Hotel Villa Marilor Zakopane

... turning back.

While in the Polish part of the Tatry you can hike any time of the year, in the Slovakian one there are more restrictions. Between October and May, entering the Slovakian Tatra National Park is prohibited. As far as tthe Polish Tatra National Park, the rescue team always displays a note both in each mountain hostel and at every entrance to the park about the level of the avalanche danger.

Sme na stanici v Poprade. Vlak nam ide o 15 minut, to je akurat cas nato, kupit listky na rychlik a bicykle. Skoda toho celeho, od zaciatku nam neprialo. Nevadi vsak, aspon vieme, ze sa to da zvladnut. A to s prehladom ! Tesim sa na dalsi rok. Nova trasa, nova sanca !

... you to wait for your group on a lower level if you suffer from a fear of heights.

On the levels of the castle you will find some traditional tools used by people of Orava in the past, as well as paintings, musical instruments, weapons, furniture, clothes and animals that used to live here. Some of the towers and terraces of the castles are available for the tourists, and it's advisable to stick to your ...

Now, you have to realise that Bukowina Tatrzańska is a perfect place if you want to spend a few days hiking in the mountains. It lacks the absurd amount of tourists and 'tourists' of the city of Zakopane, and it lacks its traffic, pollution and noise. Instead, it offers really breathtaking views over the Tatra Mountains, the delicious local cuisine and the folklore nowhere to be found any longer.

The biggest advantage of ...

... So maybe if I like it enough here I will stay that extra day and cut out my daytrip to Gdansk and shortening my two days in Warsaw to just one - who knows, we'll see! The mountains and all the green... : ) I couldn't be happier!! I am going to wander into town and get some food and be nostalgic, which isn't hard to do here at all... After all, I am staying in a big log cabin for a hostel!!

... bored as all you could do was go straight down, go up on the T-bar and then go down again. It took longer getting up there then it did coming down and in the afternoon my body was feeling a bit achy (still recovering from a cold) so after lunch I decided to just sit down and watch John. The day ended up being sunny and hot, actually too hot, I was wearing too many layers. We ate at a restaurant across the road which was very expensive for Zakopane - total ...

... proper kit who actually helped me up some of the scales after i had slipped several times and thought i was going to go rolling back down from where i started. Absolutely bloody terifying now but at the time i just had to keep going and they were good at keeping me calm. I didn't think we would be doing anything like that as they just had the usual trekking shoes aswell. Idiots I know ...

So after recovering a little bit from my illness I decided to head south to the mountains in Zapatane Poland . I figured it was only two hours away from Krakow, and if I got really ill I could get back to the doctors if nessecery. In the Bus journey I met a couple of Polish Australians and we got a room at some little polish ladie's house (Who spoke no English at all). The idea was just to rest in the house in the mountains and maybe just read. Alas the mountains were soon calling me, so ...

... we headed to a small town called Pieniny where you can catch a river boat through a gorge, with Poland on one side and Slovakia on the other! Again, with the sun shining is was lovely to just cruise down the river for an hour and a half and take in the scenery. All in all Poland has been really beautiful and is well worth a visit - although we were lucky to have Krystyna with us, who was a great tour guide (despite getting us just the teeniest bit lost at times ;)!!

... stuff - but who cares about that) and as most of you know I loooove Amber - I was in Amber heaven. Couldn't find anything I wanted though or more that I didn't have enough time to have a good look...damn!! Krakow old town has a huge square in the middle with the Cloth Hall, with St Mary's Cathedral on the side that houses the oldest Gothic alter - this was actually taken by the Germans during the war but fortunately it was found again and reconstructured. The ...