5: ...and sleet was blowing in all directions!

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So, finally I got a glimpse of what it's all about. Following my nose...the smell of multiple outdoor food outlets all busy grilling meat is quite unmistakeble....I found the main "market" area. It's like a giant craft market, with hand ( and machine) knitted goods in "local" wool, leather goods, sheepskinwares, embroidered goods, traditional felt slippers, local style shoes, and lots and lots of tat. Cheek by jowl with these stalls are all sorts of bars, cafe's, restaurants and entertainments and offers of carriage rides driven by men in traditional Tatra costume.

Once through all of this I found the base station for one of the area's funicular railways. It rises up to a ridge about 1100 metres above sea level, and only costs £4.00 return!

At the top there's a road along the ridge that rivals Blackpool's seafront! Souveniers including "have your photo taken with a "bear" or a mountain dog (the local version of a Saint Bernard)", try your skill at any number of adventurous pursuits....

....eat as much grilled meat as you can manage, buy whatever you like so long as it has "Zakopane" written on it, or (if your tastes don't run to the entertainment on offer) sit on a terrace and sip, beer or coffee, or tea (they drink more tea here than coffee) and look out over the valley and the panorama of the Tatra mountains in the distance.

As it was much clearer than it had been the previous day, I also took advantage of the opportunity to walk off the main road and into the forest a little, whre I found (and ,of course, ate) wild raspberries! Talking of eating, I saw wild mushrooms for sale again, and some very strange looking loaves and cakes (many of them grilled in little stalls, which I soon gathered was a type of local ewes milk cheese. It's grilled/smoked to preserve it and tasted very good (and it's cheap). Apparantly it's a favoured snack locally and you'll see people buying it by the bag full, or wandering around eating it hot with cranberry sauce (cranberries are also local, growing in the peaty soil on the slopes around the pine forests)

I thought I knew better than the guide book when it said "buy your tickets at the tourist office because there are often long queues" so I didn't bother.....big mistake. One and a half hours (apparantly that's a short wait, on really busy days the wait can be up to two and a half hours) queueing for the cable car to take me to the top of one of the nearby peaks. Kasparowy Wierch is at 1900 plus metres above sea level (about one fifth the height of Everest).

It takes two rides in a large capacity cable car to get there, but when you get there it's worth it. The views are breathtaking.

But it was cold (0 degrees, as opposed to 12 degrees at the base), and after just a very short while the clouds started to close in ....

.....and before I knew what was happening it was white out and sleet was blowing in all directions and I retreated back to the cable car station, and back down to the relative warmth (and heavy rain) at the base station, cursing all the while because if I had just paid attention to the guide book I'd have had a good hour of clear skies and good light.

In spite of the weather, however, and because it's a lot warmer further down, I decided to take advantage of the sign I noticed to one side of the cable car station..."Tatra National Park...entrance".