Villa Beatrice Kosice

... 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 ...

... Slovakia started with us going to see more family and we stayed for lunch... which started at 11:30am. We ended up leaving around 6:30 and in between we eat A LOT, drank A LOT, and visited. We both definitely felt pressure to keep eating and drinking. If we had a shot (which we had many.. especially Kyle) as soon as we put the shot glass down, it was full again! I figured out early on to only drink their wine (which was incredible and homemade from plums) and if ...

... place is its proximity to the mountains and to a variety of things you can do if you are not particularly keen on hiking. It's close to the Morskie Oko lake, and the red colour trail to Rysy, the highest peak of Poland. It's close to the Dolina Pięciu Stawów Polskich, which is a valley of six lakes surrounded by the mountains. Last but not least, it's close to Slovakia, which is just 10 km away. It has a huge thermal swimming ...

... at its best.  After a cheery farewell we headed to Miklus's Prison.  Miklus was the executioner in the town prison.  The museum now in its place details life behind bars from the 17th to the 19th century.  It has many dark and dingy rooms full of torture instruments and photos depicting some of the brutal deaths that took place there.  They even have one room that is empty except for a scattering of human bones and sewage waste that was discovered there in the recent ...

... when renovating the main square - fortifications, turrets, the old water system, everything. Amazing how this stuff can just lie under your feet and no one knows. Even the town doesn't make a big deal out of it. We drove through fields and fields of sunflowers, green hills, past massive castles perched on hills, and through more old walled towns (which weirdly looked a bit colonial Spanish despite no Spanish ever conquering here!) to a beautiful ...

... were happy to have left Hungary and entered Slovakia, another day another country, not to mention that our last experiance in Slovakia was great and we wanted to vist again before we jumped east. Kosice is Slovakias 2nd largest city, after its capital, and is a very nice town, housing the countrys oldest gothic church, which every weekend is full of weddings, at least 6 a day! Right, thats the tourist part done with, so on with our story... After a brief ...

... and we only had a maximum of five days. So, Slovakia it was. But rather than return to the Mala Fatra mountains, we decided to head a little further east, to the stunning Tatra Mountains and historical region of Spis. We left a few hours behind schedule on the morning of the 9th, and made up for lost time as we zoomed down the Autostrada, Poland's rather pathetic equivalent of the German Autobahn. We reached the outskirts of Krakow just after 11am, but before we ...

... day. Next stop, a hike through the Sucha Bela Gorge into the Slovensky Raj national park, in what will later be referred to as the "Brown Undie Hike". Slovensky Raj translates to "Slovak Paradise" and the name is not too far from the truth. The hike we took runs up a creek bed through a high gorge and I really mean it goes up the creek bed. It seems the attitude was "why walk next to it, when you can walk straight up the middle?" Admittedly, with the steep walls of the gorge ...

... week, and for those of you who don't know, Gomolka is Polish and I'm actually half polish. It was great calling the hostels and not having to spell my last name for once. I thought it would be easy to get places to stay since, well it's Poland. I was trying to book a week and half to two weeks in advance (usually I just do it the night or day before) and a lot of them were booked or only had one bed left. Anyone have any idea what's going on in Poland ...

... dictatorship over the country. History flows over Hlavna, Kosice's old main drag, like the lights that wash over the cathedral and old bell tower or the water in the fountain that plays and dances to classical music. It has the same feel as the castle district of Prague or Budapest, with its classically renovated buildings and elegant taste of royalty vanquished. The State Theatre is perhaps Hlavna's centrepiece. It is notable, not only for its ornate interior ...