After the excitement yesterday evening in seeing England beat Sweden to go through to the semis, it was back to earth with a bump today. Staying in a mediaeval castle thing in Poland where nobody speaks English, and we speak no Polish is interesting! Sitting in the banqueting hall for breakfast, it was difficult to know what to eat, and how much, as the waitress kept bringing more dishes out, and we didn't know when she would stop! Checking out obviously had to be conducted with Google translate.
While loading the car, I did a quick tyre check, only to find that the offside rear was showing the bead in the outside, despite having almost full tread on the rest of the tyre. As you can imagine, accessing the spare wheel with everything we need for the trip sat on top of the release bolt was a challenge. Fortunately with the way the bikes are packed, under a parcel shelf meant that after sliding the bikes out we could get to the bolt.
With the spare wheel limited to 130kph, we were lucky to get to 90 on the roads that Google decided to use for our route to Košice. As usual we were the only people in the country following the speed limits, and we found a new problem, with Essie not wanting to change up a gear. So maybe Google had a plan for us, and we didn't need to go above 3000 revs anyway. We are hoping when the tyres are sorted the gearbox will be happy again.
The south of Poland brought some exciting scenery as we met the slightly mountainous region bordering Slovakia. Its been a long time since we saw anything that wasn't flat on our trip. Two nights obviously wasn't enough to experience Poland properly, but we've appreciated the low cost of fuel - we saw it for less than £1 per litre for diesel at one place.
The crossing at the border was uneventful, as it was unmanned, so that left us looking for a garage to buy a vignette (used as payment for road use in some countries). We stopped at the first garage we saw, and asked for a vignette via the usual phone screen technique, and were dismissed with a grunt and a wave that translated as "Not here, please leave!". Internet magic saved us any further dismissals, as Emily found and paid for the vignette online.
We reached Košice a little later than planned with our slow travel, but at least we made it! We checked into the apartment easily, parking in a small private gated courtyard, and the kids had the remains of yesterday's huge pizzas heated up for tea before we went out for a quick explore.
Košice has a small city centre, with beautiful architecture, and we are just five minutes walk from the main street. Our plan was to just spend an hour, and this was easily filled with a photo contest between our camera phones and Felix's Nikon. The setting sun gave us spectacular skies as a backdrop for the old buildings, and it was just dark enough to appreciate the light and sound display in the fountains. We walked along until we happened to see an ice cream seller, and couldn't resist when it's €3.70 for four large ice creams. It makes us wonder how much they would be outside of the main tourist area!
So tomorrow's plan is flexible, as we don't yet know how long it will take to sort the car out - I'll be looking for somewhere on Google that's nearby with decent reviews, and hopefully a helpful English speaker!
Published on Monday 9 July 2018
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