well, the benefits of living in poland have started. on friday night i hired a car and drove with michelle and steve down to slovakia. it was the most nervous i've ever been when driving as i've hardly driven in the past 3 and a half years, i had to drive on the right hand side of the road in busy traffic with manic drivers and it was raining. still, with steve's navigating we managed to make it safely out of krakow with only one close call. the journey down was quite magic. at one point we were driving through the mountains with snow piled up against the sides of the road when it started snowing again with the wind blowing it fiercely across the road. there were no lights anywhere and no other cars on the road. it was a truly exhilarating experience. we crossed the border into slovakia and then tried to navigate to the town of levoca. steve did a great job of map reading and we finally drove into the walled town at about midnight. amazingly we were able to find a hotel that was still open and got a room for the night.
the old town of levoca is still completely surrounded by a wall and you enter through a couple of gates. it is such a quaint little old town and has been done up quite nicely. we spent a bit of time on the saturday morning walking around town, taking photos and freezing our arses off. leaving levoca we headed towards the spis castle which was built in the 11th century and has been empty since a fire went through it in the 17th century. it's now a unesco world heritage site and we spent some time wandering though it after having a really good (and exceptionally cheap) lunch of pierogi. we also picked up a middle aged german lady who was hitchhiking and gave her a lift back to levoca as our good deed for the day. we stopped at another lovely little town which was almost completely empty.. very strange for a saturday arvo.
from here we headed towards the mountains near the border and found a lovely little place to stay for the night. of course the guys running the place spoke no english and we speak no slovakian but we still managed to communicate with them and arranged a couple of rooms and some beers.
sunday was time to head back to poland so we made it through the border crossing and stopped for lunch at a mini ski resort. again, the food was lovely but way too filling.
all in all, it was a fantastic weekend with good company, good tunes (from our various ipods) and great scenery.
anyhoo.. pics are here
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
That's what your time in Poland is all about...getting out on the open road right! I'm really glad it's working out to do so. Muz and I are definitely keen to trip over for a weekend. By then you'll know all the best places to go ;-)
xkt
when do you get back? i'm here until the end of may so you're most welcome to come and crash at mine if you are able to make it before then
Perfect. We are back May 1. We should prob think about booking cheap flights sooner rather than later. Maybe if you let us know what weekends are better for you? We're 'on the road' now from Mon until May but will check email sporadically and can think bookings. Be great! xk
Post a Comment