Travel Musings

 Bratislava is a lovely place to visit. It's on the Danube, very close to both Austria and Czechia, and quite classy. The site we chose was just outside Bratislava on a lakeside, and it seems a favourite place for the locals to visit - It would probably be jammed full at the weekend, and with a water temperature of 22C, plenty of swimming going on. There is a chairlift type affair at one end of the lake, but instead of going up it pulls water boarders and skiers around a circuit which included ramps and jumps if wanted. There are boundless grand old buildings in Bratislava's old town area, just a 30 minute tram ride away, and a great vibrancy to it. The crowning glory, however, is the Bratislava Castle or Hrad. It looks stunning and immaculately preserved and kept, with domineering views over the city. They say you can see three countries from there. It was roasting, well above 30C, and locals were saying it was unusually so. It meant the city tour bus we took was....a little w...

 We had intended to stay three nights in Krakow to look at Auswitz/Birkenau, the famous Wawel Royal Castle, and the salt mines at Wieliczka. However, Krakow had decided to say no. Krakow introduced a low emission zone in January, basically covering the entire city inside the ring road and unfortunately including all the camp sites. It's quite harsh, and basically won't allow in any diesel engines built before 2014. There were ways around it, but you needed to apply in advance and pay an hourly charge. Fortunately the Salt mines were outside the zone, and the allowed us (for a fee of course) to park up overnight in the car park. The salt mines themselves are huge, and they descent over 300 metres, so there is a LOT of walking involved. Apparently they have proof of the mines being used in Neolithic times to make salt lamps! At each chamber you reach the have tried to set up scenes of what happened there mainly in the mid 1600's. After that in the 1800's they built superb...

 Torun was the first of the Polish cities with very old city centres, and known as the birthplace of Copernicus - the man who first suggested that the Earth moved around the sun, and paid a heavy price for his heresy. The site was on the other side of the river, so it was a simple matter of walking across it, and straight into the main square - except that the bridge turned out to be about two kilometres long, and we walked it there and back twice. There was a large main square lined with beautiful building facades and restaurants, and a central cathedral. This was was to be repeated in all of the cities we visited. Yes, they were all clean, tidy and very safe. The next stop was Poznan, where we stayed overnight in a carpark, with no problems at all, and an easy short walk into the main square. Again some beautiful facades and civic buildings. Our visit must have coincided with the days all the schools went on day trips, because they were everywhere underfoot. All well behaved thou...