Evening entertainment around Raba 500

Meander Park Swim Centre at Orawice Just over the border, in Slovakia, on the slopes of the Tatra Mountains, a Polish group opened Meander Park Thermal Baths just over 4 years ago. This is a marvelous swim centre with 6 or more pools of naturally hot thermal mineral waters from the underground sea under the Tatras. Indoor and outdoor, massage jets, water massage beds and seats, sunbathing, wave pool, children’s pools and a huge flume slide, a day at Meander Park will be a family favourite. Our driver will take you there – a 45 minute trip from Raba Wyzna, with a stop in Chocholow wooden village if you wish - and either wait while you enjoy a 3 hour session, or leave you for the whole day, returning to collect you all at the end of the day. The centre opens at 09.00am and closes at 21.00pm. Many guests chose to spend the evening at Meander Park, which in the winter, with the steam billowing up into the flood lights, is a sight to see. There is a poolside café, a restaurant, a bar, a snack bar. Orawice is on the edge of the National Park: before or after your swim session, you can take a peaceful car free walk up into the trees and enjoy the silence. Or take the chair lift up into the hills and enjoy the view of the mountains around you. The restaurant is outside the pool area: you can enjoy and evening meal there if you wish. We charge 250zl between 2-6 people for the 2 way trip. An all day ticket to the Centre costs 17€ adults, 12€ 7-14, f.o.c. 6 and under. In the winter, there are ski slopes beside the swim centre for a variety of levels of experience. For big groups of 7 or more, spending the whole day here, we leave the Zafira in the car park and leave you the keys so you have a place to store ski/swim gear when not in use. Useful websites: Swim: http://www.meanderpark.com/PL/page.php Ski: http://www.meanderski.com/PL/page.php
	Krakow centre 1. You can travel to Krakow either by bus: 07.30 am or 11.20am: 14zl each way, 90 minute trip to Central Bus Station just north of the Main Square, the last return bus leaving Krakow at 20.00 (but you must check this yourselves when you arrive there) 2. OR by train, a 3 hour trip (!) leaving Raba Wyzna at 10.40, arriving at 13.30 and the return train leaving Krakow at 14.40, arriving Raba Wyzna 15.30 3. OR our driver can take you (2-6 people) one way to Krakow for 100zl 4. OR our driver can take you and bring you back, waiting in Krakow for you. You can leave him at Carrefour and take the tram into the centre and back (4zl) and find him in the car park where you left him (350zl between 2-6 people, up to 12 hours door to door) 5. OR he can drive you into the centre and wait in the parking beside the Main Square so you can return to the car with shopping bags and so on. 400zl between 2-6 people, up to 12 hours door to door. 6. OR if you have an evening flight back to the UK, our driver can return you to Balice airport free of extra charge, and you can leave your bags in the left luggage lockers outside, suitcase size 8zl/24hr ( http://www.krakowairport.pl/en/20/46/22/Baggage-lockers ). The shuttle train to Krakow Central Station costs 8zl and you can buy your ticket on board. http://www.krakowairport.pl/en/3/176/35/en 7. OR you may decide to spend either your first night or your last night at a hotel in Krakow. There is so much evening entertainment available, that it’s well worth while. If so, we are happy to collect or return you to the airport but only taxis can enter the centre of the city so we advise you to travel with luggage by taxi between Krakow centre and the airport. Click here for the Hotel Saski. Once in Krakow centre, there is so much to see! We highly recommend taking a horse drawn carriage trip around the centre for an hour: you will be taken through the streets surrounding the Main Square (Stary Rynek), past the Castle (Wawel) and through the Jewish Quarter (Kazimierz). There are shopping centres next to the Main Station and south of Kazimierz, and the Main Square hosts market stalls and the Corn Market in the middle. Cafes and restaurants ring the Main Square with outdoor seating, bars and discotheques all round, and all sorts of evening entertainments take place in the Square throughout the year. Churches and museums abound. http://www.krakow.pl/en/


Eating out in Nowy Targ and Zakopane There are lots of restaurants in Zakopane to choose from: too many for us to list, but we do recommend the wooden restaurant next to our pickup point. At the entrance to the market, with an English language menu, it is not that expensive, and you can relax and come out to the car when you are ready. As the last train leaves Zakopane at 17.33, if you are eating out you will either need to book our driver to collect you, which for an evening pick-up costs 100zl between 2-6 of you, or come home by taxi which could cost 200zl plus. In Nowy Targ, there are various restaurants around the Main Square: Italian, American retro, posh Polish and traditional Polish cafes. Our driver will come out and collect you for 50zl between 2-6 people or you can get a taxi home for about 100zl.
