Amidst lakes in High Tatras II

The previous entry in this blog described our first days of trekking around Strbské Pleso, in the High Tatras, in Slovakia. The other two days were devoted to more relaxed activities, also due to the worse weather conditions that we had there.

We started with a visit to the Belianska Cave (Belianska Jaskyna in Slovak), the largest one in the High Tatras and one of the most beautiful ones in Slovakia (which has several of its case declared as Human Heritage by UNESCO). We were ready for the cold temperatures inside (around 5º C) although not everybody could say the same, since some other tourists with us were wearing short trousers and T-shirt.

The cave is really spectacular and impressive. I still wonder how it could be discovered and how it could be explored, since inside it is pretty dark there, believe me. Our guided walk of one hour and a half took us to some really big rooms, most of them with lakes, where we could admire the strange stone formations created during thousands of years of erosion. In my case, probably due to some permanent damange in the brain, I could not help linking all the shapes I was seeing with creatures from the Alien saga.

As second part of the day, we went to Spiss Castle, the largest castle in Central Europe, which has been used very often as scenario in Hollywood films. The navigator somehow cheated us and took us to a remote parking place from which we had to walk uphill 15 minutes, so, as you can imagine, we were not in the best of the moods to visit the castle when we finally arrived there. Nevertheless, we managed to calm down and we went through the courtyard and the old building of the castle. One has to say that they really chose a very good place from the castle, since from it you can splendid and wide views of the area around it (it should have been very easy to see the enemy approaching).

On Thursday, it was raining quite heavily so we decided to relax first in AquaCity in Poprad (http://www.aquacityresort.com/en/). After three placid hours amidst warm water and nice pools and after having a complete lunch for 3,50 € (!!!!!), we decided to drive back to the mountains, to Stary Smokovec, the place where I have been attending a working seminar in December the last two years (see http://antsanch.blogspot.de/2011/12/high-tatras-one-year-later.html and http://antsanch.blogspot.de/2010/12/in-slovak-mountains.html). It was quite impressive to see the place without snow and I could even realise that close to the hotel there is a police station; which I did not notice in my previous stays due to the amount of snow cumulated outside.

 Finally, and probably to mark the end of a very nice week of holidays, we could admire the clouds amidst the mountains in the first kilometres of our way back to Bratislava. It was really a wonderful spectacle (although not the best conditions for driving). The picture below was taken once we were in the highway, when the clouds where not so dense around the mountains.

We have promised ourselves to come back again to this amazing and beautiful corner of Europe, where there are still many places to discover.