The Tatra Mountains

We spent the last day in Krakow visiting the Salt Mine at Wieliczka. A fascinating trip down into a mine which has been worked for over 400 years and contains many sculptures in salt and several chapels, which the miners created so that they could pray, for safety before and during their long shifts.
We then spent the Corpus Christi public holiday staying on a small and rather primitive site in the Carpathian foothills beside a large reservoir.

As the site was very cheap and located right beside the lake with a bar and boats to hire, it was quite popular with the locals some of whom were camping and an even larger number arrived as day visitors.
We went out for a ride on the bikes on Thursday morning and found ourselves following large church processions in two villages we passed through.

This morning, after a heavy thunder storm in the night, the morning brightened up and we moved on to Zakopane. This weekend seems to be the start of the school holidays here so every Polish man and his family seemed to be heading into Zakopane. However we located the campsite we were looking for and then caught a bus into the town centre. Zakopane is very much geared to the tourists with souvenir stalls by the thousand, a kind of Polish version of Blackpool's Golden Mile. A major highlight seemed to be the opportunity to bungee jump, hanging by the ankles, from a large crane! The Tatra Mountains form the backdrop to the town, although the cloud was a bit low this afternoon.

Tomorrow we plan to take the funicular railway up to the top of a local peak from where the Tatra range can be more easily viewed.