Poland Days 5 through 8 - Road trip!

15-18 November
Road trip!

Since I'm a little behind and I'm getting sick of typing out updates I'm going to start condensing these into a few days at a time.

Today I leave the lights of the city behind. I have decided to hire a car for a few days to drive around the polish countryside.  I've got a few ideas about places I want to visit but I'm mostly just interested in driving around.

Picked up the car from the Wroclaw airport.  I ordered a small car but ended up with a 2017 Audi A3 sedan.  Not a bloody 8 seater minivan like I got in Japan but I wouldnt' call it a small car either.  Throwback to the old days when Cam used to ferry us around in the red a3.

Poland drives on the opposite side of the road to Australia.  It always takes a little getting used to but after about an hour I was pretty fine.  There are two things I usually struggle with driving on the other side though:
1. The far edge of the car.  The furthest side is usually the left.  I know where the left side of the car is pretty naturally after 20 years.  Having to be aware of the right side is challenging.  I keep cutting corners so I tend to overcompensate and go too far into the centre of the road.
2. Central Rear view mirror is on the wrong side! I keep looking left to look in the mirror then have to quickly look right.

Anyway. My first stop was the Unesco listed Peach Church in Swidnica. Very unusual church in my experience.  Old wooden church that looks more like a Danish farmhouse to me.  The interior was quite beautiful though it did border on gaudy in my opinion. I also unfortunately arrived at the same time as a school group so I didn't stick around for long.  Children suck.

My next stop was going to be Jaskinia Niedzwiedzia (bear cave) which is a pretty cool looking limestone cave with tons of stalactites and stalagmites.  Unfortunately I neglected to check the website properly and it seems you need to book in advance outside of the main tourist season.  Balls.

Regardless it was a beautiful drive through the area.  There were a couple of really spectacular photo ops I passed up because I was driving and going past them the following day it just wasn't the same.  The lighting was wrong and it just didn't work.  I just really love alpine areas.  The trees, the snow ... it just really appeals.  I really want to live in a snowy mountainous area at some point in my life.

I stayed the night in the town of Ladek Zdroj.  A mountain town that seems to thrive on ski season.  I was a bit early for that so it was super quiet.  There were only 2 places I found that were open for dinner (both of them pizza places) so I went to the one closest to the main market square.  The pizza was pretty good.  Lots of pizza places in Poland surprisingly.  Second only to kebab shops.

After pizza I stopped in at a coffee shop who had a jazz duo playing.  Was obviously the only happening place it town because it was pretty packed.  They basically ran through every classic sort of jazz number (including a few from a Cuban jazz CD I have) and they were pretty entertaining.  Mad rush to leave when the show was over though.  I think everyone had cleared out within 5 minutes of the last song.  Amazing.  But I guess in a town where everyone has to drive home there's no point lingering to drink booze or coffee.

My hotel was verrrrrry old fashioned and uncomfortably warm.  I slept terribly and had to turn the heater off in the end because it was just ridiculously hot.

The next morning I went to a gold mine in the town of Zloty Stock.  The mine itself was reasonably interesting but they were only offering tours in Polish so I didn't get a lot out of it.  The polish speaking people in the group (I.e. Everyone else) seemed to enjoy it though.  I stopped off at a beautiful looking church and some interesting looking abandoned buildings on the way to the gold mine.

I had originally planned to stop somewhere around Bielsko-Biala for my second night but I was quite enjoying driving so I decided to push onto Zakopane and do 2 nights there.  Zakopane is THE Polish ski town.  The Polish equivalent of Queenstown in New Zealand.

The drive there was fun.  At one point I ended up on the freeway and despite the fact I was doing 140km/h most of the way (highway police and speed cameras don't seem to exist in Poland) some of those drivers made me look like I was standing still.  People were aggressively tailgating me at times.  Some of these dickheads must have been going close to 200km/h with the speed they blew past me.  Crazy!

I got to Zakopane and checked into my quite lovely hotel.

Showered then headed into town to take a look around and find some dinner.  It's a very pleasant mountain town with the typical mix of restaurants, high priced designer stores and pubs.  Would be a fun place to come for a ski trip sometime.  I ended up at a canteen style place for dinner.  The food was OK but nothing to write home about.

The next day I ducked into the tourist office and asked for a recommendation for a nice easy hike to do.  They pointed me towards a nice little trail that was about an hour each way and very easy going.  Perfectly suited my mood and interest in hiking.  Walked up a nice easy path to a cafe and then a waterfall through some beautiful alpine landscape.

After the walk I kicked around town for a while, had lunch at a lively looking place then headed back to the hotel to drink a couple of beers and look at the snowy landscape out the window.

Google maps took me back to the hotel via some sort of snowy off-road path which was a bit nerve-wracking at times.  Dirt road covered in snow and ice with trees and rocks close on either side.  I got out OK and I'm glad I didn't get stuck in some snow or scratch the rental car up.

I thought I had booked a hotel a bit out of town to get a view of the mountains but it was unfortunately right in suburbia so all I could really see were the snow covered roofs of houses around the hotel.  Regardless - it was a pleasant afternoon.

