Poland Day 8 - Rain in the Tatras Mountains

Today we visit the Resort town of Zakopane in the Tatras mountain range.
It's a well known Polish ski area where John Paul II skied as a young man.
Mostly sight seeing today learning about the old "highlander" culture and traditions.

Shown below is a popular church in the mountain ski area. btw... if you didn't already know, Poland is somewhere around 90 to 95 percent Catholic.

The next 2 photos are of a local smoke house where a tasty smoked sheep milk cheese is produced. Apparently it's a specialty of this area.

This shows the smoke blackened rafters of the smokehouse and a number of cheese... not sure what to call the light coloured, almost shell shaped objects in this photo...  but anyway, that's the cheese being cured. Note the Crucifix in the photo. Like I said, this land is very Catholic.

The highland farmhouse adjacent to the smoke house. I thought the decorative old farm implements were great.

After lunch and between rain showers, we were able to go on a nice horse drawn wagon ride.

When heading back to our hotel, we stopped to visit a relatively new church in town. It was built after Pope John Paul II, recovered from the gunshot wounds he received in the 1981 assassination attempt. The story goes that being such a regular in this ski village, when news of his injuries reached the locals, they prayed earnestly for his recovery and promised to build a church in his honour if he recovered.  

One of the stained glass windows in the church actually depicts the attempt, showing him slumping and being attended to in his limo and the shooter holding a gun, in the pane second from the bottom left. The pane at top middle, apparently depicts a guard with an uzi.

The next two shots were taken from my hotel room balcony. Nice spot and nice day, despite the crummy weather. 

Tomorrow has us up at 5:00am and on the road by 6:30 to keep our tour reservation at Auschwitz. 

That will be a somber tour, but I think something we need to see while here.