The roads were awful. Poor Pawel was crawling along! Mind you, they’d be no worse than some of our roads here, but when you have a busload of people, you can’t just hoon along regardless.
Our first stop of the day was in Slovakia, which uses Euros, as opposed to Hungary and Poland. We stopped at Koliba Goral Donovaly – a big ski-resort area in the winter. The restaurant we stopped at was built of wood without any nails or screws. It made me think of lodges in Canada (though I’ve never actually seen one there!). The problem with writing this blog entry two weeks later is that I can’t remember what I had for lunch. I just remember it was nice and plentiful. We had a few minutes after lunch, so photographed the place a little, since it was so nice with its pond and flower pots:
The Slovakian countryside was pretty with hamlets dotted here and there. Some little family farms with chooks and vegie gardens, too:
We drove past Orava Castle, in Orava (next to the Orava river). This castle was used as the setting for a Dracula film, apparently. It certainly looks the part:
This part of Slovakia must’ve been wealthier, because there were quite a few little holiday shacks:
In the late afternoon we passed into Poland. It looked a bit run down and poor close to the Slovakian border, but improved the closer we got to Krakow:
And then we arrived in Krakow:
We stayed at the Holiday Inn, which was very nice. Nicer than the usual Holiday Inn, I thought. We had dinner at the hotel and then Tamas took us for a walk into the Old City. It was very nice to see it by night. It was a very interesting city in general. It seemed older and more authentic than other cities to me. Probably because it is, as it wasn’t damaged too much in WWII:
We snooped into Michael’s Cave Bar, which is famous for something I can’t remember – though the caricatures are somehow involved:
We headed down to one of the old city gates:
And then back to the square, where there were street performances going on, flower markets and lots of people wandering around in general:
We then walked back to the hotel, which really wasn’t far. It was another late night before I could go to bed, though…