For dinner I went to a nice Polish restaurant not far from the hotel called "The Inn at Mill".  I had a delicious meal of "highland noodles" (which was basically potato noodles with bacon bits and mayonnaise) and smoked trout with baked potatoes.  It was really nice.  Definitely a tourist restaurant because all the staff were dressed in "traditional" Polish outfits and there was a band playing "traditional" Polish songs but the food was really good.

The next morning I got up reasonably early and dropped the car off at the Kraków airport for my next stop.

I probably could have seen more on the trip (stopped off at a couple of castles for example) but I'm always too ambitious with my schedule when driving.  Regardless - I enjoyed the drive and I went through some beautiful countryside and small towns on the trip.

Day 2 Wroclaw - back to back walking tour

14 November
Day 2 Wroclaw

Today was mostly about tours in Wroclaw.  I ended up doing 2 walking tours of the city back to back.

The first one was a tour of the "old town" of Wroclaw.  It covered the market square and various older aspects of the city.  I never end up taking many photographs during these tours because there are either people in the way or I'm listening to the tour guide or chatting with one of the other tour group members.

So it was interesting and I enjoyed it and here are a couple of photos and I've forgotten basically everything the guy said.

The second tour was with the same tour guide and it was supposed to be a tour of Jewish Wroclaw.  I was the only person who turned up to this so it turned out to be a private tour and we didn't really stick to the script.  While I enjoyed the one on one attention and the fact the guide was willing to go off script it was kind of annoying that I had to pay attention the whole time.  It's nice to be able to hide in a crowd sometimes!

The history of Poland and the Jews here is really quite something.  It's been a country for a very long time, then not a country at all, then a region that's been subjected to an awful lot of atrocities and is really only getting back on its feet now.  Fascinating place.

After the tours I went back to the hostel for a while then headed out to a brewery in the suburbs For dinner and a couple of drinks which was pretty nice.  Big day but not an eventful one.

I was considering doing another day in Wroclaw since I spent all of today doing tours but decided to just go with my original plan and move on tomorrow.

Day 3 Poznan / Day 1 Wroclaw - new boots and gnomes

13 November
Day 3 Poznan / Day 1 Wroclaw

I only had 2 nights in Poznan but I think I had a pretty good look at the place.  The timing for the Independence Day party was great.

I'm planning to get on a train around 1pm today so I've got a bit of time up my sleeve.  I decide to go replace my boots since my shoes are letting a bit of water in.  They are typical sneakers which means they are nowhere near waterproof and with rain and a bit of snow on the horizon it's getting annoying.

So I do some Google Fu and find a store with some pretty good reviews online AND that's open early so I head that way.  I went down the main shopping strip in Poznan on the way there and come across this absolutely fantastic shopping mall.

It's a big red brick building and it used to be a brewery or something.  It's since been converted into a great shopping hub and won a bunch of design awards apparently.  There are some great open spaces in there, some excellent / interesting artworks and it's just a fantastic space.  If only I liked shopping.

Made it to the outdoor store and bought a pair of boots which were not too badly priced (about half what I paid for my previous ones) and seem to be decent quality but what do I know?  In any case the dude assures me they are waterproof and I can strap crampons to them for Norway and Iceland if I need to.  Here's hoping I don't blister too badly!  I tend to have the feet of a 9 year old girl though so blisters will be coming.

I also had a chat to him about Cold weather gear for the trip but I've not really felt the cold much yet so I'm going to put it off until it becomes blatantly clear that I'm unprepared ... and it will become blatantly clear at some point!

Boots on, other shoes in the bin (because ain't nobody got room for 2 pairs of shoes!)  and I head off to the train station.  The old lady at the ticket office sold me a ticket that told me to run to catch the train which was leaving in about 4 minutes.  I don't like to run.  But I did it, caught the train and the running started the blisters!  Woo!

An uneventful train ride and I made it to Wroclaw (vrots-wav).  They've got a beautiful old station building here.

As soon as I exited the station I saw one of the things Wroclaw is famous for ... Gnomes.  Apparently there are hundreds all over the city in all sorts of places (in gutters, on light poles, in the middle of the footpath) and they began as a satirical art movement protesting the communist occupation of Poland.  It's a bit of a game to walk around and go gnome hunting.  You can buy a map from tourist shops and then see if you can spot them all.  Might be fun to do if you had a few days in the city but I couldn't be arsed.

Went for a walk around after dropping my stuff off at the hostel.  The market square here is beautiful by night.  They are setting up Christmas markets all around the square but they won't open until the 1st of December.

I got propositioned by either a prostitute or a spruiker for a strip club a few times (same person each time) during my walk as I ended up crossing the square a few times.

I went to a craft beer bar on the way back to the hostel and had a few local brews then headed off to a local polish restaurant the lady at the hostel recommended.  No food pictures but I had zurek, stuffed cabbage (which was nice but I only ate half of it - huge serving and not exciting enough to make me finish it) then ordered some potato dumplings to finish.  Polish food seems to be closer to what I imagined Russian food was going to be.  Big, brown and stodgy.  Hearty, tasty food but it doesn't hold a candle to the freshness of nice Thai or Vietnamese in my opinion.