On Saturday I took my first balloon ride! Granted, it’s a tethered balloon, but it goes very high and provides great views. The balloon is full of helium and ascends up to around 500 feet (150m). It was overcast that morning, but sunny clear days are not common around here this time of year, and it least it wasn’t rainy or windy (in which case the balloon wouldn’t have launched). It was quiet in the area, and I was fortunate enough to be the only person besides the pilot. I used Google Translate to chat with him, and he told me that he loved his job. It was perfectly quiet during ascent and descent, and you hardly had a sense of movement if you weren’t looking at a reference point below. Having a balloon ride like this seems like a great attraction in a touristy city. As with all things Krakovian, the price was right: $20. Totally worth it.
I know they wouldn’t have flown in such conditions, but the following video shows that this balloon is a newer one because a previous one popped! I’m glad I discovered this video after flying.
Another unique site I visited on Saturday was Nowa Huta, a huge planned workers’ town five miles outside of Krakow. You get a sense of the enormous but stark aesthetics of Communist architecture. According to Rick Steves, it’s one of only three towns outside the Soviet Union that were custom-built to showcase socialist ideals. Nowa Huta’s Central Square was recently and aptly renamed for Ronald Reagan, recognized as a staunch anti-Communist. It’s so large that it’s somewhat difficult to appreciate at street level, but a satellite view from Google Maps gives a better perspective.
I got to see a da Vinci painting – Lady with an Ermine. Seems better to this untrained eye than the Mona Lisa. This one was stolen too, albeit by the Nazis.
When in Eastern Europe, you need to watch out for vampires, so might as well behead the dead, or at least bind their limbs together in burial so as to limit their ability to get back out and attack you!
I know this sounds weird, and my apologies to my Scottish cousins, but it was easy to find the Scots while in Krakow – you just had to follow the sounds of drunk men shouting! There have been six or seven times over three days when I have heard men shouting from a distance away, and everytime as I walked by, I could hear them speaking that difficult-for-me-to-understand English, and I could often see that they were wearing kilts (no kidding) and/or wearing shirts that said something about Scotland.
Today’s dad joke: What’s the following Krakovian image of?
A barber Pole‘s barber’s pole!
Bonus dad joke: What do you call your mouth when pouring Polish beer into it? Your “alkohole”.
Today’s travel quote:
He who would travel happily must travel light.
Antoine de St. Exupery
Major Meander 
Whoa – that video was crazy! Looks like a hurricane or one of those bad summer storms we seem to find in Michigan.
It was surprising indeed. In chatting with the English gents, they were saying that European storms pale in comparison to those we can get in some places in the US. So true!
Good for you. I always wanted to take a balloon ride.
Please never make me go on a balloon ride. I nearly peed looking at your pics and THEN I saw the video. NO THANKS!
Wow! Interestingly, my first – and only – tethered balloon ride was at Lake Eden! When I was a kid my mom worked at the hospital and the hospital employees would have a big employee appreciation event there every year.
That sounds cool! I’d enjoy taking another ride, and it would be fun to see Black Mountain from above.