Hidden Gems of Poland

⭐️ Welcome to Poland and the beautiful city of Krakow. Upon arrival at Krakow airport you’ll be met and transferred to your hotel in the heart of the city. The rest of the day is at leisure. This evening we will meet with the tour director and the rest of the group in a meeting room in the hotel and thereafter have a short evening stroll where you can grab dinner.

🍴Breakfast on Board
🏩 Overnight in Krakow

📍Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum.
On a guided visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum, we walk beneath the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate of Auschwitz I and through the vast, silent expanse of Birkenau with its watchtowers, barracks and remaining ruins of gas chambers, a voice to the 1.1 million lives lost here – a solemn, unforgettable encounter that puts all of European history into perspective.

📍Wieliczka Salt Mine
After lunch, we descend 135 meters underground into the Wieliczka Salt Mine, a UNESCO World Heritage marvel carved entirely from salt. Over 2.5 hours we wander 3km of shimmering corridors, underground lakes and chapels sculpted by miners over 700 years, culminating in the breathtaking St. Kinga’s Chapel – a vast cathedral with chandeliers, altarpieces and statues all hewn from rock salt, glittering in the half-light.

📍Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory
Returning to Krakow, we enter the wartime world of Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory in the former Podgórze ghetto, now the acclaimed museum Krakow Under Nazi Occupation 1939-1945. Through original artefacts, photographs and Schindler’s own office, preserved as he left it, we relive the story made famous by Schindler’s List.

📍Wawel Hill
We end the day on a note of Polish majesty with a late afternoon stroll on Wawel Hill, the coronation site of Polish kings. From the Cathedral where kings and saints lie buried, we gaze over the Vistula River and the dragon’s den below, as the evening bells ring over the Old Town – a perfect close to a day that moves from tragedy to beauty to resilience.

Moderate walking, 800 steps in salt mine (lift back up), 17-18°C underground – bring a jacket.

🍴Breakfast Box from hotel.
🏩 Overnight in Krakow.
⭐️ Free time to stroll in Krakow on our last evening.

📍Warsaw
After breakfast we bid farewell to Krakow and board our private coach northward through the heart of Poland – rolling fields, villages with wooden steeples, and the changing landscape that tells the story of a nation. En route we can pause for coffee and reflection, arriving in Warsaw by early afternoon.

Warsaw is not a city that was preserved – it was resurrected. Over 85% destroyed in WWII, it rose again stone by stone from old paintings and memory. Our local guide leads us into the miracle of the UNESCO-listed Old Town (Stare Miasto) – colourful, cobbled Market Square where artists paint, children chase pigeons, and café music drifts from restored burgher houses that look 400 years old but are barely 70.

📍Warsaw Royal Route
We walk the Royal Route, from the Castle Square with King Sigismund’s Column to the Barbican and city walls, hear the legend of the Warsaw Mermaid, and stand where the Warsaw Ghetto once stood. The afternoon ends with free time to sip coffee on Krakowskie Przedmieście, Europe’s most elegant rebuilt boulevard, before checking into our hotel.

A day of transition, from Krakow’s preserved glory to Warsaw’s defiant rebirth.

🍴Breakfast at the hotel.
🏩 Overnight in Warsaw.

📍Warsaw Uprising Museum
Today we discover why Warsaw is called the Phoenix City. We begin at the powerful Warsaw Uprising Museum, housed in a former tram power station, this immersive museum tells the 63-day story of 1944 when young Warsaw rose against the Nazis. We view a replica Liberator bomber, secret printing presses, sewers the insurgents crawled through, and hundreds of personal letters.

📍POLIN Museum
We walk to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Built on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, its award-winning architecture leads you through 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland, from medieval traders to the vibrant interwar community to the heartbreak of the Holocaust crowned by the stunning reconstruction of the 17th-century Gwoździec wooden synagogue roof.

📍Royal Castle
After lunch in the revitalised Jewish quarter, we enter the Castle. Blown up by the Germans in 1944 and rebuilt brick by brick from donations of ordinary Poles, its marble halls, Canaletto rooms and throne room glitter anew, the very symbol of national rebirth.

🍴Breakfast at the hotel.
🏩 Overnight in Warsaw.

⭐️ Suggestions: In your free time this evening, why not take in a Chopin Concert, or stroll around the markets in Warsaw shopping for souvenirs.

📍Depart Warsaw
After an early breakfast this morning, we depart from Warsaw, heading north through the Masurian lakes and amber fields of northern Poland, a scenic 4.5-hour journey into the land of the Teutonic Knights.

📍Malbork Castle
We visit he largest castle in the world by land area and a UNESCO World Heritage fortress. Built in 1274 by the Teutonic Order as their mighty headquarters, its red-brick walls stretch for over 20 hectares, with moats, gatehouses, granaries and a vast medieval palace within. We visit Grand Master’s Palace, the knights’ dining hall where a meal once fed 400 crusaders, and see the armoury of swords and chainmail.

📍Gdansk
After lunch at the castle tavern, we continue for an hour to the sea. As we arrive in Gdansk, the air changes – salty, maritime, free. We see the Motlawa River where amber traders and Hanseatic merchants once made this Poland’s richest port.

🍴Breakfast at the hotel.
🏩 Overnight in Gdansk.

⭐️ Suggestions: In your free time this evening, wander to Long Market (Długi Targ) for your first taste of Baltic life – fresh fish, amber shops glowing like honey, and the sound of seagulls over the crane.

📍Gdansk Old Town (Known as the Jewel of the North).
We walk to one of the most beautiful Hanseatic ports in Europe via Długi Targ (Long Market), where every house tells of Dutch merchants, Polish kings and amber fortunes. See the iconic Neptune Fountain(1633) where legend says Neptune smashed his trident into the water, creating the famous Gdansk Goldwasser liqueur with flakes of gold.

📍St. Mary’s Church
From the Town Hall with its 81-meter tower to St. Mary’s Church, the largest brick church in the world to the medieval Crane (Żuraw) over the Motlawa River Gdansk unfolds like a live museum of freedom and trade.

📍European Solidarity Centre (ECS)
This museum is built inside the former Lenin Shipyard where in August 1980, electrician Lech Wałęsa climbed over the wall and started Solidarity. Through original shipyard gates, strike banners, and the 21 demands that cracked communism, we relive how a shipyard of workers brought down an empire without firing a shot.

📍Sopot (Poland’s summer playground)
Art Nouveau villas, beach cafés, and the famous Sopot Pier (Molo) – the longest wooden pier in Europe at 511.5 meters stretching into the Baltic Sea. Walk the pier, dip your toes in the Baltic, collect amber on the beach, or stroll the famous Monte Cassino promenade.

🍴Breakfast at the hotel.
🏩 Overnight in Gdansk.

This morning after breakfast, with packed bags, we are transferred to the airport for our flight home.

As we prepare to head back home, we take some time to reflect on all the amazing memories we’ve made.

Whether it’s the stunning scenery we have witnessed, the delicious local cuisine we tried, or the new friends we made along the way, these experiences will stay with us for a lifetime.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end.

Be sure to book your next tour soon.

Tired, but happy we arrive back home.

🏩 Overnight safely, in your own bed.