Madrid to Zakopane in a day!

This will be a short blog as all I did was travel from Madrid in Spain to the mountains of Zakopane in Poland.

Why would I do that I hear you ask? ?

Well the answer is that then I would meet up with my wonderful best friends Jude,  Graeme,  Grazyna and Andy. And yes they do read the blog!

Ewan has been left to his own devices and has headed off to Portugal. The irony is that when we were planning the trip he decided not to come to Zakopane because his knees don't cope with too much walking.  And I am the walker in the family: that's a joke at the moment. Zakopane is famous for serious walkers tramping around high mountains: walkers fully  equipped with walking sticks have been past our door this morning.

To get here my itinerary was:
Get out of bed at 4.10am in Madrid
Catch airport shuttle bus at 5 am
Get on plane and fly to Kracow in Poland (3 1/2 hours so plenty of time to catch up on some sleep! )
Get some zlotys (polish currency - although they are part of the EU they have retained their currency)
Get a taxi to the bus station in town ( supposed to get a bus but none arrived so gave up!)
Have a strong coffee and a pastry for sustenance and to try and stay awake
Buy a bus ticket for Zakopane  ( buy a cheese and salad roll  for lunch on the bus)
Arrive at Zakopane bus station 2 1/2 hours later.
Walk to the apartment (should have taken a few minutes but helpful local gave wrong directions and I dragged my bag up a steep hill unnecessarily! )
Finally arrived and collapsed for a rest: apartment really beautiful with lovely view of the mountains
Walked to the local supermarket to buy some supplies before the others arrive (with no Polish this involved a lot of pointing and smiling and nodding of heads)
Enjoyed bread, cheese and sausage, and the beer, which appeared to be the staple diet of the locals when the others arrived.
Went to bed early after the sofa was turned into my bed.  So comfortable after a busy day!

Wednesday 9th September

Having done a lot of walking over the past few days the others are having a rest day today so we ambled to the shops admiring old dark wooden houses along the way. 

We chose a cafe for breakfast and Graz went to order in her best Polish: it does make life a lot easier to have someone who does speak the language.
Despite that our scrambled eggs turned into fried eggs and they come in 3s here!  We ended up with bread and bread rolls, the eggs with bacon, ham and cheese slices, plus butter and jam.  And lots of coffee! Truly a lot of breakfast to get us started on our promenade.

Whilst we were expecting a small shopping street it turned into a long row of shops, some in the characteristic wooden houses here. It pains me to say it but alongside McDonald's, our Quiksilver and Roxy brands are taking over the world!

I have to admit that I am not at all well-equipped for cool weather - one down parka and vest and one long sleeved Tshirt and that's it.  But fortunately I did pack an umbrella and boy did I need it!  The beautiful sunshine that we had enjoyed whilst breakfasting soon turned into rain and then into heavier rain.  Graz bought a very  snappy rain jacket and Graeme an even snappier poncho,  and we headed for the warmth of home as the rain increased and the temperature decreased.

After a bit of lounging around and postcard writing we headed off to do the local points of interest.  Firstly the local church ( because I would go into withdrawal without seeing a church every two days) which had a beautiful blue ceiling with gold stars and of course a portrait of the Pope. It also had a very interesting painting of a man in  POW stripes and number with a gold halo: we couldn't quite work that out at all.

Next stop was the local Cemetery - not usually included on the list of sights. Check out the photos as the graves were works of art and decorated with lots of wood carving which seems to be a feature of this area.

Next stop was a coffee and cake shop before we ambled home through the rain, umbrellas ahoy and stopping to check out the restaurants on the way.

Grazyna is going to teach us 5 Polish words each day so we have had some practice over a G&T  and now we're about to head off for some traditional polish food for dinner.

Your sociable and slightly damp correspondent

Dianne