After Wroclaw, I only visited small towns in Poland. On the upside, this forced me to use my Polish rather than German or English, got me in touch with contemporary Polish society more than I would have in Warsaw or Krakow, and it is certainly more adventurous and less like home. On the downside, small towns get boring easily and many of them can be seen in about an hour. A side-effect is that I haven't taken one single train, all my travelling has been done by bus, a means of transportation I generally prefer, though some Polish busses are truly crappy - too bumpy to read or write, and forget about staying dry when it's raining.

Sobotka I only saw when I arrived and when I left, as I was staying in a PTTK Schronisko (walkers' hostel) way out of town - see my first entry on Poland.

In Swidnica I had 2,5 hours changing busses. Just enough time to see a bit of the old town and have a beer. There happened to be some sort of local festival going on - children performing on a provisional stage dressed like octopusses, that sort of thing. It was a nice place, I must go back some time and explore it more thoroughly.

In Jelenia Gora, I'd spent about the same amount of time last year, but now I had plenty of time to explore. It's probably the loveliest town of the bunch, but as I said small towns bore easily so I was still glad to move on.

Szklarska Poreba is the typical resort town, great as a base for going hiking in the mountains, and full of restaurants, pubs and supermarkets to fill up the rest of your time, but you have to turn a blind eye to the horedes of (German and Polish) tourists and tacky souvenir stands. Still, it could've been worse, part of the reason I stayed here were the bad reviews of Karpacz (the other resort in the Karkonosze) I'd heard.

Klodzko I didn't like much at all. A barely remarkable, tiny old town, an unimpressive fortress, and the major tourist attraction, the underground tourist passage, really isn't worth 7 zloty. Still, Polish tourists seem to love it.

Kudowa Zdroj has a big swimming pool, some nice houses and a big park, but the major tourist attraction here is the so-called skull chapel. It's a tiny chapel of which the walls are entirely decorated with skulls and bones, in which they try to cram as many people (and many want to see it) as possible at once, after which a nun blandly talks about its history, and shows some more skulls and bones (this is so-and-so and this is his wife). At the end they open up a door to the cellar, in which yet more skeletons are heaped up. In comparison with similar sights - the ossuary in Kutna Hora near Prague or the skull tower in Nis, Serbia - it isn't very special, but the local catholic church and souvenir sellers sure do make a lot of money of it.

Paczkow has an attractive yet tiny old town, surrounded by almost intact medeaeval city walls, gates and towers.

Otmuchow's old town is even tinier, but it is situated between two lakes, so the natural surroundings offer a wonderful added bonus.

Nysa was once known as the "Silesian Rome", because of the many fine religious buildings, but was much damaged during WWII. But it's exactly the mix of beautiful yet mostly somewhat neglected old buildings, and not too ugly modern buildings, brightly painted around the Rynek (market square), that makes it worth a visit today. It stands out, you know.

Zakopane is super-touristy, but as a first stop in the Tatras it's OK (2 years ago it was my last stop and then I hated it). I took the cable car up to Kasprowy Wierch, bought popcorn, took photos, walked a little way out and then returned. Real hiking I would do on the Slovak side of the Tatras later, so I allowed myself to behave like a real tourist for once.