	Rabacowka Raba Wyzna has one bar, Rabacowka. The landlord, Pan Jan, is a bit of a historian and his bar is full of Partisan Memoria: the Gorals fought hard, guerilla style, against the Germans and the Russians. It’s rarely busy in the bar as the people of Raba Wyzna tend to party at home, but weekends find a variety of locals in the bar and they will be delighted to entertain you. If you want a meal at Rabacowka, let me know the day before and Marta, Jan’s wife, will do the honours. The back bar is a games room with pool, darts and an air hockey table. Its 10 minutes walk to Rabacowka from Raba 500: if you can’t walk home, Jan the landlord will happily drive you.
u Bogdalu BBQ and farm fun My best friend and neighbour, Krystyna Bogdal, lives with her family across the road from us. Their small farm is a regular venue for fun and games! You and your children can learn to milk a cow and then have the milk you milked with cereals for breakfast next morning. The family will put on a BBQ for you, and you can wander around, meet the horses and the bull, the dogs and wild cats and dance in the grass to local Goralskie music. In summer, a paddling pool is ready for children and adults alike. A very ‘real’ experience and adults should not expect to come home sober. No transport charge of course, even if we have to drive you home (!). A very full afternoon or evening, with snacks, BBQ, drinks etc. costing 50zl each. Another ‘to go where no other tourist group has been before’ experience.
	In the garden at Raba 500 The garden at Raba 500 covers some 2000m sq, all safely fenced and gated so even small children can run out and play anytime. We have a splash pool, play house, climbing frame and slide, sand-pit and swing and a wide variety of out door games and toys, bike, skate board, roller blades and so on. You can host your own BBQ if you wish – the ladies at the local butchers will be delighted to help you choose your sausages. Sun shines most days throughout the summer: sun bathe or sit in the shade of the apple tree, sit in the pool with a cold beer, or under the sunshade at the bar with an iced drink: you don’t need to go anywhere for the day when you stay at Raba 500.
At Raba 500 playing with the local children Our younger guests love spending the day at home: no need to pay for travel anywhere. Just being here around Raba 500 is a holiday for children. There are about 15 children, aged 2 to 16 living around the hamlet of Bogdalowka, where Raba 500 is situated on the north side of Raba Wyzna. The children play outside spring through autumn, and run from garden to garden with a freedom that refreshing to see. Most homes have pets or farm animals: the children will see chickens, geese, turkeys, (many of which roam free in the lane) sheep, goats, rabbits, cows, horses, dogs, cats, hamsters, fish and, in the forest above Raba Wyzna, wild deer. Sharing is the rule, and if your child needs a bike, one will be found. Your children are sure to be invited into neighbouring children’s homes and are welcome to reciprocate as all the local children know that our door is always open to them. They may want to join the children helping their parents in the fields beside each house, raking hay, and then riding down to the farm on top of the horse drawn cart full of hay. In our garden, we have a climbing frame and slide, paddling pool, play house, swing and sand-pit and loads of out-door toys. In the evening, the children can host their own BBQ, inviting their local new friends round to cook sausages over a small fire. Our daughter will accompany them to the shops to buy supplies. Summer holiday evenings, June 21^st to 1^st September, usually find all the local children playing some sort of mass game until darkness sends them inside to bed around 21.00. During school time, however, children are usually in bed around 19.00 as they start school at 07.45. In the winter, sledging groups gather and all our guest’s children are welcome to join in. We have 4 ‘apple’ sledges and 1 bigger traditional frame sledge for their use.
