Zakopane

On my last day in Krakow, I woke up at 5 am to take the bus to Zakopane, a little resort town in Poland's Tatra Mountains which is so close to Slovakia that I kept getting "Welcome to Slovakia" text messages. I told the guy at tourist information that I wanted to take an easy hike - he took one look at my yoga pants and old runners and apparently decided I needed a really easy hike, so he recommended the park's most popular tourist trail. It winds up the mountain to a hut where you can get a hot chocolate, which sounded good to me.

Mistake! There were about 300 cars in the parking lot and the "trail" could have been a two-lane highway in Saskatchewan. There were lots of people in sandals and even one girl in (low-ish, but still) wedge heels. I decided to flee at the first opportunity.

 
I held out for about 2 km before I got really annoyed and cut off the "trail" onto the first path into the trees. The signs were in Polish, so I didn't know exactly where I was going, only that it would take about two hours and 20 minutes to get there. I ended up in a nice meadow, which may or may not have been my intended destination.

 

 

The weather wasn't great, but there were wild blueberries and best of all, not many people (although there was one very bored school group, armed with mp3 players and iPhones, who were definitely not enjoying nature). At some point I remembered that there are probably bears in Poland (Google has since confirmed this) and questioned my judgement before deciding it would probably be okay. And it was!