Today was a total travel day as we needed to cover some 260 miles which is s pretty big distance in Europe if one doesn't ride the equivalent of an interstate highway. I set the GPS to avoid toll roads and interstates and off we went under threatening skies.
The route took us south from Turnov past the now familiar blockage that I figured out a detour around and then we rode on the 35 road and eventually headed more easterly. About 2 hours later we crossed the Polish border. From a riding perspective, the only thing that changed was the language. The road conditions were comparable to the Czech Republic, but a notch down from the German road quality. The villages were frequent and interesting.
Around noon we stopped in a major town that had a mall and an ATM and I withdrew $50 Polish Zloty not realizing how little it was in US dollars (about $12). But it was enough to allow us to get a quick lunch at McDonald's and use their WIFI. I also used Booking.Com to find a room for the next two nights for about $38US per night.
We rode on for a couple more hours past another unsigned blockage, and I found my way around it using some off pavement riding for about a mile. We then found a little village that had an ATM and I did a bigger withdrawal so that we could refuel the motorcycle.
We arrived in Oswiecim around 5:30pm and found our pension called Zajazd Skorpion which is only a few kilometers from the two Auschwitz Concentration camps. The pension is clean and neat and the proprietor allowed us to park behind the building. As he had a group of Asian tourists booked for dinner we couldn't eat until 8pm after they left. So we settled into our cozy little room with the biggest bathroom door I have ever seen.
After dinner I arranged for us to stay for a third night so we could spend one day seeing Auschwitz and the other seeing the famous Salt Mine. These are the two most famous tourist attractions in the area. During and after dinner we watched Brazil beat Serbia in the World Cup.
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