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Poland Trip - 2004
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Lee and Michie @ Ksiasz Castle in Western Poland.
Feb. 23, 2004
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Poland was beyond everything I had ever imagined. A most beautiful country with wonderful people. I was truly impressed with Poland's history and landscape. To be walking on roads that were centuries old made me wonder how many kings and famous Poles had walked on these same paths.
We visited Warsaw, Wroclaw, Kraskow, Swidnice, Walbrysz, Promnice, Oswiecim, The Birkenau Concentration Camp, Paszkowce, Zakopane, Chocholow, The Wieliczka Salt Mine, and finally Krakow.
We visited Ksiasz Castle, one of Poland's oldest and largest castles, we spent the night in the royal palaces of Kraskow and Wezykow, had lunch at the royal hunting lodge at Promnice. In Swidnice, we visited the beutiful and interesting Church of Peace, one of Poland's oldest free-standing wooden churches. We spent three days in Zakopane, Poland's most beautiful ski resort. While in Zakopane, we visited Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church. This church was built in honor of Pope Paul's recovery from the assination attempt on his life in the 1980's. The hand crafted wood-work by the local citizens is really spectacular. While in Chocholow, we visited the studio of Jan Zieder, one of Poland's most famous wood sculptures. We rode the railway tram up to the top of Mount Gubolowka. The views of the entire Zakopane Valley are to incredible to describe. Zakopane has excellant resturaunts and shopping areas and offers a very wide variety of "things to do".
On our way to Krakow, we stopped in Wieliczka to tour the famous salt mine with its hundreds of underground chapels and carvings all in salt. The last three days of our tour were spent in Krakow, the home of Poland's greatest master artworks.
The artwork in all of the these places was incredible, especially the stone sculpturing, wood-carving, and masonry work. Having a mechanical "mindset", I kept asking myself: "How in the Hell did they do that?" The craftsmanship and skill from hundreds of years ago is incredible and amazing.
For Michie and me, the weather was very unique, most of the people in our tour were from Michigan and Illinois, so the winter weather was no big deal. The temperature never went above 35 degrees F (+2C) and except for the first day and night, it snowed almost every day. I thought it was wonderful but Michie wasn't to crazy about it. Our California clothes didn't hold-up to well. The winds cut right through our sweat pants. Our final three days in Kracow were covered in snow, over 17 inches. I'm just glad that we didn't have to do the driving, we had our very own tour bus and driver for the whole tour.
One of the big highlights for my brother (Bob) and I was being able to visit the town that our Dad was born in (Zator). Our tour guide and the bus driver made a slight detour so that we could see Zator. Unfortunately, it was dark when we got there and my pictures didn't turn out to well. But at least we were there and I know that our Dad and all of our Uroda ancestors were smiling down on us.
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