In Poland
My family bitches about travelling by air but this trip reminded me all the bad things about doing that level of mileage by car: severe lack of sleep and chronic pain in the bum that after 24 hours no amount of shifting can alleviate. We've been here a few days now and I'm just beginning to fell that I've caught up on the sleep I missed. The journey itself was relatively uneventful. We only got lost once in the dead of night around a complicated junction mainly thanks to the fact that my parents forgot to bring any of the up to date maps we had (I swear they have too much faith in my map-reading ability that they forget that it's not magic and needs things like, say, maps) and the lack of attention that lack of sleep brings as dad continually sails serenely past all the exits we're meant to take and I serenely fail to plot alternative routes.

We're in a small town called Szczawnica in the Pieniny. The town isn't particularly nice or unice but the view of the mountains outside of my window is cool.

On Sunday we went for a walk along the Homole Canyon which was very pretty and a suitable short walk to ease one back into walking. I'd forgotten how nice walking is, I want to do more. I think if I can persuade my parents to go on a longer walk tomorrow, that would be good. We then ate a huge meal and then went to sleep. We then woke up and spent until 4am awake. We have no sleeping pattern.
On Monday we went into Nowy Sacz and put the car in for a service. We used the time we waited to do shopping. It's not particularly worth buying electronic goods in Poland as they're about as expensive as in England, sometimes more. However, being a bit more chilled makes it easier to shop and I bought myself a usb wifi stick because it turns out my work laptop doesn't come with wifi and also I bought a 1Gb mp3 player because if I hear any one of our car CDs one more time I will kill. We can make that work with the car radio thanks to one of those FM broadcasters dad owns. Also, we twisted my mother's arm and got her to buy herself walking shoes. In the past mum always used to be the least prepared for walking and used to both suffer the most and hold us back. Dad solved this by buying her a proper gore-tex jacket which, despite her objections, gets regular use and means we are all on a par for surviveability. So it was amusing to hear her try to justify not needing boots given that anytime she uses her coat is an occasion she will use her boots.
Today we went to see a property mum has her eye on buying in this region. We're not very decided about what to do. What we can agree is that investing in this region is a very good idea seeing as the Polish tourist trade (particularly skiing) is under-developed. The question is very much how. Also, our sleeping patterns seem to have just about realigned and we just about seem to have shaken the post travel tiredness.

We're staying in a hotel that is a Sanitorium. I'm sorry, I mean health spa. This is because there was no where else available. It's an old communist building and it's very cool (in the communist-is-cool-because-it's-history-and-I-don't-have-to-live-with-it way). Mum rented an apartment rather than a hotel room and it looks like the apartment was for the old communist important people. It is set up to be luxurious in this way that is like someone had only academically heard what luxury was like and tried to emulate it but actually missed the spirit completely. We have gold-plated taps and doornobs, a huge bath, lots of space and the beds are comfortable but it lacks all the actual final touches that would make it a comfortable place to be. Clearly you are meant to impressed and happy at how important having gold-platted taps makes you. Fortunately, we're not going to be here long enough for that to affect us.