Maidens to be Rescued

We may have returned to Krakow, but it wasn't quite the end of the cycling. The city lends itself quite well to exploration by cycle, and we saw some great sights on our cycle tour.

As we approached the Vistula River, we came across the Krakow dragon guarding his cave. Nowadays he is a huge metal fire breathing structure, but in his heyday he was a real terror and brought great fear to the neighbourhood as he chased and, more often than not killed, livestock and young ladies, virgins being his particular favourites.

Can you see us in our picture? We'll give you a clue, we're as far as we can be from his fiery breath.

Our guide Jakub told us the story of the dragon. A local shoemaker's apprentice, named Krakus, rid his people of the dragon by a clever ruse involving using a sheep as bait and sulphur paste. To cut a long story short, when the dragon ate the sulphur coated sheep, he developed such a thirst that he drank enough water to swell him up to a size which caused him to burst and die. There was a great rejoicing and Krakus was hailed a hero. In fact he became Prince Kakus and the city which became Krakow was named after him.

We were lucky that during our short visit the dragon breathed real fire for us. Apparently, if you turn up at night, you can sometimes wait a long time to see him breathe fire, but there is an option to text the dragon from your mobile phone and set off the fire breathing. We think it it worth seeing, and rather than have our readers miss out, we're going to attempt a first (for us) in our blog and include a video clip of our friend, the Krakow dragon, breathing his fire. Hope it works and you like it.



Lots of love, George & Yorkie xxx

More New Friends

After our rafting trip we were very hungry, so we found ourselves a pleasant Slovakian restaurant to try a traditional meal of bread dumplings and goulash. It was hearty fare and it went down very well. It certainly stopped us being grizzly bears. After our refuelling it was time to make some new friends. First had to be a local bear. He was giving one of the locals such a big bear hug that we had to sit patiently and wait our turn. He was a lot bigger than us but we reminded ourselves that 'size isn't everything' and so we didn't feel in any way inferior. Were we wrong not to be scared, given how close we were sitting to those teeth?


The next friendly looking local who we stopped to greet, was one of the boatmen. He didn't look quite as modern as the two chaps who had poled us an hour or so earlier, but we bet with his age and experience he had a tale or two to tell.


Unfortunately we didn't have time to hang around to listen to his tales, as it was time to cycle along the Pieniny Way, a cycle path carved out of the cliff running the whole length of the Dunajec Gorge which we had seen from the raft earlier. Only cyclists and walkers can use the path so it was great to cycle away from the traffic and have time to stop and enjoy the spectacular scenery.

At the end of the way, we crossed back into Poland. There were some border guards at this crossing point but they were too interested in their conversation to give our bearports more than a cursory glance and no stamp was offered.

That evening we stayed in a spa town with another rather unpronounceable name - Szczawanica. Here we found a great squirrel - he was great not only in personality but also in size. We wasted no time making his acquaintance in the hope he would tell us the best places to visit and the best restaurant to eat in.


Lots of love, George, Yorkie and squirrel xxx