Krakow

After a routine start to the day retracing our steps away from the National Park, direction south, we make an exciting discovery...a green, grassy, beautifully landscaped area with rotunda, pond with water feature, and a table and chairs in the shade for our 'elevenses' stop!  Now this may not seem all that interesting to the man on the street, but as travellers who rely on breaks for the driver, we find it quite frustrating not to have regular pull-outs for  stretches, lunch, etc.

Roadworks again slow us down...we'd love to be in Poland in 5 or so years when all these roads are finished - it will be sensational!  It's orchards and market gardens with some grain crops as we drive across river flats towards Krakow.  An intermediate overnight at Sandomierz takes us to this beautiful old city on the top of a hill, of course!  It's history is fascinating and we climb up a hundred or so steps from the camping to explore the town square, basilica (closed)and ngs dating back to the 14th century.  Incidentally, we are welcomed to the camping by the owner's son on vacation from his post-grad studies in Antwerp, Belgium.  He lives in the Jewish sector of the city where the language is
French, he studies in English, and the language of the University is Dutch...  We have dinner at a Polish pizza restaurant in the town square listening to live music, and the pizza comes with ketchup!

Next day is cooler, which is more than ok with us...24C as we leave Sandomierz...and the wind has died down without bringing the threatened rain overnight.  We move from the river flats and market gardens into the hills about 60km from Krakow with grain and tobacco crops.  The traffic gets heavier and we think we are there when the signs to Krakow disappear to be replaced by destinations Warsaw and Katowice.  We haven't seen any camping signs so we stop at a huge shopping centre to see if we can buy a map of the city.

We do so much better than that!  At a book shop, called Empik, a chain like Dymocks, we find the most helpful staff.  They not only sell us a perfect map, but also print the directions to our camping from a local website...it happens to be just down the road!  We arrive in time to get access to one of the last electricity connections available.  It's a big park and almost full...some folk who arrive after us are located in the carpark for the night, caravans, campervans and tents!

We have directions to get ourselves into the city by bus tomorrow.  It will be a big day!