Kraków

The first thing that struck me about Kraków, before the architecture, before the food, before anything else, was how clean it is. Immaculately, almost unexpectedly clean for a medieval city of its age and size. The cobblestones of the Old Town gleam. The Main Market Square is pristine. The lanes of Kazimierz are swept and tended with obvious civic pride. It is the kind of cleanliness that tells you something important about a city and its people before you've spoken to a single one of them.

And then you speak to them. The people of Kraków are some of the nicest, most genuinely engaging people I have encountered anywhere in my travels. There is a particular Polish warmth, direct, curious, generous, that you notice immediately and remember long after you've left. I met a man inside one of the Old Town churches who, within minutes of conversation, offered to take me around several other churches he knew and loved. A complete stranger, giving up his afternoon, simply because he wanted to share what he knew about his city. That is Kraków in a sentence.

The affordability of Kraków is the thing that genuinely surprises most visitors. For a city of this beauty and historical significance, a perfectly preserved medieval centre, a royal castle on a hill, churches dating back eight centuries, the prices are extraordinary value. You can pack an enormous amount into a long weekend for a fraction of what the equivalent experience would cost in Western Europe. It is one of the genuinely great travel bargains left in Europe and I suspect it won't stay quite this affordable forever.

I stayed in an apartment in the Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, next to a nighttime food market, surrounded by high-end restaurants on streets that are atmospheric in a way that is difficult to fully communicate in words. Kazimierz has a different energy to the Old Town. It is quieter, more contemplative during the day, with independent cafes and bookshops and galleries that reward slow exploration. But as the evening arrives something shifts. The food market lights up. The restaurants fill. The streets take on a warmth and energy that keeps you out far later than you planned.

The combination of staying in a proper apartment in that neighbourhood, not a hotel, but someone's home, in a building that has been standing for a century, and having that nighttime market on your doorstep is the Kraków experience I would recommend to anyone. It is the difference between visiting a city and actually inhabiting it, even briefly. You cook breakfast looking out at Kazimierz. You walk to the market for dinner. You feel, for a few days, like a resident rather than a tourist.

Wawel Castle on the hill above the city is the other non-negotiable. The royal castle that housed Polish kings for centuries, with Gothic and Renaissance architecture accumulated over hundreds of years, looks down over the Vistula River from its limestone outcrop in a way that makes you understand the city's confidence and its pride. Go in the morning before the groups arrive. Walk the courtyard slowly. The views over the river from the castle walls are among the finest in Poland.

After a long day walking Kraków, and you will walk a long way, because the city rewards it completely, there is one experience I would recommend above everything else for the evening. SaunaPark Platinum. I have been to saunas in several countries and I have never experienced anything like this. The sauna shows they perform, theatrical, choreographed, genuinely extraordinary, are unlike anything I have encountered anywhere else in the world. It is not simply a sauna. It is a performance. It is a ritual. It is the single best way to decompress, relax and process a day of exploration before bed.

I don't want to over-explain it because part of what makes it extraordinary is that you arrive not quite knowing what to expect and leave having experienced something completely singular. Just go. Book it in advance because it fills up. Take a long day of Old Town exploration beforehand so you appreciate the contrast. And go with an open mind, the experience rewards it completely.

Kraków is the perfect long weekend destination and I mean that as the highest possible compliment rather than a limitation. Three or four days is genuinely enough to see the Old Town properly, explore Kazimierz thoroughly, visit Wawel Castle, discover the smaller streets and churches and cafes that the busiest visitor routes miss entirely, and still have evenings for the food market and SaunaPark and the restaurants that fill the Jewish quarter after dark.

The city is compact enough to walk everywhere that matters, which means you actually see it rather than travelling between highlights in taxis. The Main Market Square is the largest medieval square in Europe and it is your geographical anchor for everything, the Cloth Hall, St Mary's Basilica with its hourly bugle call, the surrounding streets that lead in every direction toward something worth finding. Start there every morning and let the city unfold from it. Kraków very rarely disappoints.