Prague to Krakow *or* How I Learned the Truth About Night Trains

First, a confession: I've been keeping things from you. For one, it rained in Prague every day apart from the day we first arrived when it was gorgeous; grey skies and generous portions of rain met us every day after. Also, I've been suffering from a cold. Every day my throat gets more and more swollen and I'm less and less able to swallow. These are things that were never really worth mentioning before since we're doing our best not to let them affect our holiday. We still had a fabulous time in Prague. But admittedly, I don't know how much more of this we can take. My throat is at its all time most swollen, and despite being met by sun and blue skies upon our arrival in Krakow today, the moment we decided to step outside we were assaulted with thunder, lightening and a torrential downpour. Still, we have hope.

The journey here was quite the affair. Sleeper trains. They should really look into renaming those. Our train was loud, cramped, stuffy, and stopped often and abruptly, making sleep an adventure in futility. At around 2am a loud persistant knocking on our cabin door introduced me to an intimidating Polish officer demanding our passports, which I supplied wearing nothing but my underpants and a groggy expression approaching fear. Satisfied, he shoved the documents to my chest and began rapping on the adjacent cabin's door. Back to broken sleep for me. Did I mention the part about my having a throat-swelling cold??

Today was a write-off in Krakow, firstly because of our extremely early arrival/lack of solid sleep, coupled with my being poorly which saw us sleeping through the sunniest part of the day, then the downpour which got us as far as the cafe around the corner where the food was delicious and cheap but came at the price of getting cold and damp from top to toe. Still, we have hope. As I write this, the storm clouds above appear to be breaking up. The rain has stopped and patches of blue sky are emerging. We've bought ourselves a deck of cards and are prepared to spend the evening in bed going fish, conserving our energy for a big, bright, adventurous day tomorrow, when and where anything is possible.

We're in Krakow! I know you're jealous.