My husband and I traveled to Poland in October, visiting Warsaw, Gdansk, Torun, Poznan, Wroclaw, Krakow and Zakopane. With the exception of Zakopane, which is in the Tatra Mountains on the southern border, the country is flat and not particularly scenic. The Tatras, on the other hand, are beautiful, even more than I expected. The cities all had very attractive old towns. I usually like to plan trips with a variety of experiences, and I was a bit worried that this trip might be too much of the same thing. As it turned out, it was a lot of the same thing. But I have a thing for medieval old towns, and I was in the mood to soak up atmosphere, rather than see a lot of blockbuster sites, so I liked Poland a lot. For the most part we had beautiful weather, and we really enjoyed being outside.
Poland is a terrific value! This really added to the enjoyment for us. I couldn’t believe how cheap everything was. This was a welcome change from our trip last year (Switzerland). If you are looking to stretch your vacation dollar, consider Poland.
The Swiss and Germans have nothing on the Poles when it comes to trains. Every train we took left and arrived exactly on time. Why had I never heard this? Most of the trains are modern and very comfortable. Some of the regional trains are older, but just fine.
I am not crazy about Polish food. It is a little like German food – lots of sausage, cabbage, cheese, sauerkraut, and of course pierogis. I had some good pierogis and some that were pretty blah. Fortunately, Polish restaurants serve more than pierogis and cabbage, and there are a lot of Italian restaurants, so I managed to eat well. My husband loves Polish food, so he was very happy with the food. As for drinks, apparently the Poles are partial to hard liquor – and of course vodka! There is plenty of beer, which my husband prefers, and the beer was pretty good. Wine, on the other hand (which is my beverage of choice), is decidedly unpopular – a lot of menus didn’t even have wine on the menu. However, when I asked, they always had at least one red and one white wine. I’m not any kind of wine connoisseur, so I can’t tell you if it was great wine. All I can tell you is it was good enough for me. Also, some of the restaurants had hot wine, which was delicious and very welcome later in the trip when it got fairly cold. With the exception of Krakow and Zakopane, we did not see many bakeries and the ones we saw had mostly sweet desserts, as opposed to bread and breakfast stuff. This was a little disappointing. Also, I had looked forward to the gingerbread in Torun, but this was really disappointing – it was hard and not very gingery. Don’t go to Poland for the gingerbread.
I think Rick Steves describes the people very well. They don’t initiate contact (they are the least outgoing people I have ever been around), but if you approach them, they are very nice and helpful. I liked them a lot. It doesn’t seem to be a very diverse country, and the tourists weren’t diverse either. It was extremely rare to see anyone who was not Caucasian. On the positive side, we saw almost no Americans. Not meaning to disparage Americans; I like them, but I see them every day at home! English is not that wide spread in Poland. Everyone in the hotels speaks English, at least the ones we stayed in, but you cannot count on English anywhere else, even in the train stations. Many, if not most, of the young people know at least some English, but it’s hard to find an English speaker among the middle-aged and older. But enough about the common people. Let’s talk celebrities. Here are the big three – Pope John Paul II, Copernicus, and Chopin. A pretty good line-up, I would say. The Poles are very proud of these guys.
Now I’ll cover each place we visited in a separate post.