The ‘world-famous’ Christmas market city just two hours from the UK with £4 beers and cheap 5* hotels

NOTHING feels quite as Christmassy as a mediaeval European city lit up by lights and not being able to feel your hands.

Poland’s cultural capital of Krakow is beautiful, the right amount of wacky and, if you can stand a little cold, at its best when it snows.

The city truly seems to come alive in December, almost as if it was built for Christmas.

Like clockwork, the snow fell as we walked around the world-famous Christmas market nicely merry from litre-sized steins of beers.

You can spend hours meandering through its 13th-century cloth hall and endless rows of wooden chalets that sell everything from stocking fillers to glass sculptures, enormous fur hats and ancient model guns.

Travelling with easyJet Holidays and 23kg of luggage included in the package meant no worrying about getting all those goodies home.

The snow continued to fall as we ate pierogies (Polish-style dumplings) on the street and stuffed ourselves with nutella-dripping waffles.

Gone are the city’s days as just a pit stop for visiting the nearby Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau or for stag-do parties looking to get drunk cheaply.

Change is in the air for a modern Krakow that has a more than a healthy dose of art, culture, good food and the right amount of edge.

Bring the proper gear — hat, gloves, your biggest coat — and after enough beer its minus temperatures in winter seem to feel more than manageable.

Plus, its cultural cobblestoned core is all walkable.

However, I opted for a whistle-stop tour round the city’s most important sites on an eight-seater golf buggy, which sounds more fun than it is.

Clear plastic curtains come down, a heater goes on and you can whizz past Schindler’s factory, the Jewish quarter, the Wawel Royal Castle, a fire-breathing dragon and some very old churches, all the while feeling chuffed not to be out in the cold.

Then you can jump aboard a warm, wooden riverboat cruise to see what Krakow looks like from the water.

Just eight miles southeast of the city centre is Wieliczka Salt Mine, a 700-year-old underground world that has chapels, restaurants, endless tunnels and a lot of history carved into its salty rock.

Poles come to party

With eyes tired of sightseeing, I spent one lazy afternoon moving seamlessly between a vodka-tasting session into yet another hearty meal, full of bread and slow-cooked meat.

Polish food doesn’t try to be healthy, and the people serving it don’t try to be nice — it’s traditional, stern and filling.

The portions are huge and most things are easily shareable, but there’s always less fun in that.

If you are after something fancier, I spent a wonderful three hours making my way through an affordably priced 11-course tasting menu at the Garden Restaurant.

The chef pulled off some sort of modern French twist on traditional Eastern European food with plenty of foamed beetroot and even a volcano that spewed out a pudding.

You can then dance it all off in an underground techno club.

This is still the one city outside of Warsaw where Poles come to party.

And at night time, you can find live jazz in underground tunnels or dance in bars inside old halls of chicly rundown Baroque buildings.

I finished off one icy evening at the speakeasy cocktail bar Mercy Brown, hidden behind a big wooden door disguised in a cloakroom.

In general, food and drinks are very reasonably priced.

Beers cost from £4, cocktails from £6 and a two-course meal with drinks at a very decent restaurant will set you back around £40.

After days spent eating, drinking and sightseeing, kick up your feet at the newly opened 5* Hotel Saski Krakow Curio by Hilton, just seconds from the main square.

It has a pool, spa and four floors of music-inspired boutique rooms, each designed differently.

Detail is everything at Saski, even down to each room having its own fragrance.