Back in the mountains!…

Another week in southern Poland, discovering Krakow before crossing the border and entering the 15th country of our journey: Slovakia!… We are back in the mountains with the impressive Tatra massif, and have also climbed our first peak on this side of Europe…

Given the forecasted temperatures, we thought that spending the weekend in a car park well protected from any draught behind a medieval wall might not be the best idea in the world… So we headed a little further west to reach the pretty town of Łańcut and its castle (a bit copied from the French neo-baroque style).

Polish peculiarities… (2/09/2024)

Under the trees of the small family campsite where we were, the heat was a little more bearable… In addition, during the night from Saturday to Sunday, we had four drops of rain which, with the cloudy weather on Sunday, helped to cool the atmosphere by a few degrees. Unfortunately, the respite did not last long as the sun returned and we reached 30ºC again…

So we tried to adapt and drive only in the morning, before settling into the shade in the afternoons, like that day when we spent the night at a homestay, at another wine estate (in the end, we will become Polish wine specialists 🤣). The place was quite nice, actually. We didn’t have a single vineyard around us, but we were in the shade under big trees, with a small pond right next to us and big dragonflies flying all around…

Meanwhile, this weekend we continued our discovery of Polish peculiarities. Here, on Sunday mornings, there is no need to go to mass. It is the mass that comes to us!… The churches are equipped with loudspeakers all around their exterior, and what happens inside is broadcast live outside, so that everyone can hear and enjoy… In addition, masses here are still traditional, with choirboys, gala cassocks and all the trimmings… And since the churches are full, people gather in the street to listen to the mass through the loudspeakers. It is quite surprising to see all these people, standing or kneeling, in the middle of the street… We preferred to spend our time drinking a coffee with a delicious raspberry and almond muffin, while listening to the Sunday liturgical chants in the background. … 😜

The other peculiarity we noticed since our arrival in Poland is a certain tendency to install planes at the entrances to villages, in the middle of roundabouts or on the side of the road. A bit like the Concorde exhibited at Roissy, but with normal planes (Cessna and others…). It is quite curious, and we have already seen quite a few…

We must say that when it comes to decoration, Polish design is quite… unique. We will skip over the hundreds of garden gnomes or other figures of bears, deers, giant tortoises and others, but today we found a small village, Zalipie, whose inhabitants decided to paint everything with floral motifs, from houses to beehives, and from municipal flowerpots to… the fire station!… At least it has the merit of standing out from other villages in the country, with their usual clusters of grey building blocks, all identical, with a disproportionately gigantic church in the middle, not far from John Paul II Avenue (seriously, there is one in every Polish village or city!…).

Capital monuments… (3/09/2024)

Krakow is often cited as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and… it is a reputation that is certainly well deserved. The city is relatively compact (at least its historic centre, since you still have to travel 22 km to get to the centre when you pass the entrance sign to the city), but it is full of monuments, beautiful residences and other churches (something unmissable in this country… about one every two or three streets, maximum… 😁).

Krakow was the capital of Poland until 1596, and from its time as the capital, it has retained its cultural, academic and artistic dynamism. Once you have passed the medieval wall, which is surrounded by a small park, you no longer know where to look, as the squares lead to the churches, which in turn lead to Gothic, Renaissance or Baroque buildings. Going down one of the main streets, you reach the immense Wawel royal castle, with its imposing cathedral within its walls. The cathedral itself is made up of a whole series of private chapels belonging to the city’s noble families, each with its dome visible from the outside. From the castle gardens, one gets the impression that each dome or bell tower is competing to find space to rise a little higher than the others… Inside (where photos are prohibited), in addition to numerous sarcophagi of saints and other kings and nobles, the central part is entirely covered in gold leaves, while in some side chapels medieval paintings can still be seen. The cathedral bell tower houses Sigismund’s royal bell, cast in 1520 and weighing 18 tons. It takes 12 people to activate its mechanism (fortunately, it only rings on very special occasions)… And as if that weren’t enough, St. Mary’s Basilica, just a few streets away, houses the largest wooden Gothic altarpiece, which was stolen by the Nazis and sent to Germany, before being found intact in the cellars of Nuremberg Castle, bombed by the Allies… It is no wonder that, with so many monuments, Krakow is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site…

Krakow also has a ghetto (a neighbourhood where Jews were forced to live during the German occupation), but unlike the one in Warsaw (destroyed by the Germans at the end of the war) or the one in Prague (devastated by successive fires), this one is quite well preserved and has evolved, over time, into a real neighbourhood with many synagogues, bars and restaurants (a bit like the Marais in Paris). Our idea was to visit it in the afternoon, when it was a little less hot, and then focus, at first, on the more medieval part of the city. In addition, we were lucky enough to find a parking lot located, literally, 2 minutes walk from the medieval wall and its famous St. Florian Gate. It would have been difficult to find a more centric one! The parking lot is guarded 24 hours a day and the guard told us that it was no problem to sleep there that night… So we had enough time to visit the ghetto and the rest of the historic center in the evening, before looking for a good restaurant to replenish our energy… 😉

PS: For those wondering, yesterday’s wine tasting was very nice, and the white wine (semi-dry) was excellent!… 😉

Back in the mountains!… (4/09/2024)

Krakow by night is a pretty nice city, but it could do with better lighting to highlight its buildings. With a few exceptions, it is the terraces of the restaurants that illuminate the lower part of the buildings, and where there are no restaurants, those remain in the dark (well, okay, it is also true that it is difficult to find a place without a restaurant in the old town… 😜).

