But before I leave the subject behind, lets pay a visit to one of my favourite Polish cities, the somewhat overlooked Lublin in Poland's southeast.
As I wrote in Lonely Planet's Eastern Europe book, Lublin would make a nice substitute for the wildly popular Kraków when the latter city's tourist crowds are too much to cope with.
Like Kraków, Lublin has a beautiful Old Town, an impressive castle, and good drinking and dining; but it's not overwhelmed with visitors and the pace is slower.
So here's a snapshot of Lublin, created by gathering together all my postings to Twitter during my stay in the city (with a glimpse of a day trip to nearby Zamość)...
- Bloody hell! What looms above the skylight of my hotel room here in Lublin, Poland? And has it been fed? 2:43 PM Jun 21st
- Ah, the trolleybus... combines all the disadvantages of both bus and tram travel in a single ungainly vehicle. 5:36 PM Jun 21st
- With the A$ so strong, I should be saving cash... but here I am at the Grand Hotel Lublinianka (and it's only costing me $90 a night!). 5:53 PM Jun 21st
- Well that's a record - the iPhone's battery almost drained by 10:45am. Apple should be ashamed of its non-removable battery's poor life. 6:42 PM Jun 21st
- Just located Lublin's first modern backpacker hostel... nice. Always satisfying to add something good and new to the LP book. 8:33 PM Jun 21st
- In the basement of my hotel, the Lublinianka, is a classy sauna; but not in the Lubyanka, the KGB's ex-HQ. Important not to mix them up. 4:58 AM Jun 22nd
- The colour-coded Renaissance facades of Zamość; founded the same time as Shakespeare was writing his stuff. 7:12 PM Jun 22nd
- You know, you can have too much runny scrambled egg in your life. Hotel breakfasts more impressive in theory than reality, aren't they? 3:11 PM Jun 23rd
- Behold the Fiat Polski, the standard car of Poland's communist era. It's about the size of a matchbox. 4:20 PM Jun 23rd
- On the road (or rails) again... off to Przemyśl next. Nice day for it! 5:14 PM Jun 23rd
