That day finally came.\u00a0 We had breakfast one last time in Zakopane and then packed up to return to Krakow.\u00a0 I\u2019m not ready to return to normal life yet.\u00a0 Vacation has been exciting and wonderful.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen so much.<\/p>\n
We could see the front of the hotel from our windows.\u00a0 So we sat in the living room reading until the van arrived to carry us north to the hotel by the airport.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t have any plans made for how we would spend the afternoon.\u00a0 I just knew we would be near the airport for our early departure.<\/p>\n
Our driver pulled into the driveway and got turned around before I knew he was there.\u00a0 We gathered up our stuff and locked up the room.\u00a0 Rich went on down to meet the guy.\u00a0 I dropped off the key and to say good-bye.\u00a0 I said, \u201cDziekuka,\u201d which is thank you in Polish.<\/p>\n
Outside, our driver, David, was putting the first of the suitcases into the van.\u00a0 This is not the same David as our trip to Rudy Rysie.\u00a0 My suitcase weighed a ton today.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure why.\u00a0 I only added a couple of things.\u00a0 Of course, I had most of the dirty clothes in my bag.\u00a0 He put it into the van without much trouble, so I didn\u2019t have to be too embarrassed.<\/p>\n
David explained that he was going to take the country roads back up to Krakow.\u00a0 There was a lot of construction on the main road.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t in a big hurry so seeing more of the countryside was OK with us.\u00a0 David lived on the southside of Krakow and said he usually did the run from Zakopane to Krakow.\u00a0 He had a head start anyway by being on that side of town.<\/p>\n
We went through some beautiful little villages.\u00a0 David explained that one of the villages was probably the oldest in this area.\u00a0 All of the homes were wood log structures.\u00a0 You could easily see that the houses were much older than the ones around them.\u00a0 The houses and the barns are one structure here as well.<\/p>\n
We left the mountains for a valley for a bit before we started to climb back up the other side.\u00a0 There were meadows with grazing cows.\u00a0 Here the cows have a chain attached to their neck with a weight on the other end of the chain.\u00a0 David said this was to discourage the cows from wandering away.\u00a0 Cows tend to be lazy and I image pulling the weight would make them think twice about moving too much.<\/p>\n
We made it into Krakow in good time.\u00a0 It only took us an hour and 40 minutes from Zakopane.\u00a0 I was worried about traffic and the horror stories of 6 hours traffic jams.\u00a0 I guess I didn\u2019t have to worry after all.\u00a0 As we came up from the south and headed to the airport, we saw the monastery on the mountain.\u00a0 We had seen this while touring Kosciuszko\u2019s Mound earlier with Marcin and Aneta.\u00a0 We had a good idea of where we were in relationship to downtown.<\/p>\n
I had made reservations at the Hilton Garden Inn by the airport.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t realize it was directly across from the terminal building.\u00a0 So much for having to figure out how to get there.\u00a0 We could just walk across the street!\u00a0 We said good-bye to David and went in to register.<\/p>\n
This morning, Rich was starting to have some trouble with his back.\u00a0 By the time we got to our hotel by the airport, he was really having trouble.\u00a0 We got upstairs to our room and he sat down.\u00a0 That was a mistake.\u00a0 After a bit, he was able to get up and take Ibuprofen.\u00a0 Then he crawled into bed to stretch out and wait for it to take effect.\u00a0 While he slept, I got checked into our flight, boarding passes printed, and toured around the hotel a bit.\u00a0 It\u2019s a pretty basic hotel with few amenities.\u00a0 It\u2019s just for overnight and then we move on to Frankfurt.<\/p>\n
Later, Rich got up and we walked along the road by the terminal to see where we go for departures in the morning.\u00a0 We needed to be over at the terminal by 8:30 in the morning to check bags and figure out where our plane was.\u00a0 That will seem pretty early for us after vacationing all this time.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, we fly into Frankfurt.\u00a0 We\u2019ll have the afternoon and evening to go downtown and look around.\u00a0 I figure we\u2019ll eat dinner down there and be back at the hotel to sleep.\u00a0 Our flight leaves later in the day on Wednesday.\u00a0 At least we won\u2019t be rushing all over the place to catch planes and get through securit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That day finally came.\u00a0 We had breakfast one last time in Zakopane and then packed up to return to Krakow.\u00a0 I\u2019m not ready to return to normal life yet.\u00a0 Vacation has been exciting and wonderful.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen so much. We could see the front of the hotel from our windows.\u00a0 So we sat in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3825,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824\/revisions\/3825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}