Poland was never really on my travel list.
My husband and I made a little promise to ourselves that every year we would try to use the Easter long holiday weekend to travel. So, when we started looking for somewhere to go in April, we had a very specific kind of trip in mind. We wanted to be outdoors, but we needed somewhere below 2,000 metres and a hike without too much ascent or descent.
After a lot of searching, I somehow landed on Morskie Oko in Zakopane. Until then, I had no idea Poland had landscapes like this. I watched a few videos, and the view of Morskie Oko surrounded by the Tatra Mountains convinced us to book the tickets.
A rainy welcome to Zakopane
We flew from London Stansted to Kraków and took a bus straight from the airport to Zakopane. I had imagined Zakopane as a tiny mountain town with a few restaurants and hotels, so the town itself was my first surprise.
We spent our first evening strolling around the main town before stopping for dinner at Trattoria Adamo Pizzeria-Restauracja. We ordered pasta Alfredo, a vegetarian pizza and mango and lime mocktail, and the food was absolutely delicious. It was a simple first evening after travelling most of the day and exactly what we needed.
There was just one problem: the weather.
We knew April weather in the mountains could be unpredictable, so we’d deliberately kept an extra day in Zakopane. Our original plan was to explore the town on arrival, hike Morskie Oko the following day and spend our final day at Gubałówka and the thermal baths.
But the next morning was rainy, windy, chilly and completely overcast.
So, we flipped our Day 2 and Day 3 plans. We still took the funicular up to Gubałówka even though it was raining and we knew we might not be able to see much. Since it was my first funicular ride, we decided to go anyway and hoped we might get lucky with the weather. Unfortunately, we didn’t. We sat inside the Gubałówka café, had a coffee and waited for a while, but eventually accepted that the weather wasn’t going to change anytime soon.
There wasn’t much point taking another cable car when we couldn’t see anything, so we headed to Chochołowskie Termy instead.
It turned out to be a really good plan B.
It was my first thermal bath experience, and we ended up spending hours there, moving between hot outdoor pools, saunas and different thermal areas. There was even a private terrace thermal bath where clothes weren’t allowed, which was certainly a new experience for me!
I’ll write separately about my experience at Chochołowskie Termy because there’s much more to say about that place. For this trip, though, it gave us exactly what we needed: a relaxing day while we waited for the weather to change.
And thankfully, it did.
Finally, the Morskie Oko hike day came
The following morning, the sky had cleared, the air was fresh, and we finally had the mountain weather we’d been hoping for.
We took a bus from Zakopane to Palenica Białczańska, the entrance to Tatra National Park and the starting point for the walk to Morskie Oko. The name Morskie Oko roughly translates to “Eye of the Sea”, which feels quite fitting when you see the lake sitting between the mountains.
Calling Morskie Oko a “hike” can give you the wrong impression of the route. Most of the approximately 16 km return journey follows a paved road with a gradual incline. You still need to be prepared to walk for several hours, but I didn’t find the route particularly difficult.
Which brings me to my shoes.
Before this trip, I bought myself a new pair of hiking shoes from Decathlon. Then I wore them while travelling to Zakopane and spent the entire day cribbing about how heavy they felt on my feet. By the time hike day arrived, I’d decided there was no way I wanted to walk 16 km in them.
So, I ended up doing the entire hike in my regular Skechers.
For Morskie Oko, I got away with it. The paved trail meant my walking shoes were comfortable enough, although by the end of the hike they were pretty much worn out. I definitely wouldn’t make the same choice for a trail with more difficult terrain. For somewhere like Madeira, I would absolutely want proper hiking shoes, but for Morskie Oko, comfortable walking shoes worked for me.
The walk itself was beautiful. One thing I kept noticing was how incredibly clean the entire trail was. We walked kilometre after kilometre, and I don’t remember seeing litter anywhere. The air was crisp and fresh, the surroundings were well maintained, and with the weather finally on our side, it was such a lovely place to walk.
And then there was Morskie Oko
When we finally reached the lake, it looked exactly like the photographs and YouTube videos that had convinced me to come to Zakopane in the first place.
In April, Morskie Oko was caught somewhere between winter and spring. Parts of the lake were still frozen while others had started to melt, with the Tatra Mountains rising behind it.
We took some photos, but eventually found a bench and just sat there looking at the view.
There were long queues for food at the restaurant, so we ate what we’d brought with us instead – a cabbage pastry and another similar local pastry we’d picked up before the hike. Nothing fancy, but after walking for hours, it did the job. We sat, ate and admired the mountains for a while before starting to think about the journey back.
There is another trail from Morskie Oko towards Czarny Staw, a smaller lake higher up in the mountains. I’d seen photographs and it looked absolutely beautiful, but the melting snow had made parts of the path slippery and I wasn’t comfortable walking further in my Skechers.
Maybe next time – with the hiking shoes actually on my feet.
The slightly chaotic journey back
We had one more complication that day: we needed to reach Kraków that evening.
There are horse-drawn carriages for people who don’t want to walk the entire Morskie Oko route. We’d walked on the way up, but decided to take the carriage for part of the return journey to save time. We were running short on time and still had to reach Zakopane town, pick up our bags, head to the bus station and board our bus to Kraków. Thankfully, we managed to do it all on time.
When we finally reached Kraków, sightseeing was the last thing on my mind. As a desi woman, I just wanted my comfort meal – daal chawal.
We found an Indian restaurant near our apartment with absolutely no expectations, ordered our food and it somehow tasted even better because I was starving. After a day in the Polish mountains, ending it with daal and rice before collapsing into bed felt very me.
Our apartment in Kraków was quite cosy, and I slept like a baby that night. My Apple Watch showed almost 33,000 steps – a personal record that I still haven’t beaten.
Zakopane offered more than I expected
Three days in Zakopane felt right for what we wanted: enough time for a hike, the town, Gubałówka and a long afternoon at the thermal baths without trying to squeeze everything into a single day.
I wouldn’t call Morskie Oko an undiscovered place. It is popular, there are crowds and you’ll find thousands of photographs of it online. What surprised me was Poland itself.
It wasn’t a country we’d been desperate to tick off a list. We came across Zakopane while searching for a completely different kind of Easter trip, and I came home wondering why I’d never seriously thought about travelling around Poland before.
Now Gdańsk and Warsaw are on my list, and I would love to return to Zakopane in winter to see the town covered in snow. I’m also fairly sure there are other parts of Poland I don’t know enough about yet.
If you have any similar suggestions or must-see places in Poland, please drop a comment.
