Kolejarz Zakopane

... and much higher than the Polish part.

There is a special railway designed to bring the mountaineers to virtually any place they want, and its network connects all the High Tatra towns like Tatranska Lomnica, Smokovce or Strbske Pleso. What's more, there are a few cable cars that take you directly into the heart of Tatry without any effort, and amongst these places are peaks and passes like Lomnicky ...

... catch the cable car at this hour, to our surprise the queue was actually longer (!!) than what it had been at midday the day before! Needing to catch a bus across the border to Slovakia, I waited until 9am before giving up and returned to my hostel. (I later found out from one of the girls that she didn't get on til 11am!! and I would have definitely missed my bus had I waited!).

The reason of my trip to the region of Orava, a northern part of Slovakia, is very simple: it has been raining in the Tatras and I hope the weather is different on the other side of the mountains. The best cities to stay in if you wish to see the most beautiful castles are Liptovsky Mikulas and Dolny Kubin in Slovakia, or Zakopane in Poland.

I believe one of the most intriguing castle to see in this part ...

skiing....better than sex....the most fun id had in a very, very long time...

the beer was cheap,. the meat platters were like something out of alice and wonderland...and i was proper pro by the end of our 3 week stay in zakopania...look at the videos

... and Steve's trip to the mountains wouldn't have been complete without one. We rose early the next morning to a somewhat overcast day, but we weren't going to let that stop us as we stocked up on some food before boarding a minibus for the short trip to Lysa Polana, some 20km east of Zakopane. I'd already been out this way some ten months earlier, when I visited Morskie Oko, but there was one corner of the Polish High Tatras I still hadn't seen, which required setting off from ...

... get in the door, and only one of of the rooms occupants had checked out. In fact, this person, a 50 or 60 year old English women, had awaken me gathering her stuff around 5 AM. Awaken, I had got up and used the bathroom where I noticed that she had piled her stuff outside the door. I also noticed that she was not a backpacker, her stuff looked more like belongings of a hobo or tramp. Sure wish that I would have checked the chair ...

... way? - C) It's breathtaking though, incredibly beautiful and I don't think my photos do it justice. Fortunately the next day (yesterday) was sunny again so we went for a good six hour trek along the Magistrala Trail, from Stary Smokovec. Fantastic walk, with great views. I'll get those photos online next time. Hope all are well at home. Heard a rumour there's a new prime minister, funny to be missing events like that. I'll live with it though. Bye for now! Mark and Claire xx

... set off for a short hike in the Tatra National Park. We had quite a pleasant hike along a clear, cool river, then started heading uphill, huffing and puffing our way along in the heat (around 32 Celsius). After a while, Marnie looked up at one of the forbidding rocky peaks and said "I think we are headed up there!". "No way," replied Andrew, "that's miles up. There is no way we are going that high." But, as we climbed and climbed, it became ...

... the Murphy's, we weren't bitter, and we went off to explore the closed restaurants. It was so busy in fact that the same woman was responsible for the bar, the coffee shop and the supermarket. We made her earn her Slovak Crowns by using all three in the one evening, as there really wasn't that much to do once the sun had gone down. Still, she was loopy and wished us 'Happy Way' whenever we left. As for the mountains, we had a bit of a ...

... cream and fruit. Pretty much the same as a funnel cake except i paid $1.25 Canadian (3 sloty) for one hahahhaha. Me and Krissy have walked ALOT. Every city we have been to we have walked. We are trying to budget as much as possible so we have been using our good old feet to travel. Even though it is soo cheap, me and krissy havnt paid for a thing in Poland. My mom has treated us and everyone else for EVERYTHING. She is unreal. Ive always known, but im even surprised how generous ...