Oxford to Krakow

Monday 19th March 2010

Does it really take a whole day to travel anywhere, or does it just feel like it? Okay, staying in bed until 10am may feel like half the day is over to some of you, but it's an early start for me!

The flight was due to leave Stansted at 5pm. The satnav says that's about 1 hour 40 minutes away but I decided to leave no chances. I will never forget the holiday where I arrived at the check-in desk two minutes before it closed, after being stuck in traffic. I left home at about 11.45 and was at the Stansted car park by 1.30. I had booked a late deal with Pink Elephant parking, which operates out of the Hilton hotel. What a lovely start to the holiday, sitting down in the Hilton lobby for an hour, drinking coffee and talking with Marian, my travelling companion, and transferring some of her belongings into our shared case. (I packed so lightly, and Marian had even less. How did it ever come to exactly the 15 kg allowance? So fortunate I weighed it before leaving and decided I had more than my share, and took out my tiny torch and my boots.)

Standard travel - shuttle bus to the airport, queues to check in and get through security (and for a change i was not stopped and searched at security), long wait in a crowded lounge, 2-hour flight (on time leaving and early arriving) in crowded conditions, queues to get through passport control in Krakow. At the airport we were met and put into a mini bus with 4 other people who had booked the same deal we had, ready for the 30-minute drive to the hotel. We negotiated with the driver after he told us what time he'd be collecting us on Thursday. Instead of collecting us at 4:50, he'll do so at 6, which should still get us to the airport early for our 8.50 flight. Leaving 4 hours early would have been ridiculous.

We are staying at the Holiday Inn, very close to the centre of Krakow. This is an old building that has been renovated, leaving the original facade. We are on the ground floor, in Pokoje 62.

In my typical fashion, the first thing I did was rearrange the room. The two beds were only a few centimetres apart (look at the headboard), with an armchair and table and lamp beyond. Those three items fit perfectly next to the TV, which means the bed could be moved several metres over, against the wall. I wonder what housekeeping will think when they see it in the morning. We've been in hotels where I change the furniture each night and they change it back each morning.

It's lovely that the hotel has free internet access. It's just a pity that sites like blogger come up in Polish and it's taken me the whole time of writing, guessing which button to click on, to notice that there's an offer to translate it into English. Oops!