Kraków by bike: how to ride the city and stay sane
The most important advice: ride out beyond the Planty. That is where the city that is truly made for bikes begins.
I have cycled around Kraków for twenty years and I know it has a reputation for being difficult: the cobbled Old Town, trams, crowded pavements. True, but only within a kilometre of the Market Square. Beyond that Kraków is flat, criss-crossed by riverbanks, parks and paths, and the most beautiful places, Tyniec, Zakrzówek, Wolski Forest, can be reached without a single climb, or with one, but with a view.
Start with the Vistula. The boulevards on both banks are thirty kilometres of car-free asphalt from Tyniec in the west to Nowa Huta in the east, with Wawel halfway. The Vistula Cycle Route is signposted, has maps on boards and continues further, to Oświęcim and Sandomierz if you feel like it. For me it is the route for every free morning: coffee below Wawel, fifteen kilometres to Tyniec, lunch at the monastery restaurant, back with the wind.
The second direction is west: Błonia, Jordan Park and Wolski Forest. Błonia is 48 hectares of meadow in the middle of the city, with paths you may ride on; beyond it, Cichy Kącik and the Panieńskie Skały avenue climb to Wolski Forest, with its zoo, two mounds and paths where you can get lost for half a day. It is the only route with climbs, but after it everything in Kraków feels flat.
City bikes run from spring to autumn with stations all over the centre; you rent them with an app and the first minutes are free. For day trips a rental bike is better, from one of the shops in Kazimierz or by the river, or your own. Most regional trains take bikes, which opens up one-way routes: ride to Ojców, train back.
A few rules the city taught me. On the Market Square and in the Cloth Hall, walk the bike, not because anyone checks but because the crowd demands it. Cross tram tracks at a right angle, especially in the wet. On the riverbanks a bell and a smile are enough for everything. And most important: take an obwarzanek. Every route in Kraków tastes better with an obwarzanek in the basket.
The seven routes I love most are in the cycling app: with a narrator who talks at the stops and an arrow that leads between them. If you are in Kraków for more than two days, give one of them to the bike. You will see a city you cannot see from the Market Square.