	Horse and cart ride from Raba 500 The horse(s) and cart(s) arrive around 17.30 outside the house, and we pack on all the supplies of beer, vodka, soft drinks, potatoes, cheese, sausages, bread rolls, ketchup, music machine with extra batteries... and all the other bits and pieces we need for a 3 hour trip to the forest! There's room for up to 5 people per cart plus driver, but we'll fit 6 on if need be. Summer or winter, we'll make sure you are comfortable with sheepskins to either sit on or hide under. Burning brands light the way, and those sitting by the beer crate can start the evening on the outward journey. We can provide up to 4 horse and cart combos so groups of up to 20 can enjoy a convoy through the village, bells ringing, horses clopping and neighbours waving us on. This is a wonderful evening out for all the family, something that local families do for fun on a summers evening. The price includes the cart driver's fee, (and makes a big difference to his monthly income by the way) and your food and drinks, and apples and carrots for you to feed to the horses, of course. (Ask to see the photos of the guests feeding the horse mouth to mouth….) We drive out around the back of Bogdalowka, onto the main road and canter through the village, starting our 30 minute drive out of town. Slowly up the hill over Raba Wyzna's sole speed bump between the junior and senior schools, we come down past the football stadium, and pull over onto a track into the forest. A wooden roof with rustic benches and tables awaits, and the drivers build a fire in the grill and a bonfire to the side. Cooking is self-service: everything will be laid out on the tables for you. You can either put your sausages, potatoes and cheese on the grill or the drivers will provide wooden sticks to impale your goodies on, and hold over the flames till they are hot through. The sausages are pre-cooked so no fear of food poisoning. The drinks go round, the food goes down, the music plays and you may get a song out of the drivers... In the winter, children can sledge down the surrounding slopes, build an igloo or snowman and then warm up around the fire. Around 20.30, we start to pack the carts and head back home singing as we pass the abandoned palace..... Cost: 350zl for 2-6 people. For example, 5 people = 70zl each = £15.55.

Dragon Discotheque Czarny Dunajec On Saturday nights, if you would like to try a local disco, we can take you to the “Dragon” pizza bar and discotheque. Our driver will wait for you in the car park – don’t worry, it’s his job - and bring you home when you are ready. We’ll charge you 300zl between 2 to 6 people for the return trip, and entrance to the disco is 15zl per person.
	Turbacz hill top BBQ Summer or winter, our friends Jacek and Asia will take you on a hair raising drive up the track to their shepherds hut on Turbacz for an evening BBQ. Food, drink and transport all included, you’ll pay them 90zl each. This is another one of those Star Trek excursions, where we take you where no tourist has been before. Local people who live on the mountain in huts will hear that you are there and will come and visit, with dubious bottles of home made alcohol, and musical instruments. If you are lucky, Asia’s father will turn up and put his old Jimi Hendrix tapes on. A night to remember! If you like, up to 7 of you can stay the night in the shepherds hut. There’s no electricity, but they’ll leave you a car battery so you can listen to music, and then come and collect you late the next morning. Pay them 120zl each if you stay the night. If you stay on a Saturday night, you can go to mass at midday, at the chapel on the summit of Turbacz. http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbacz
Indoor play at Raba 500 It’s rare in the summer to have rain during the day at Raba 500, but if we do, there are plenty of day trips that keep you out of the wet. And during the winter, there may be some people who fancy a day at home relaxing from an excess of ski muscle use. If so there is plenty for adults and children alike to entertain themselves with at Raba 500. The library has over 1000 books with lots of variety for all ages, although we have no Barbara Cartland. A mini pool table for children, X Box, Play Station (although we haven’t got many games so if you are aficionados, best to bring your own game with you). TV: we have cable TV so there is usually a channel to suit. We can also lend you a lap-top if you fancy a film in bed in your own room, and we have 100’s of DVD’s for you to choose from. We also have a wide variety of jigsaw puzzles and some board games. For adults or family groups, there’s the sauna, 50zl for all of you for up to 6 hours use. We also have toys in abundance, although they tend to the girly side. In the dining room there is a fridge for guests use, so if you want to buy any food supplies for yourselves, feel free to use the fridge to store them. At Raba 500, we can offer a lunch snack of soup and bread for 20zl per head.
	Eating out locally: Siwy Dym and Rusnakowka Siwy Dym and Rusnakowka are both traditional style Podhale/Goral restaurants, both about 15 minutes drive from Raba 500: Siwy Dym at Zabornia above Rabka Zdroj, and Rusnakowka just outside Spytkowice. We’ll drive you to the restaurant, and give you the telephone number of our taxi driver, Pan Stojowski. The waitress will telephone him when you are ready to leave. Both have menus with English translation. Siwy Dym has live music every night from 20.00. A 3 course evening meal with a few drinks will cost about 60zl per person. http://www.siwydym.pl/restauracja1.htm and http://www.karczmarusnakowka.com/
Sleigh rides This section will be up-dated before the 2010/2011 winter season as options change each year, but in the meantime: children love the horse drawn sleighs that run along the Gubalowka Ridge during most of the winter. In Zakopane, on the south side near the Skoki, ski jump runs, and up to Kuznice in the National Park, you will also get a lovely sleigh ride through most of the winter months. In Rabka Zdroj, when the roads are snowed up, sleighs are out and about, and we have our own horse-drawn sleigh driver, Marek, who will come and take a group of up to 4 of you around the snowed over roads of Raba Wyzna when ever you like, evening or day-time, and he picks you up in the centre of Raba Wyzna so you can walk down and meet him then go to the pub, Rabacowka, afterwards. Reckon to pay at least 100zl per hour. These sleigh drivers have a limited amount of time they can work their sleighs during the year as the roads are kept so clear for cars!
