Anne and Maddy - Our Travel Adventures: Slovakia, Lithuania, Poland, & Home - Oct. 27

We spent a couple days relaxing at Thom's place, Penzion Europa, in Osturna, Slovakia. He's planning a 2019 tour of Osturna and the region. If you're interested, we can tell you it will be full of great scenery, great food, comfy accommodations and learning interesting facts. (This is an unpaid endorsement. ) On Tuesday we headed north in Thom's snazzy new Skoda toward the Baltic region. We spent a night in congested Warsaw. The next day we drove to Kaunas, Lithuania, which is a lovely town with brick homes with steep roofs. The time jumped an hour ahead, surprising us. Anne thinks it will be one of the new destinations for many tourists with its many English speakers, cobbled stone streets, shops, old town square and historic buildings. We planned to visit Latvia and Estonia, but the continual rain convinced us to return to the Penzion. On the way home we stayed 20 minutes outside of Warsaw at the visited Hotel Mansor in Zabki, Poland, just outside Warsaw. It is a new hotel built in a fine old manner. The employees were so friendly. We picked up Perun from the dog hotel in Krakow and returned home.

Most of the week had clear sunny skies, and Thom took us on several day trips. We took the tram up to the Vysoke Tatry, which is a beautiful sight. We didn't take the next tram higher up because of the cloud cover. On Tuesday we saw the Three Crowns, the Dunajec River and the red monastery. The next day, Halloween, we went to beautiful medieval Levoca and saw the Spis Castle,a UNESCO site, built in the 12th century. We lunched at W Spisskych Bratrikou restaurant, and enjoyed our duck and pork. We enjoyed playing with some of their Halloween decorations. It was unusual to see those decorations which are so common in the US. We had an opportunity to see the lower and high Tatras when the sky was clear. It's spectacular. There was just a touch of snow on them. On All Saints Day, Thom and I visited with our cousins Jan Vanecko, his sons Janko and Peter and daughter-in-law Doreneka. Jan and I both choked back some tears and sobs when we greeted each other. This was my first visit with them since my cousin Katarina's (Jan's wife) sudden unexpected death last year. Sad times. The next morning Thom took us to the bus stop for our 2-hour drive to Krakow's main train/bus station.

We enjoyed Krakow yesterday. It was so lovely, a 'must see' for any traveler. Anne rates this city as her favorite old city and prettiest market square with the Cloth Hall (Sukienicza) in all of Europe. There were plenty of tourists, we heard many languages, we noticed so many young people. We met Gus, a retired American traveler who came from Guatemala 45 years ago. He's been traveling since February, and he expects to go home to Chicago in March. His son is teaching in Saudi Arabia. Gus visited Saudi Arabia, India, Jordan, Bangkok, all over the place. Krakow was the first cold place he'd been in in months, and needed to go buy a jacket. He speaks English, Spanish, some Polish, some Yiddish. He said he gets lonely sometimes, but he is outgoing and probably isn't lonely for long. We wished him good travels. What a journey!

Well our time is up - we have an early flight from Krakow to Amsterdam to Detroit and will be home in about 18 hours. We know we are very fortunate to travel as we do. But we are already thinking about our travels next year.

Kaunas, Lithuania - Taking a walk in the evening after we arrived