48 Hours in Wroclaw Poland

Welcome to Euromentravel.com’s weekend-getaway guide to Wroclaw, Poland.

In case you have already read our 48 hour guides on Varna Bulgaria or Jakarta Indonesia you will be pleased to see a central European destination being covered in this guide.

Let’s have a look at how to spend 48 hours in Wroclaw, Poland.

How To Get There

Located 350 kilometres East of Germany’s capital Berlin Wroclaw is an intrigueing destination in the heart of central Europe.

Leaving from Germany you can easily reach Wroclaw by car as Poland’s highways are in a state-of-the-art shape. If Berlin is the point of your departure then it will take you no more than 3,5 hours to get to downtown Wroclaw.

Leaving from from another European city like, say, Prague will take you slightly longer. In this case you will not be able to take advantage of the European route E40 that goes all the way through Europe like a horizontal line, linking Poland and Germany in a very convienient way.

The e40 highway goes across the whole of Europe.

If going by your own car is not for you then I recommend you check out Blablacar.

Blablacar is Europe’s biggest online portal for shared rides. Their website comes in 12 different languages and there are dozens of people on Blablacar who drive to Wroclaw every day and from all over Europe.

Sharing a ride through Blablacar is by far not expensive, many drivers offer a ride to the city for a small contribution to gas money that can be as low as 10€. Lastly, using all functions of Blablacar is free of charge.

If you prefer to fly then there is good news – or rather bad news, depending your point of view. They are good news if you are a fan of cheap flight and quick travels, bad news if you are unhappy about more and more travel destinations becoming played out by mass tourism.

The good/bad news is that like many other Eastern European cities Wroclaw International Airport (WRO) is served by low cost carriers such as Ryanair or Wizzair. Flights to Wroclaw are (relatively) cheap, I am giving you three sample prices for flights departing from three different Western European cities:

• Ryanir offers a roundtrip flight London Steansted-Wroclaw for 160€.
• Ryanir offers a one-way-ticket Paris-Wroclaw for 14€
• Wizzair offers a roundtrip ticket Milan-Wroclaw for 115€

Note that these price come with the usual shenanigans by the low cost carriers like late-night flights, horrendous extra fees for luggage that goes beyond the allowed 10kg hand-baggage and airports that may be far out in the countryside.

The City of Wroclaw Poland

Not an Oriental palace, but Wroclaw’s main railway station.

With a population of 630,00 and over one million people in the agglomeration area Wroclaw is Western Poland’s largest city as well as its industrial and educational center.

If your idea of Poland was that it is economically left behind or not really up-to-date in terms of development then Wroclaw will correct your view.

As of today Wroclaw is a modern, clean and ultimately convenient city. Public transportation is cheap at only 0,40€ for a single ticket while it is also very reliable. Many bus and tram stops have electronic signs that will give you the estimated time of arrival for the next bus on your route. No need to dechifer timetables or rely on the guessing of the locals.

When looking for a place to stay the “bad news” I mentioned above come into play. Namely, the fact that during peak season (mid-June, July, August) Wroclaw is overflowing with tourists that come from all over Europe. Or even Japan for that matter:

Picture-happy Japanese tourists in Wroclaw, Poland.

As a consequence accommodation is suffering heavily from a lack of supply during summer.

If you were planing to save money with Airbnb then you might be in for a hard-to-swallow surprist: Unless you  book way in advance you have a good chance that even Airbnb will not have a decent offer for a halfway centrally located  apartment – unless you are willing to pay 90€ per night, of course.

For the sake of completeness let me just tell you that the apartment situation on booking.com is even worse as there are only a handful of offers there. If you choose “apartment” is the type of your desired accommodation then the first 5 or so results will be actual apartments while the rest will be – hotels.

Speaking of which, for hotels in Wroclaw I can personally vouch for Hotel Piast that is located right across from the gorgeous yellow building of Wroclaw’s main railway station Glowny. Wroclaw, Poland is a walking-friendly city so getting to the center from Glowny is a matter of 8 minutes.

For some unknown reason the hotel Piast is rated as a 2-star hotel. So when I got there I did not expect much. But once I got to my room it was obvious that the hotel Piast could easily pass as a 4-star hotel even under Western European standards. Here’s one of their rooms:

Hotel Piast in Wroclaw is a surprisingly good hotel at Glowny Station.

For 44€ per night this really is nothing to complain about. I didnt even make a reservation but just walked to reception once I was in Wroclaw. The cheapest offer on booking.com is at 46€/night so I did not even pay more.

I was so surprised by hotel Piast that I did something I rarely do, namely I left them a review on Tripadvisor.

What To Do

Wroclaw Poland is a student town and has lots of young and educated people. Therefore, Wroclaw is  blessed with tons of nightlife options that are all scattered in the perimeter of Rynek (Polish for market), Wroclaw’s central square.

You can start the night by having a drink in one of the many bars and cafes that are located in the backyards of oldtown Wroclaw. Personally, I would like to recommend the two bars in the backyard of the synagoge in Wroclaw’s Jewish quarter.

The illuminated facades give the backyard a cozy vibe and drinks are good and inexpensive:

00:32h in Wroclaw, Poland

Out of the many nightclubs and bars on Rynek like Cherry Club, Casa De La Musica, Domowka and many others the Cafe Manane sticks out as it has one of the best equipped bars in the city and a crowd that likes to party long and hard.

All nightclubs are conveniently located in a radius of no more than 500m making bar hopping an easy thing to do. Have a look at the map below that shows you the location of Manana Cafe as well as the nice bars in the backyard of the synagoge:

On comment on nightlife in Wroclaw:

As the whole world knows Polish girls have friendly and easy-going personalites that come with slim, feminine and alluring looks. One special feature about them is that the vast majority of them have a heavy attraction to men who have a “Latin” vibe about them.

As much as this sounds like the total cliché it is the absolute truth:

While I was having a drink at the bar behind the synagoge (see above) I was talking to a Polish girl who openly admitted that she had a “fetish” towards Portuguese men. Needless to say that in the past years she had spent a significant amount of time in the city of Lisbon and kept on going back there regularly. Each time for “professional” reasons as she put it jokingly.

But even if you have no interest in nightlife Wroclaw has a lot to offer.

You could have a walk to the largest shopping mall in the center called Galeria Dominikanska (see map above) that has several nice cafes on its heighest floor as well as a food court in on the ground floor where pay-per-kilogram restaurants offer delicious Polish, Asian and Oriental cuisine.

In any case, Rynek remains Wroclaw’s main attraction. As you can tell by the map Rynek has the shape of a square with the Ratusz (city hall) being its most significant sight. Just strolling around picturesque Rynek is a nice experience and it is no wonder that many of the people coming to Wroclaw do just that.

I don’t blame them.

The busy North side of Rynek on a Saturday afternoon.

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