As planned, we went for dinner in the ghetto, where we unfortunately arrived a little late to explore the area thoroughly. We did eat very well there, though! Then, a leisurely walk back to our parking lot at the edge of the wall, for an acceptable night (for a parking lot in the middle of a city of 700.000 inhabitants), and this morning, a last stroll around the main square and a breakfast right at the foot of the wall, before getting back on the road, heading south.

We went back on the road and also a little higher up in altitude! Just outside Krakow (heading south), one can see the peaks of the Tatra Mountains in the background, and the landscape begins to gradually undulate, as larches and fir trees reappear to replace the corn and wheat fields…

We were less than 10 km away from the Slovak border, but since we finally found a nice corner in Poland, we thought we could spend one more night in the country before crossing the border tomorrow… The region is called “Precarpathians”, and it is, as the name suggests, a foothill area, like in the Pyrenees or the Alps, before much higher peaks (up to 2.500 m) in the background, but all of them on the other side of the border (except one, the highest peak in Poland, right on the border line with Slovakia 😁)…

It’s still hot, but with the altitude (540 m where we were), the nights should be cooler. We were on the shores of Lake Czorsztynskie, an artificial lake used to produce electricity and provide a playground for sailing, kayaking and other stand-up paddle enthusiasts… There are also a few small 15th century castles, including Dunajec in Niedzica, where we took a short break before coming to settle at the end of a peninsula, facing the lake and another castle, Czorsztyn, in ruins, this one… Not a bad view for our last night in Poland… 😉

High peaks… (5/09/2024)

Our last night in Poland was really symbolic, as it took us only 3 km (10 minutes and because the access track to the main road was not very good) to find ourselves in front of the border of our fifteenth country: Slovakia!…

And although it may seem hard to believe, this border actually changes a lot of things. From the green hills on the Polish side we reached the high peaks of the Tatra Mountains just beyond the border, including the impressive Gerlachovský štít, the highest peak in the mountain range at 2.655 m. This is a gigantic granite peak that rises up in front of the wide valley of Poprad and which we skirted to reach our objective for the day, at the western edge of the Tatra National Park.

Before arriving here, we stopped at an old airfield, now abandoned, but which still offers a 360° panoramic view of the Tatras to the north, and the Poprad valley and the Low Tatras massif to the south. To keep the story short, arriving on the runway has a similar effect to the first arrival in the Dolomites. It’s hard not to let out a big “WOW!”… 😁

And for our first night in Slovakia we came to settle right on the edge of the National Park, at the foot of mountains lower than Gerlachovský štít and all covered with large fir trees. In front of us, a large meadow, a flock of sheep and their shepherd (we are in a bear area so here the flocks are guarded…) and in the background, the forest and the mountains… Maybe it is because it has been months since we last saw these landscapes, but it is undeniable, they are still… WOW! 😁

Besides, the Tatras are also an International Biosphere Reserve (as well as a National Park on both sides of the border), and one of the places in Slovakia where one can see chamois and Tatra marmots, as well as brown bears, wolves and lynxes. If we don’t get a few more “WOWs” in the next few days, it will be hard to understand!… 😜

Exploring the Tatra (6/09/2024)

It is probably the effect of spending so much time in the plains, but we felt so well in our meadow, facing the mountains, that we decided to stay one more day and go out and explore the Tatra National Park…

For this, the most logical goal was obviously the peak located right in front of us, and which we had not stopped looking at since our arrival here: Babky, one of the first peaks of the Tatra chain looking north. Our meadow was at 760 m altitude and Babky Peak at 1.566 m, which left us with a difference in altitude of about 800 m which, despite our obvious lack of training (the life of a truck driver does not help much to stay fit… 😜) did not seem totally insurmountable… The only thing we had not foreseen is that the hiking trails in the Tatra tend to scrupulously follow the steepest slope of the mountain. At the beginning of the trail, a sign warns cars of a 12% gradient but, since the road is closed by a barrier at the entrance to the park, a few meters further on, we wondered if the sign was not also for the hiking trail! 🤣

All in all, we had to work hard and sweat a lot to climb the famous 800m, but the view from the top was worth it. A breathtaking panorama of the Tatra, the Poprad valley and Lake Liptovska, with the added bonus of a golden eagle wandering by just as we reached the top.

We also got a bit of an adrenaline rush when, just past the entrance sign to the park, we found on the side of the road what Google confirmed to us were brown bear droppings. It was still early and we hadn’t yet encountered anyone, so we hesitated for a moment, before finally remembering the safety rules in bear areas and continuing our climb, making a bit more noise than usual… 😁.

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In Poland, as in Slovakia, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.