Poland - Thursday and Friday (Wisla & Geocaching in Czechia)

Thursday, 26 October 2016

Out of necessity I have to try and make this a short update, because tomorrow we are travelling again and I don't see that I can do much until we are in France.  So, here goes:

On Thursday we took to bus to Wisla and spent most of the day there: walking, visiting another restaurant and searching for a few geocaches. 

Without a timetable waiting for the bus took very long, probably over an hour, but finally one turned up and we were in Wisla in no time.  At first Patricia was a bit disappointed, but as I never have expectations I am generally happy to explore.  As it was way past morning tea time we looked for a coffee shop and sat down with a lovely cappuccino in, again, very pleasant surroundings.  Patricia had a kind of apple slice, which she liked, and I was happy with just a coffee.

When rested we sorted out where we were and then started walking along the river to where we knew to find a few caches.

Just a beautiful building, looking like a Swiss chalet

The River Vistula (Wisla in Polish)

The caches were both close to the river and we found them without any problems.  One was again Johan's, so we only had one more to find of the 7 that he has hidden.  It is such a pleasure walking here in autumn.  The parks are full of fallen leaves and it really smells like autumn!

#1773 - Aleja Podań i Legend Śląska Cieszyńskiego

#1774 - 1000 km Wisły w 25 fotografiach, na 100 m brzegu

When finished caching we walked past some mosaics in the park and since we were hungry we looked for a small restaurant where we could have lunch.  Everything is so cheap here, it would be ridiculous to carry sandwiches all the time and this way we get to sample the local food, which is even better...

The restaurant, U Zosi, was delightful. As you can see in the pictures, it looks like all the furniture comes from Ikea, and it is very light and airy.  We had some kind of soup with eggs, but it tasted more like mushroom soup.  It was just delicious.  Afterwards we had hot chips and red cabbage salad.  As there was a bit of mix-up with ordering we apparently didn't have to pay for the latter, because it didn't appear on the bill.  Only the soup and cappuccino...  

Once outside we walked on and discovered a street with shops, again like market stalls.  Patricia bought another pair of socks as hers had shrunk in the dryer and I fell for a lovely jumper that came with a necklace.  In the end the poor lady offered me also 3 Zloti off the price, which, in Australian dollars, is already very cheap.

We walked through the street, towards the main road where we took pictures of the ski slopes and then found a bus that would bring us back to Ustron.

At home we put our feet up after all the walking and had simple sandwiches for our evening meal as I don't like two full hot meals per day.

Friday, 27 October 2017

Johan picked us up at 8:30 for a day of geocaching.  Unfortunately it started with rain and ended with rain and for me was not a pleasant day at all, because I hate rain in the first place and going out searching for caches in the rain is not my idea of a day out, but.....  we couldn't turn down Johan's offer of course and he had to walk through the rain as much as we did, so I much appreciated that side of the day.  We also had the chance of crossing the border into the Czech Republic and I did not want to fore go the chance of another (geocaching) country souvenir.  Patricia would have killed me! ;-)

So, we looked for caches, had coffee together and later on lunch at another great restaurant.  Patricia and Johan went for an omelet, but I couldn't go past a meal of liver with onions with the trimmings.  Call me mad, but I just love liver!

We visited Cieszyn on the Polish side and viewed the Czech side of Cieszyn from the castle walls.

The towers of the castle

Johan and Patricia

From there we crossed the border, and after we had found a number of caches (and didn't find a number as well) we crossed the border back into Poland.  The river functions as the border at this stage.

Soaking wet and still smiling...

and back into Poland

After lunch I showed Johan some of the geocaching tools we use.  Johan has only started a year ago, we are 'old hat'. :-)

And next I have the list of caches that we found in Poland and in the Czech Republic.

#1775 - Kościół w Goleszowie

#1776 - Stacja kolejowa - Goleszów

Just the logbook, it was to wet to walk back for a picture

#1777 - ieszyńska zajezdnia tramwajowa

#1778 - 2.Kostel Nejsvetejsiho srdce Jezisova

#1779 - Urad prace v Ceskem Tesine

Just a note was left.  This one had apparently disappeared

#1780 - Studnia Trzech Braci w Cieszyn

Johan's 7th (and last) cache we found, so we needed a picture of him at this location

Logging the cache

#1781 - 1200 lat Cieszyna

As I mentioned there were a few that we couldn't find and I was happy to give up, because by the end I was soaking wet and started to feel cold and miserable. 

Just a few more pictures of Patricia searching:

When done we walked back to the car and made our way back home as Johan had to drop off his wife somewhere.  A quick dash into the supermarket for Patricia, who needed some food for the evening and then: home!  I was so grateful that we could turn the central heating on and get dry and hung out the clothes to dry.  My shoes will hopefully be dry tomorrow when we are taking the bus back to Krakow, because there is no newspaper here, which normally works wonders when you want to dry shoes...

For the evening meal we made ourselves 'tostis', always a life saver when you don't want much, but need a warm meal or get rid of stale bread. ;-)