Zakopane

Dave and I, went to Zakopane this weekend. Zakopane is in the Tatra mountains in southern Poland, and is a well known Polish ski resort. We stayed in a cozy hotel with comfortable beds: our hotel in London could stand to take a few lessons from the Patria hotel on what a REAL three star hotel is like.

We took the express train to Zakopane Friday afternoon. On Saturday, we explored the local town architecture, which included a small wooden church (that has a greek orthodox spire top), and a traditional Zakopane-style villa:
We also went shopping in the towns market place. We got Dave a fur-lined leather hat (there's a picture of the new hat below), a sheep skin rug to keep under his computer desk, and I got a new scarf and knitted hat. We got pictures of the cheese market: the vendors are selling a smoked unpasterized cheese called 'Oscypek'. Fried cheese is a local specialty. The picture below is ALL cheese: the cheese is molded into different shapes, and the color differences come from how long the cheese is smoked.After the shopping expedition, we rode the cable car up to the top of a ski hill, and had lunch at one of the small restaurants on the mountain. We had soup and pierogis for lunch, as well as hot-spiked beverages. As a side note, all restaurants in the region seem to have about 2 pages of food and 5 pages of hot beverages with alcohol. We tried mulled wine, mulled beer, hot mead, hot chocolate with rum, and something called 'mountain tea.' We think that this was a tea bag left to steep in a mug of vodka. Here's a picture of us at the top of the mountain, with the town below.
Our next adventure was a sleigh ride. We all loaded into horse-drawn sleighs, were covered with fur-lined blankets, and then went for a ride out to a typical 'goral' cabin outside of town. One the way back, all the sleighs used torches to light their way.
The 'gorals' are the local mountain people of the Tatra mountains, and they had a distinct culture unto themselves. We had goral drivers . At the cabin, they had a fire lit and waiting for us to roast our own Kielbasas. We had hot honey tea to go with the sausages (oddly enough for the region, this tea did not appear to be spiked in any way). Finally, the gorals demonstrated a few local dances for us. I really liked the traditional dress:Believe it or not, two hours after this the group went and ate AGAIN. Melissa went to bed early suffering from a horse allergy, but Dave finished off the day with food followed by drink. Sunday's brunch involved a visit to restaurant that has found about 100 different ways to serve fish. Then, thoroughly stuffed and relaxed, we boarded the train back to Warsaw.