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Day Trip from Wroclaw?

Has anybody any recommendation for a day trip out of Wroclaw. In July I will have 2-1/2 days in Wroclaw. Arriving mid-day on a Friday, leaving by train early morning on Monday for Warsaw. By train. I would be interested in a day trip for one of those days? I am sure there is plenty to see and do in Wroclaw. But I always enjoy seeing something other than the “big”. Thoughts? Suggestions? Thanks in advance!

JimD

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Car service or package tour to Churches of Peace?

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Ksiaz Castle. Directions for traveling from Wroclaw to the castle by train/bus are on the Ksiaz Castle website. (We rented a car for the day so we could visit this castle and the Church of Peace in Swidnica.) There are tours from Wroclaw that include transportation. You can check on the Get Your Guide website; if you find a tour you are interested in scroll down until you find the name of the provider and see if you can reserve directly with them.

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Here’s a cut and paste entry from my Sept 2022 RS Poland trip report about a day trip we took from Wroclaw to Ksiaz Castle and Church of Peace in Swidnica.

For our last full day in Poland I booked a day trip through Viator for a Jewels of Lower Silesia tour ($112/pp, ~8 hrs) taking us to Ksiaz palmhouse (30min), Ksiaz Castle (3 hrs, castle audioguide & Underground tour), and the Church of Peace in Swidnica (45min). It wasn’t slated to rain in Wroclaw for the day, but since we were heading further west and closer to the mountains we experienced rain and sprinkles for most of the day while touring. We met our driver at the communicated location just outside the Old Town at around 8:30am, and although I was expecting this to be shared small group tour it ended up being just us and the driver in a small car. Our driver/guide spoke good English and he was able to share some basic history/information on our ~1.5hr drive to Ksiaz. We first stopped at the palmhouse for a quick walk thru the greenhouse (a pretty normal indoor botanical garden), it was raining pretty good at this point so we didn’t explore the garden any further. Then we headed to the Castle where we had timed entry tickets for the Underground tour. We ended up being a couple minutes late for the start of the tour and had to catch up with others in the group. The Underground tour was in Polish but we were given audio language guide that was timed to change scenes as we entered into each new room. I found the Underground tour part of the castle to be rather dull, especially since they still don’t even have hard facts about what the system of underground tunnels was used for during WWII. The underground tour was about 45 min long, then we climbed our way back up to the main Castle area. We entered into the front of the lovely Ksiaz Castle, checked our coats and umbrellas and got our audioguides. We followed our audioguide thru the castle for about 1.5 hrs and there were also various museum exhibits and literature to read in some of the rooms. At the end of the castle tour we exited into the garden areas surrounding the castle at different terrace levels and made a leisurely loop around the castle for pictures. Luckily it had stopped raining by this time so we got to enjoy our views. We found our driver in the parking lot and we headed out for our next destination in Swidnica.

cont'd on next post

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Cont'd:

We entered Swidnica town right during afternoon rush hour and there was a lot of road construction going on, so it probably took us longer than normal to get to the Church. We parked on a side street then our driver guide escorted us to the Church of Peace explaining some of the history, walked us around the site extents and then accompanied us inside. We were given a very detailed English flyer explaining all about the Church, and there was a narration playing over a loud speaker that alternated between Polish and English. So between the flyer and the narration we got a good overview. I’ve honestly never seen anything like this Church before. We learned that the Peace Churches (the one in Swidnica being one of 3 originally built in this region) were built during a time when Protestants were not allowed to have their own places of worship, and only due to a change in governance were they allowed to finally build their own Church but it had to follow a strict set of guidelines: had to be paid for and built directly by the congregation, could only use temporary materials like wood, sod, thatch to construct the structure, no bell tower allowed, and the building had to be built in no more than 1 year. Since made of wood, the structure was not intended to last for a long period of time (fire risk and all), which makes it all the more amazing that this wooden church is still standing in its original condition over 400 years later. I found the interior to be spectacular and I couldn’t stop staring at all the intricacies of construction and architecture within. The church is 3 levels of almost solid pews, which meant that once filled with people the whole space warmed with body heat, which was a good thing since there was no other source of heat in the building (again, fire risk). We spent probably close to an hour at the Church, then headed back to Wroclaw for the evening, experiencing a lot of traffic getting back into town. It was probably close to 5pm by the time we got dropped off. We were pretty hungry by this point and wanted to have a nice last polish meal to end our vacation. We dined at Spitz, a historic tavern under the Town Hall and had a lovely filling meal (120zl/pp).