Poland

I visited the underground salt cathedral of Poland: the Wieliczka salt mine, and there I saw chandeliers made of salt, statues carved from rock salt, and looked around the chapel. I peered at stalactites and stalagmites, and licked the salt mine, and found it was salty indeed. I also saw pretty rocks glowing under UV.

In central Kraków, I wandered around the grounds of the Wawel castle, the Old Town and Kazimierz. I walked down into the dragon's den, but it was only afterwards that I saw a dragon breathing fire. In the Museum of Municipal Engineering, I stared at old printing presses and trams and learnt about the infrastructure of the city. I played Pinball Dreams on an Amiga and Duck Hunt on a NES.

I ate a lot of ice-cream, including wonderful flavours such as gooseberry, bueno, Smurf, kogel mogel, pesto, sweet burnt charcoal, semolina, rhubarb.

I visited the socialist realist district of Nowa Huta and stared up at the architecture. I visited a bunker in a former cinema and tried on a gas mask. I learnt about how the town was designed with nuclear war in mind and visited the Museum of Poland under the Communist Regime.

I took a trip to Zakopane. I stared out the window of a bus at the countryside on the way there and saw hay bales (grass bales?) that looked a bit like Cousin Itt. I also saw people dressed up in traditional costumes for Corpus Christi. I took a cable car above the trees and up into the mountains and oh, it was stunning. I ate some apple cake and some coffee there, and then went on a hike, moving from rock to rock as if I was a mountain goat. I was in awe of the mountains and the beautiful scenery. Back in Zakopane, I noticed a house that was upside down as I went past it on a bus, and then later found it and went inside. Everything was upside down in there and that delighted me. I also become temporarily upside down (or perhaps the right way up).