The mountains of Zakopane

---

Coming from Alberta, I'm usually not overly impressed by mountains because we have the Rockies. C'mon, they're some of the biggest and most beautiful mountains in the world! But since Leszek was right about falling in love with Krakow, we followed his advice and went to Zakopane - a little resort town in the mountains.

The town reminds me a lot of Banff (for those of you not familiar with Banff, it's a national park in Alberta and is where some of the Rockies are located) except that it looks more storybookish because of the old streets and houses. Just the kind of place you want to go when you need to get away from bustling cities. We arrived late at night after a rocky bus ride from Krakow and stayed in a hostel called Stara Polana - a really cosy and comfortable hostel near the centre of town. It's very reasonably priced and the staff there know a lot about the various hikes and walks you can do through the mountains.

Just a side note about travel in Poland: buses are very cheap and faster than the trains, but they're not exactly of tour bus standards so be prepared for a bumpy ride!

The receptionist kept telling us that the next day was supposed to be rainy and kept apologizing for this because we were only there for one night (Benny had to catch a plane in Budapest - our next stop) and it was kind of getting us down. Jeremy got some information about some nice day walks anyway because we weren't going to waste our one day in Zakopane!

The next morning we took a bus to the foot of the mountain and decided to do one of the easier 3-4 hour walks. Even though it was cloudy and a bit rainy, the weather was perfect for hiking (at least for me since I don't like hiking in sunny and hot weather). So we lucked out with the weather because the walk wasn't as easy as we thought 😊.

We reached a peak in one of the valleys and as you can see from the pictures, the views were absolutely amazing. The cloudy sky just added to the scenery and I think the views were some of the best I've ever seen. During our walk, we encountered a lot of Czech people and Jeremy got to practice speaking some of the Czech he learned while living in Brno a couple of years ago. They were all really friendly and spoke a bit of English and they helped us take some group photos.

After the hike, we decided to explore the centre a bit and again spent a lot of time eating the wonderful Polish pastries and for me, kielbasa! Mmmmm! Then, it was time to catch a bus back to Krakow and then a night train to Budapest... More to come!

---

Photos

This looks like some sort of ad...
To me this looks like a North Face ad, haha!