Maidens to be Rescued

We may have returned to Krakow, but it wasn't quite the end of the cycling. The city lends itself quite well to exploration by cycle, and we saw some great sights on our cycle tour.

As we approached the Vistula River, we came across the Krakow dragon guarding his cave. Nowadays he is a huge metal fire breathing structure, but in his heyday he was a real terror and brought great fear to the neighbourhood as he chased and, more often than not killed, livestock and young ladies, virgins being his particular favourites.

Can you see us in our picture? We'll give you a clue, we're as far as we can be from his fiery breath.

Our guide Jakub told us the story of the dragon. A local shoemaker's apprentice, named Krakus, rid his people of the dragon by a clever ruse involving using a sheep as bait and sulphur paste. To cut a long story short, when the dragon ate the sulphur coated sheep, he developed such a thirst that he drank enough water to swell him up to a size which caused him to burst and die. There was a great rejoicing and Krakus was hailed a hero. In fact he became Prince Kakus and the city which became Krakow was named after him.

We were lucky that during our short visit the dragon breathed real fire for us. Apparently, if you turn up at night, you can sometimes wait a long time to see him breathe fire, but there is an option to text the dragon from your mobile phone and set off the fire breathing. We think it it worth seeing, and rather than have our readers miss out, we're going to attempt a first (for us) in our blog and include a video clip of our friend, the Krakow dragon, breathing his fire. Hope it works and you like it.



Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx