big enough to employ tens of thousands. Guides run it in period Trabants and little Fiats, stopping at the arcaded avenues, the shelters built under the housing blocks and the church the residents spent a decade fighting to build.
- 1Legendary Private Nowa Huta Communism Tour with Crazy Guides★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 262 reviews
- 2Private Tour: Warsaw’s Communist History by Retro Fiat★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 115 reviews
- 3Private Nowa Huta Adventure Tour in Communist Cars★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 114 reviews
Chopin, in the room
Chopin left Warsaw at twenty and never came back, but the city kept him: his heart is sealed in a pillar of the Holy Cross Church on Krakowskie Przedmieście. The recitals run most nights in small halls around both Old Towns, an hour long, forty or fifty seats, often with a glass of wine, in rooms small enough to hear the pedals.
- 1Chopin Piano Recital at Chopin Concert Hall★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,330 reviews
- 2Chopin Concert in the Old Town★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,287 reviews
- 3Warsaw Concert: Chopin – Painted by Candlelights with Wine★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,442 reviews
Gdańsk has traded in amber for a thousand years.
Merchant houses face the Motława, the medieval port crane still stands on the quay, and Malbork, the largest brick castle anywhere, is an hour up the river. Sopot's wooden pier and the Westerplatte peninsula are both short trips out.
- 1City Cruise on Historical Polish Boatfrom $22
- 2Sunset Cruise on a Historic Polish Boatfrom $26
- 3Gdańsk City Sights & History Guided Walking Tour in Englishfrom $26
Book these before you fly to Poland.
Most of Poland can be arranged from your hotel the night before. These cannot. They run on timed entry, short seasons and rooms that hold fifty people.
- 01Wieliczka Salt Mine TourEntry is by timed slot with a guide, and the English-language slots fill first through the summer.
- 02Wawel Castle & Cathedral Guided TourThe castle sells a fixed number of tickets for each state-room slot per day, and the mornings go earliest.
- 03Chopin Piano Recital at Chopin Concert HallThe recital rooms seat a few dozen people, so a Friday or Saturday night is gone days ahead.
- 04Traditional Dunajec River Rafting with Mountain ChairliftThe raftsmen work the gorge from spring to autumn only. There is no winter crossing.
Poland's answer to bad weather is underground or waist-deep.
Rain comes in sideways off the Baltic and the mountain snow can sit into April. The best answers are downstairs or in the water: a salt mine at nine degrees all year, the excavated market square under the Rynek, a museum that needs three hours, or the thermal pools at the foot of the Tatras.
By city and region
Kraków411 tours
Warsaw98 tours
Gdańsk73 tours- Zakopane & the Tatras55 tours
Wrocław36 tours
Poznań8 tours
Toruń4 tours- All regions →
By experience — salt mine, pierogi or segway?
Kraków to Gdańsk, the way a first trip usually runs.
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