Hotel LUCNI DUM Janske Lazne

The day before we landed in Poland, there was a massive storm. So big, it washed out a good chuck of it's national railway. This lead to a bit of a dilemma. How to get to Kamienna Góra. After a hour of frantic phone calls, Anita's relatives decided that it was best to catch the train, then it'd bypass the damaged parts by bus, then we'd be back on our journey. Ahhh, all sweet.

Once again, we were late to rise, and it made for a hectic hour ...

Jelenia Góra ('deer mountain') is about couple of hours south from Wroclaw (trains or buses). It is close to the Karkonosze mountain range running along the Polish-Czech border. Only 10-15 km of the town there are few ski resorts such as Karpacz, Szklarska Poreba.
Nice, colorful Market Square, Cyprian Kamil Norwid Theatre, Saint Cross Church, the Old Town are just few places worth of seeing.
Jelenia Gora, Western Poland, Poland ulka

... little tent (and man, do I mean little) is not only really really little, but it is also really waterproof. And I can honestly say that it is actually a decent tradeoff. But actually, my whole point is to answer a question that has come up a few times: What am I reading when I stretch out at night in our really really teeny tine tent? I find that good books are like gold when traveling. Despite their weight, I try to always have at ...

... pokazali, ze nie szata zdobi czlowieka (grecki mnich, bosniacka rodzinka), ujrzelismy miejsca cudne, ale rowniez takie wywolujace refleksje, przejechalismy 10 krajow i chyba z 6 stolic. Spedzilismy ze soba tyle czasu, ze to prawdziwy cud, ze sie nie pozabijalismy. Chwilami miewalismy siebie dosc, ale to chyba normalne, gdy przebywasz z kims 24h na dobe. Zadne z nas nie ma latwego charakteru. Marcin to ten typ, co ...

... the 'Red Baron'. However, the trip was all about the Karkonosz, and we decided not to waste any more time here. We arrived in Karpacz, one of the most popular mountain resorts in Poland, soon after 1pm and made our way slowly up the winding main road amidst literally thousands of tourists. We certainly weren't the only people who'd planned a weekend here over the holiday, and after checking into our small guesthouse we quickly made our way away from the crowds in the centre of the town ...

... sure how this happened, obviously I haven't been looking after him properly, which is one of his favourite catch phases. So 4 loads of washing, one dryer, charged by the hour, and its 14 degrees so not the best weather for drying. Washing really has become a obsession of mine, it's a war, you have to focus and be ruthless with all your competitors, this is not about making friends people, this is about survival of the fittest). Victory at last for ...

... to treat my new partner Ania to a day out in the mountains, and joining us were Chris and his partner Kasia. Our first stop for the day was for a coffee in a medium sized town named Klodzko about an hour and a half from Opole. With the exception of the stunning town squares in Krakow and Warsaw it was quite possibly the most attractive town I had seen in all of Poland. Sitting on the side of a hill, under the shadow of the largest medieval fortress in ...

... hill above Trutnov to do some cross-country. It went great all day, the sun was there we were crossing a majestic Pine trees forest which had witness a huge battle between Prussia and Austria about 150 years ago... we were therefore on a huge battlefield. The snow was great and the landscape as well. Nonetheless saying it was nice to do some outdoor again! We followed an old man for few km in the forest talking ...

... Our Czech is abysmal as was their understanding of our cola/redwine induced ideosyncratic converstaions. "We are from Mars and need space fuel for our journey home, do you know where we can find some?" After five minutes we would bumbled off, tripping giddily over tent guy-strings. Trutnov, more of a festival with music than a music festival, seduced us four days into an uncertain decadence. The festival commenced with a ...

... but it began to rain steadily. The border town where we decided to stay, Szklarska Poreba, is very quaint -- in the hills; buildings and surroundings are very woodsy. It is clearly very popular with German tourists, and I was grateful that English is so close to German so that I could understand that the car park was around the back. But nothing else. We napped first, as it was ...