	Meals at Raba 500 Traditional Polish food is really yummy and I learnt to cook here in Podhale so you’ll enjoy real home cooking, Polish style. Children of all ages love the meals we serve up, with many parents being delighted to see supposedly ‘fussy eaters’ tucking into their second helping of beetroot soup. All meals and soups are prepared from scratch, fresh ingredients sourced locally. Our potatoes are home grown and 100% organic. Milk is fresh from the cow each morning, although I have shop bought milk if you prefer. Cakes are made by the locals, and bread baked at the local bakery 2km away. Breakfast (included in your accommodation charge): cereals or home mixed muesli and milk, bread or toast, butter, margarine, home made jams, Marmite, yoghurts, ham, cheese, tomato, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, fruit juice. Lunch: soup, bread, cake, coffee, tea, water: 20zl adults, 15zl under 12’s. Evening meals: 30zl adults, 20zl under 12’s. A three course meal, order it in the morning and dinner can be on the table anytime between 16.00 and 21.00. Just let me know. Dinner includes soup, bread, main course, cakes, coffee, tea, vodka, beer, juice or water. If you require wine, I can buy it for you at 35zl per bottle or you can buy your own on your way home. We will happily cater for special diets: vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, allergies. Just make sure you let us know what you require.
Haymaking An ideal end to a day at home at Raba 500, summer evenings often find us wandering up the lane to the fields on the way to the forest, where neighbours energetically mow, rake, turn or harvest the hay. This is the real Podhale, with wooden home-made rakes, grass either scythed by hand, or by horse drawn mower, and the horse drawn cart to take the dried hay down to the farm. You will be welcome to join in at the lower fields: it’s best to take a couple of beers with you as the fumes keep the hay flies away as you sweat your way round the haystacks. Children can roll in the hay in the lower fields but will not be invited to the upper fields as vipers can often make an appearance there in the untended strips of land. Carts drawn either by antiquated tractors or horses are filled and the children love to pile on top and ride down to the farm, geese, dogs and chickens running alongside in the lane. Some days, we spend all day in the fields and a picnic lunch is enjoyed sitting in the shade of the haystacks. A real day out with no travel involved. Great for a tan and losing weight!
	Rabka Pizzeria If you are visiting Rabka Zdroj for the day, you will almost certainly visit the park at some time. If you fancy some lunch, there is a very good Pizzeria to the east side of the park. Pizzas cost between 5zl and 40zl depending on the size. We recommend it! At weekends, they have a DJ and you might want to make an evening of it. We will make sure you have the telephone number of our recommended taxi driver, Pan Stojowski, so the Polish/English speaking waitress can call him for you, and he will bring you home. It’s about 50zl from Rabka to Raba 500. Or during the day, you can walk 5 minutes down to the bus station for a 4zl ride home.
Sledging around Raba Wyzna We have a good size frame and wood sledge and about 6 apple sledges so the children can go off down the lane, sledging with the local children. For adults, in the evening, when there’s a lot of snow on the back roads, we can tie you to the back of the Land Rover and tow you up to the top of the ridge towards Harkabuz, then let you sledge back down the road. Hilarious.
	Ice skating In the winter, at Rabka Zdroj, an out-door ice skating rink and cafe are open from 09.00 to 19.30 in the evening. Skates are available to hire and with an hour and a half session, will cost under 20zl per person. We take and return you free of charge, or you can catch a bus, with the bus station just across the road from the rink.
Ski Chabowka No charge for transport to our favourite beginner slope, 5 minutes from home. Two great slopes, one for absolute beginners on a rope pull lift, and the second for skiers ‘first day’ reminder session, a button lift up to a shallow start, then steep finish. Lovely little wooden café selling snacks and drinks, instructors speaking English, snow cannons at night, and the cost: 7zl for 10 ascents on the rope lift, 14zl on the button lift. You can’t get better value anywhere. Open from 09.00am to 21.00, (if there are enough people skiing), floodlit after 15.30, if you get a morning flight we can get you skiing on your first day. Some of the keener skiers might want to go for an hour or so after dinner: no problem. http://www.chabowka.com/