Day 23: Zakopane; ZakoPAIN!

Krakow is an amazing city, so we decided to spend most of our time in Poland there. We’d also read about plenty of little day trips you can take from Krakow, so we knew we wouldn’t have difficulty filling the time.

History, architecture, food….Krakow has it all!!

For our last day in Poland, we knew we wanted to do a day trip, but we were torn between two very appealing options.

Zalipie is about an hour and a half from Krakow. The town is full of beautifully painted houses. The artwork is all done by women in traditional Polish fashion.
Zakopane is a a resort village about 2 hours from Krakow. It’s known for winter sports and hot springs

We loved the idea of spending our last day in Poland relaxing a bit, so after a lot of hemming and hawing, we decided to drive the 2 hours to Zakopane, where there are several thermal spas to enjoy.

Termi Bukowina has several saunas, different temperature baths and waterslides too.

When we set out in the morning, it had already started snowing, but being from Winnipeg, that didn’t exactly phase us. It DID worry a lot of other drivers though, and the result was a whole lot of slow moving traffic. Our two hour drive became a 3 hour drive.

It was a beautiful 3 hour drive!

When we finally arrived, we realized the town was a terrible place to try and drive in the snow. The roads are quite narrow and confusing, and there was NOWHERE to park. Finding a restaurant away from the congested city center proved to be difficult as well.

I was busy trying to help Dave navigate down the main streets, so I didn’t get pictures of the traffic, but it was bumper to bumper all the way through the town. Everyone was just crawling along

We finally found some lunch, and then head to Termy Bukowina. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out so well… On top of the place being an absolute zoo, they don’t rent towels and expected guests to buy towels in the gift shop for $15 Canadian each, instead.

Picture about 100 kids running around this place along with a whole lot of annoyed looking adults

We tried one other (smaller) hot spring, but that one was just as packed. So…. We ate some cake and drank some coffee and then drove the 2 hours back to Krakow (traffic wasn’t bad on the way back!).

I did get to see the wood cottages though! Unfortunately, the mountains surrounding Zakopane were hidden in the falling snow so we didn’t get to see that either

So that’s how we spent our last day in Poland …

On the bright side, I did manage to mail our postcards while we were there, so if you get a postcard from Poland from us, we drove 5 hours to get those to ya!!!!

I’m just going to have to come back to Poland some day to see Zalipie!

One thought on “Day 23: Zakopane; ZakoPAIN!”

  1. We visited Krakow long time ago, definitely need to re-visited this lovely city. We are from Slovakia and our country has a lot of thermal spas as well. They have 2 things with Polish spas in common: you cannot rent the towels and if you plan on visiting during weekend or holidays, they are always packed.. next time make sure to visit during the week and you will love it 🙂

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