We recently returned to California after 16 days in Poland (first trip there). We spent 4 nights in Warsaw (totally worth seeing. I was not expecting much but was quite impressed. It's a lovely, clean, landscaped, growing city) and then rented a car and headed east. We stopped in Kazimierz Dolny, then to Lublin, where we stayed overnight. Then we drove to Zamosc and stayed there overnight. Next was Sanok. We arrived later and stayed because we wanted to see the skansen or ethnographic museum (open air museum with recreated villages). Then we drove to Krynica Zdroj, a lovely Victorian spa town where tourists go to "take the waters." From there we went to Zakopane, a ski town that we really enjoyed even though we were there in late September. Loved the architecture and "Zakopane-style." We arrived in Wadowice around 4 PM on our last night before Krakow. We are Catholic and wanted to see the John Paul 2 sites, but because we planned to tour Auschwitz the next morning, we also stayed there since the two are only 30 minutes apart. Not much is going on in Wadowice outside the main square, but the location worked for us. We toured Auschwitz, then went straight to Krakow. Husband drove me to our fabulous AirBnB and then dropped the car off a few blocks away. We spent the remainder of our trip in Krakow. We had a fabulous time. Poland has big, beautiful highways. However, taking our path often required smaller, over the meadow and through the woods type of driving, which was beautiful though sometimes tiring.
Happy to answer any specific questions, but all of this is worth seeing.
