Day 3: Zakopane

Our base for the final two nights was Zakopane, a ski resort in the south of Poland. I spent a week here in 2005 during an Esperanto event, although shamefully have no recollection of the mountains.

By the time we arrived night had fallen. Our landlady told us where to find a good, local restaurant, confirming that it was open, since we'd noticed so many others closed for Independence Day during our travels. We ate well and returned to the chalet.

Yes, I said chalet. We have an amazing location with a bedroom each. It looks beautiful from the outside:

The inside is equally stunning:

This morning started off with a streetwide powercut, which the landlady had informed us about the previous evening. Fortunately, Dad and I had got our showers in beforehand, and there was a gas cooker in the kitchen, which Matt used to make sure that everybody had coffee.

We had a particularly relaxed start to the day with people free to get up and come down when they wanted. Our plans were limited to using a cable car to get to the top of a nearby mountain. Without any travel ahead of us, we could afford to take our time.

As it happens, we never got around to having breakfast because it was past eleven when we left the house and drove to a place called Kuźnice, from where we were going to use a cable car to reach Kasprowy Wierch, not far from the summit of the highest mountain.

Unfortunately for us, the cable car was closed down for technical review prior to the ski season, so we were stuck where we are, albeit in pretty surroundings:

Rob, James and Matt went off for a little stroll:

And came back down perhaps twenty minutes later:

With little else to do and having had no breakfast, we decided to head into the main town and look for lunch. 

We ended up parking alongside pretty surroundings:

Including Poland's largest ski jump!

It didn't take long to find somewhere to eat and so we settled down for an hour or so. Afterwards, we had to think about what to do, given that our plans had gone awry. I had the intention of taking a five-mile trail to see a glacial lake called Morskie Oko but I was conscious that this wouldn't be everybody's cup of tea. In the end, we decided that Matt would explore the town and then make his way home, Dad would spend some time in the chalet, and Rob, James and I would go up the trail by the cable car.

The first 20 minutes were very difficult, walking up a steep cobbled incline. Things suddenly became easier and we were soon rewarded by a view:

A few minutes further, and things really started to look pretty:

We decided that it would be worth walking on to see whether we could get any closer views, so off we set:

The track led through a pine forest:

There was soon a steep section:

It had become drizzly but we were soon encouraged by the promise of a view:

And soon we were there:

It had taken a shade over an hour and we weren't far from twilight, so we decided we'd earned a rest, and headed back down to the car, taking a slightly different route on the other side from where we had taken some photos earlier:

And then we headed home. That's also what we'll be doing tomorrow. Since we're flying from Kraków and didn't get to see much of it when we were there, we've decided that we'll stay there for a few hours before driving off to the airport.