Today are visiting the Tatra National Park to visit Morskie Oko or Eye of the Sea.
The park is 14 miles from our hotel. The research I did told me that we should leave early in the morning to beat the crowds. This is a very popular place.
We left our hotel to get some breakfast. Nothing open before 8 am. The desk clerk suggested a bakery that was close by. It was permanently closed. We found a grocery store that was open. We loaded up on good stuff and went back to the room to eat and grab whatever gear we needed. I couldn’t pass up the freshly made paczki from the store.
The white mini bus that we needed to catch would stop at the same bus stop we were at yesterday for the city bus. The private busses like this only take cash. I stopped at an atm before hand and got 100 zloty. Enough to get there and to get back.
The bus arrived in a few minutes. A “ Morskie Oko” sign was on the dashboard. This was our bus. The driver told me that it is 15 zloty each and that I pay on the way off the bus. The ride was about 40 minutes up mountain roads. Lots of traffic, slow speeds. When we were near the park the driver yelled something in Polish and then looked in the rear view mirror for responses. No idea what he said. No one responded. I paid the driver and asked which sign would be on the return bus. Zakopane was his response. The city isn’t that big so I felt comfortable that we would get back ok.
We paid a few to get into the National Park and were off to Morskie Oko. The path to the lake is 9km uphill. Fun! We would be doing 18k at the park. I can tell you from running days that 10k is 6.2 miles.
Very few folks on the road at 8:30 am. Maybe the rain earlier this morning scared them away. I had on a t shirt and shorts. Terri had quite a bit more on and also carried a backpack with water and raincoats. That was my job in a previous life.
The walk up was nice. We passed a few areas with porta potties. The shear number of them told me that this road gets crowded. No crowds yet. Those that don’t want to walk can take a horse drawn wagon for most of the way. One or two passed us on the way up.
2 hours late we were rewarded with these views.
Quite a few people at the top. More than I expected to see this early. We spent about 30 mins at the top and started back down. Much easier going downhill. There were now loads of people coming up. Families, groups of kids, old folks. They were everywhere. Many horse drawn wagons were passing us. This walk gets about 50,000 visitors each year.
The walk down was another 2 hours. A bus was waiting and off we went. Muscles were hardening on the way back and it was tough getting off at our stop.
We walked back to the hotel and decided to have dinner in the middle of the afternoon right at the hotel. Great food once again.
We returned to the street for some ice cream and yes who could pass up potato chips on a stick?
