10-Day Highlights of Poland - Small Group 2027

Highlights

• Kraków: Share a first dinner with your small group in a local restaurant, enjoying regional dishes and relaxed conversation that marks the beginning of your travels together.
• Zakopane: Enjoy dinner accompanied by Góral Highlander music and dance, with performers using regional instruments such as the fiddle and shepherd’s flute. You’ll hear the sharp, rhythmic patterns typical of the Tatra Highland.
• Warsaw: Come together for a final dinner in Warsaw, sharing regional dishes in a local restaurant. It’s a straightforward moment to reflect on the journey and spend time with your small group before departing Poland.
• Kraków: Join your Local Expert to trace Kraków’s development around Rynek Główny and the streets that formed the city’s medieval core. You’ll see the layers of architecture shaped by royal patronage, mercantile guilds and university life, noting how each period left its mark on the Old Town’s pattern.
• Kraków: Visit Wawel Cathedral with your Local Expert, stepping inside the burial place of Poland’s monarchs and statesmen. You’ll see chapels added across successive dynasties and the cathedral where Karol Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II, served as Archbishop of Kraków.
• Zakopane: Explore Zakopane with your Travel Director, moving along Krupówki Street to see examples of the Zakopane Style, developed in the late 19th century from local timber-building methods. You’ll pass stalls selling Highlander woodcarving and textiles, and view the market area that continues to draw craftspeople from the surrounding Tatra villages.
• Auschwitz: Visit the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum with a Memorial Guide Educator, viewing preserved barracks, guard towers and the barbed-wire perimeter of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
• Wrocław: Explore Wrocław with your Local Expert, moving through the Rynek to see its restored facades and the adjacent Plac Solny, known for its long-standing flower market. You’ll also encounter several of the city’s bronze gnomes, originally installed in the 1980s and now scattered across the center.
• Poznan: Join a Local Resident to explore Poznań’s Old Town, pausing at the Renaissance town hall, rebuilt after the 16th-century fire, and the adjoining market streets. You’ll see facades restored after wartime damage and note how the square links to the streets leading towards the university quarter.  
• Gniezno: Visit Gniezno Cathedral to see the monumental bronze doors cast around 1175, noted for their detailed panels showing scenes from the life of St. Adalbert. Inside, you’ll also view chapels and crypts that reflect the cathedral’s long association with Poland’s earliest rulers and archbishops.
• Toruń: Explore Toruń with your Local Expert, moving through streets lined with Gothic brickwork shaped by the Hanseatic League. You’ll see the market square, the leaning tower, and sections of the medieval walls that still outline the town’s original plan.
• Gdańsk: Join your Local Expert to view the harbourfront, including the vantage point towards Westerplatte, before stopping at the shipyard gates linked to the Solidarity movement of the 1980s. Continue into the medieval streets where Hanseatic brickwork and merchant houses define Gdańsk’s historic layout.
• Malbork: Explore Malbork Castle with your Local Expert, walking through one of Europe’s largest medieval brick fortresses. You’ll see the High Castle with its cloisters and chapter house, the Middle Castle’s great refectory, and the defensive walls that reflect the Teutonic Order’s building program from the late 13th century.
• Warsaw: Visit the Neon Muzeum during a guided visit with a museum specialist, viewing restored signs preserved from Poland’s Cold War period. Housed in the Palace of Culture and Science complex, the collection includes original neon designs created for shops, cinemas and streets across the country.
• Gdańsk: Visit the European Solidarity Center and the Gdańsk Shipyards with a local who worked here during the 1980 strikes linked to Lech Wałęsa. Walk through original shipyard buildings, including the BHP Hall, and hear first-hand accounts of the Solidarity movement. Your visit directly supports United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education.