A Stroll in the Park

It's the first day with no rain since we got here. After last night's mega-calorie dessert, I take it easy at breakfast and sneak my ham and cheese sandwich out for lunch. My mother taught me this trick. With our excellent 1:8000 map in hand, we take the small roads out of town, and follow the creek downstream. I'm convinced that this creek used to be a canal. With its high stone walls, depth gauge, and buildings along side that look like warehouses, it seems quite likely. We get to the train station to see what progress is being made on the renovations to it and the train lines. Not much. The station is untouched and there is no train line - just the old railway bed bereft of ties and track. It makes a great walking trail out of town however. We reach this old bridge and follow a foot trail across the fields, down a muddy driveway, and reach the highway.

Old wooden bridge across the not yet rebuilt railway line

Can't resist going through the portal to find ...

This forming one side of a square compound

We only have to follow the highway a few metres until we pick up another public footpath. It's flat for a while, then climbs to give us this view of where we've been.

View from the top of the hill

The footpath then descends and goes past a couple of houses to a small road. A couple of hundred metres later is the Żaba Muzeum (Frog Museum). There's a pond across the road where we sit and have our picnic lunch first. Since the pond is especially for frogs, I presume its full of invisible tadpoles. The museum is an eclectic collection of plush frogs, ceramic frogs, wind-up toy frogs, frog earrings, frog wind chimes, frog puppets etc etc. The idea is to bring awareness of conservation and the environment. It's completely unattended with no admission fee. We left 10 zł in the donation basket - probably doubling the amount that was in there.

Plush toy frogs

Henson's Famous Creation

Wind-up Toy Frogs

One of several stamps from the symposium of 1994

More kitsch than you can imagine

From there, it was an easy walk through the woods, coming into town just one street away from our hotel. We relaxed for a while and then went out to a couple of grocery stores for tomorrow's lunch on Table Mountain. I picked up what should be a decent bottle of French Carignan for a ridiculous 12 zł ($4).

At the hotel, we have a lovely dinner of traditional breaded deep-fried rolled chicken with potatoes, shredded carrot salad, and shredded red cabbage, along with the last of Tesco's Bordeaux. Yum.