Can you say "Szlak Orlich Gniazd"?
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 11 ~ 8 July ~ Tomaszowice to Kraków
The last day on our bikes; back to the big city.
Leaving the hotel. Onward!
Well, onward-ish. We're little more than 10km from our destination in a straight line, so to make a decent day of it we've been given a very roundabout route, starting in pretty much the exact opposite direction.
This is a bit more formal than the last railway line we crossed.
Ok, with good reason!
As regular readers will know, we are deeply shallow people easily distracted by anything shiny. How could I not stop to take a picture of the Shiny Garage sign?!
Nothing else about it is worthy of a picture, but that's enough.
We haven't quite finished with the Eagles' Nests, though. Zamek Tenczyn w Rudnie is our final castle.
It's in what we think is quite a good condition, neither totally ruined nor excessively restored.
"Make a little birdhouse in your soul"
Looking down on the castle cows.
They may not actually be the castle cows, but we'll gloss over that.
Ah, another somewhat simpler railway crossing.
Well isn't this nice.
The only minor problem is that we missed a turn a while back and didn't realise. Ok, no big deal, according to my GPS data (OpenStreetMap - OSM), there's a cyclable route ahead which will take us back to the planned route.
Now I'll say this for OSM: they're better at cycle routes than Google Maps, but the latter is almost epically bad, so there's plenty of margin for error. This is such a case.
After ploughing through all but impassible jungle ("Yes, we're still on the track according to GPS"), we find a forest trail, but then this happens. Ok, follow the diversion.
This is the state of the diversion path. We don't want to think what we've been diverted from!
But eventually we get back on the proper track. No harm done and we've had a bit of an extra adventure.
Amanda does fancy the idea of an Iron Dragon triathlon.
We're on a bridge above this road, not on the road itself, but it's pretty obvious we're not in the countryside any more.
And then, and then... Suddenly we are in the countryside again.
The rural idyll is closer to the 21st century than this picture shows, but it's still here and real.
Another minor missed turn rewards us with this strange statue in somebody's back garden that faces onto an almost unused path.
And here we are back in Kraków, not far from BikeTrip's shop. Google Maps tells me this sculpture is "Pomnik Polski Walczącej w Krakowie", describing it as a "1992 sculpture with intertwined bronze birds & inscriptions honoring Polish soldiers".
According to the GPS, it's in there somewhere! This could be another tricky part of the journey.
But in fact it's not so bad, and here we are.
We swap the bikes for our luggage and thank everyone for an excellent trip, then set out on the not too long walk back to our apartment. We had previously looked at tram and taxi options, but as the weather is fine we'll just wheel our bags and it won't take us very much longer. We're returning to the same building as we stayed initially, but it's a different apartment. Iga has promised us that it's not like the first time: we have it entirely to ourselves.
Hello again...
Ah, this bedroom has a window!
In fact we're looking onto the square.
For dinner this evening, we fancy Moo Moo's neighbour Hamsa, motto "hummus and happiness". How can we resist?!
It was a pretty marginal decision to go with Moo Moo first time, so it takes us no time at all to choose tonight.
We'd noticed the attractive lampshades before, but only now do we realise they are made from empty bottles of the water they serve to guests.
We've never been to Israel (and as I write this, it seems unlikely that Israel is going to be a holiday destination for anyone for a long while yet), so we have absolutely no idea whether this is authentic or not, but it's definitely Middle Eastern. Specifically, it's not European Jewish, which is very different. The latter can be a bit heavy for our taste, but this is good.
Happy Stevie. With more nice Polish wine.
It's curious: Central and Eastern European wines generally are far from unknown in the UK, but Poland is totally off the radar. Now of course we've drunk wines all around the world that never make it to Britain, but that's usually because they're too far away or production is too niche or both. Poland is neighbour or near-neighbour to many countries whose wine does make it to Blighty, and the quailty is certainly there, nor do they make weird concoctions that you can only like if you've grown up with them.
Prices are good too. If I were in the wine trade, I'd be thinking about my opportunities. [And if you, my reader, are in the wine trade and you do think about this opportunity and profit from it... feel free to thank me with a case of your finest imports.]
Just across from the restaurant is this bronze sculpture. It's clearly important in local Jewish culture because we see families posing for photos by it and parts are obviously polished from touching by visitors.
We have a little walk around town after dinner.
We'll leave the square to it. Goodnight.
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