A couple of missing weeks!

Well well ! Took a little longer than expected to find some blog time :-)

We left gdansk and headed for Briebrza national park with the promise of wolves, bear, and wilderness. Arriving at the tourist information charlotte managed to trap her finger in the door and after 5 minutes of screaming the tourist info lady finally offered a pointed finger towards the toilet..no harm done luckily. Tourist info then pointed up to the only campsite there and we got ourselves a map. Getting to the campsite we found a shut gate that looked like the entrance to jurasic park and after 10 minutes in the now boiling heat the gate keeper arrived and gestured to us to just push it open. Behind the gate was a lovely empty site near water and beautifully peaceful. We pulled up and opened the doors to a swarm of clearly starting mosquitoes and other unidentified biting things, discharged our grey water and hot footed it out of there nursing our bites. Heading to the next village we found another site swarming with people swimming and nowhere safe to leave the van to allow us to explore the park and maybe a bit prematurely due to the heat and disappointment we called it a day and sped off to warsaw..

In Warsaw we found a surprisingly nice campsite 'camping123' which restored our faith in city campsites. With warsaw English being much more westernised and more english speaking it was easy and although enjoying the difference of eastern europe so far, the choice and variety in shops and level of service made it easy to relax bar the kiddy rebellion that had begun centered on what was deemed adult fun versus child fun and the lack of toys that made the packing shortlist. Having had a family discussion we agreed the following:
No driving for more than 2 hours without a play break
More regular feeding during city tours
More playtime
Day 1 began with a toy purchasing trip to carefour to appease the tribe followed by an afternoon Chilling at a nearby bar where kids could play(and daddy could try the homemade lard on bread)..jem getting good on monkeybars now and daddy learned polish for apple juice..can now quite successfuly order a small and large tyskie or zywiec and two apple juices without pointing or shouting
We Went back that evening for live music which bev really enjoyed, jem thought was too loud and charlotte thought somebodies sparkely shoes where nice (aunty sharrie will buy me some when im older was her comment in the toilet:-) )

We Explored the city with a long walk up and down from the new town to the old. It was so quiet you couldn't believe it was a saturday in the capital city of poland. After quite a relaxed day with only a few arguments over who should sit in on or generally hang off the buggy, a disappointing trip to the marie curie museum which took longer to carry the buggy up the stairs than to see it and Charlotte tripping over a mans display of hand carvings, we finished off wish sushi (in poland, to the sound of balearic beat...the guy having the cheak to explain that sapporo was chinese and so asahi was all he had because that was japanese and this was a sushi bar)

Next move was to krakow via another carefour trip this time to stock up on essentials whilst we had the chance. We arrived late at night at camping 'smok' after the now obligatory 2 hour stop which consisted of charlotte and jem scootering around a carpark in some little town off the main highway (attracting lots of attention from the local kids looking in amazement at jems attempts to aquaplane a scooter across a large puddle), and the last minute tomtom crash within 5 minutes of the destination.
Camping smok was a great site. We moved 'upstairs' the next morning having been put in the lower field late the previous night. Up the hill we had a spot right opposite the little playground so the kids could play close buy (of course after 3 weeks of them pointing out of the window at every swing we drove past
, they had to be practically forced to play on the ones 5 metres from the van!)
The campsite was a handy base to explore krakow from. Another family vote and it was decided zoo for day 1. The zoo was about 4km so we decide to walk and quickly came to the conclusion that this sucked. The roads were narrow and windy and the zoo happened to be on top of a hill! Luckily we came upon a walking route that cut through a forest and shortened the journey..unluckily the forest turned out to be infested with mosquitoes and ticks ! Jem broached the subject of the meaning of the word 'shortcut' and by the time we got to the zoo had worked out it wasn't always good. Anyway, an hour or so of near vertical climbing we got there and had a great day seeing a surprising number of big cats..the route back was uncannily familiar given the lack of bus, but was at least quicker downhill. Jem decided he needed to 'rest' his eyes on the way :-)
Day 2 got the adult vote for a trip into Krakow which was lovely. Very much focussed around the old town square which is apparently the largest in the world though we think they cheated as the cloth hall takes up quite a large space. Our first attempt at stopping for frequent kiddie snacks and drinks failed as one coffee 2 milkshake and a lemonade took 25 mins to arrive, so with restless tribe in tow we explored the cloth hall souvenire sector. Indecision reigned and jem couldn't choose what he wanted eventually agreeing to wait til he found something he really wanted. Zoe and charlotte got an amber charm each and we got some elusive goldwaser(even if it was a gdansk speciality). Jem and charlotte found a fountain to play in getting just a little too damp but they had fun as did the locals watching them. Still no meat for our £12 bbq/wood stove that we'd picked up in carrefour so home for early bed. Day 3 kiddie day ... So we headed off to the 350 metre deep salt mine. This was really good despite yet another example of how poland hasn't quite caught up with tourist demand. A longish wait in the sun and another point of 'confusion' about whether bev was number 40 or 41 in the lift and we entered the mine with one of the best tours we've been on culminating in the huge 130 meter deep church entirely carved out of the salt. The way back up was the same disorganized event with a 40 queue in a tightly packed hot passage as opposed to the cavernous souvenire hall. Charlotte in her usual manner walked into a door frame nearly causing a roof collapse (from the screaming) so we were then fast tracked to the lift.
Heading back to 'smok' we stopped of at tescos to get some bbq fodder for our last night..next stop zacopane via auschwitz (or oswiecim to give it its polish name..but we couldn't work out how to pronounce that)