Wrapping Up
We've been back home for about a month now. We had a busy summer, even after the trip, and so it took me a while to catch up on all the writing for this travelog. I spent a lot of time writing it because, though the trip was memorable, I wanted to capture a lot of the details before my recollections started to get hazy. I wrote mostly for myself and Vicky as a way to preserve what for us was a great trip. But I hope anyone else who might read this will find it entertaining and maybe a little informative. This final post serves as a wrap-up, and here I give some of the things we learned about travel that we'll take forward on future trips.
Poland I'm really glad we went to Poland for our first trip abroad in over a decade. I would recommend a trip there to anyone who has Polish heritage. The experience helped me to understand more about the country and its complex, eventful, and sometimes tragic history. But I would also recommend a trip to Poland to anyone of any heritage who wants to visit Central Europe. Such a trip can easily be combined with other destinations in that part of Europe, such as Germany, the Czech Republic, and other places. The people we met were very friendly. The sights were fascinating: some for their history, some for their artistic or natural beauty. Though air fare can be relatively expensive, Poland is otherwise a relative bargain: I just looked at the current pricing of accommodations where we stayed, without the tour group discount. They were all centrally located hotels of very good quality and all are significantly cheaper than similarly located hotels in the US or Western Europe. The food is great, and inexpensive. So are the tourist attractions. Transportation within the country by train is cheap, frequent, reliable, and very comfortable.
The hardest thing about Poland for most is probably the language. Polish is a very difficult language for native English speakers to learn, and pronouncing Polish words is no picnic for English speakers. (Most travel videos on YouTube are produced by people whose pronunciation of Polish is horrible.) I don't know much Polish. My main advantage is that I can pronounce Polish words pretty well, thanks to my maternal grandmother teaching me how to sound out Polish text. However, in the cities I found very few problems getting around with what I knew. The Poles you will likely interact with at hotels, bars, restaurants, and tours have decent English. People under 30 are more likely to know some English than older people, since English language is now required in schools. Poles will appreciate any effort you make in Polish, even if it's only "dzień dobry", "proszę" and "dziękuję" ("good day", "please", and "thank you"). And Google Translate with voice features is a modern godsend.
Would we go back? In a heartbeat! We've even talked about doing so before going to some of the other places on our bucket list. What's most likely is that we'll tack on several days in Poland to another trip we'd like to do in Central Europe (including Berlin, Dresden, and Prague).
Here is a ranking of the places we stayed at least one night: Kraków and Wrocław are about tied at the top. They are wonderful cities with a lot to do other than the typical tourist activities. But they are also nice places to just hang out at a bistro and people watch. If you are going to Central Europe and want to take in just one Polish city for a few days, the place to go, hands down, is Kraków, both for the city itself and the numerous interesting nearby sites such as Częstachowa, Auschwitz, and the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Next in my ranking after Kraków and Wrocław would be Olsztyn because it's a nice small city and was such a pleasant and relaxing start to our trip. Warsaw and Gdańsk were good for one visit but would not be the first to draw us back.
Guided Tours Prior to this year, I was pretty leery of long guided tours. I thought guided group tours were taken by "tourists" who only wanted a superficial look at a place, and I thought the tours themselves were probably crowded, rushed, and exhausting. And it's not that there's no truth to these prejudices. However, now that I've gone on one, I see that they can be a good compromise for people who would like to sample a country and learn a lot in a little while.
We had planned our own vacation in the western US and Canada from start to finish two years ago, and we had a great time. But our destinations then were relatively known quantities, and there was no language barrier. Planning a trip abroad, especially to a place far from home and completely foreign to you, can be exhausting. Working through a travel agent is an option, but even so, putting together a custom made trip abroad entails a lot of moving pieces and can be expensive. Guided tours sacrifice some of the freedom of movement, but can give you a good value for your money and are relatively easy to set up. They are available in a wide variety, from mostly self-guided tours to small groups to large tours. Many tour guide companies, including the one we used, can help you reserve flights or book accommodations at times other than the tour start and end times to help you link up multiple tours or (as we did) add your own travel to the guided tour. The quality of tour group agencies varies considerably. I think we chose a good one.
Gate 1 Some of my friends in my age bracket have taken group tours with Gate 1 and they were the ones who first started to change my mind about guided tours. They had uniformly good things to say about Gate 1. Our experience was very positive. We got a good feeling the night we met up with our tour group. During the introductions, we found that most people in our group were repeat customers with Gate 1. Some had taken many trips with the company.
Gate 1 offers a wide variety of tours. There are small groups, and tours that are pretty much "roll your own" (with Gate 1 only providing flights, accommodations, and breakfast). They schedule tours so you can easily book back-to-back tours, saving money on transportation.
Gate 1 was helpful from the time we first contacted them, and they helped us with the "roll your own" aspects (longer stays before and after our tour, air travel) of our trip. It seemed like something they do often. Our tour manager Jolanta was excellent, as were the various local guides that were part of the tour. The pacing was good: days were busy, but not jam-packed, leaving time for our own exploration. The various optional add-ons were reasonably priced, and excellent. All told, the Gate 1 tour was good value for the money and we'll definitely look at their offerings for our next trip.
What We'd Do Differently We wouldn't have done too much differently from what we did, but we learned a few things that we'll use the next time we travel. Booking time on our own before and after the tour was an excellent choice and we'll probably do that again. We might combine tours if we feel we have the energy. We did a pretty good job packing, so no big changes need to be made there next time.
Regrets I've had a few, but then again too few to mention. OK. I'll mention them. I regret not doing this earlier. I regret not seeing a few more of the available sights (a couple of museums stand out). But that's about it. Given that we have finite time and energy, I think we did alright.
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