So reader, you may remember a couple of days ago we made an attempt at getting the hop on, hop off bus, but failed? Well today we succeeded (and a note to the taxi driver who was trying to get us to go with him on a tour, the bus fare is only 60zl, not 70zl…56 zl if you are old). I double checked the timetable last night and knew that we had to be at the stop for 10:25. We were, it arrived, we got on. Sorted (at last).

It was one of the usual red line, blue line jobbies where you change at Centrum (still the centre of the city, not the vitamins). It was only after we were handed the leaflet that we had a full idea of the times. “This is a bit rubbish” I commented, “if we get off at the stop we got on at, it will be a couple of hours before we can get on the next one”. We decided then that we would do one line in the morning, have some lunch, then do the other in the afternoon. What was a bit odd was that the driver had his lunch between 2 and 3. All of them? Across the entire fleet? It was only after a little more studying of the timetable that we realised what was going on.
The first blue line tour ran from 10:00 until 11:00, the first red line from 11:00, the next blue line tour…you guessed it 12:00. Basically there wasn’t a fleet of buses, there was literally just one bus driving around. So every time we had spotted “a red bus” we actually had spotted “the red bus”. That explains why he had to have a break. With this new knowledge we stayed on the bus for 2 hours up to lunch.
As we were walking towards a cafe for lunch, mum commented “funny, we were worried about stuff being closed on a Monday and everything is open”. Of course we now had an unexpected extra half day, our last half day to fill. “Oh, there was another bit of the palace that we didn’t do on Friday. We could do that, it’s only 10 zl and will kill a couple of hours and it would keep us nice and close to home”. Great idea, let’s do it.  
We walked towards the palace and noticed the door was closed. Well not only the door, but the whole place. Yep, it closes on a Monday; but the real rub was next Monday (with it being May) it would be open. So we had to content ourselves on our last afternoon pottering around, buying fridge magnets (dad), pin badges (me), sticking our heads into a couple more churches and drinking ridiculously thick hot chocolate. To be honest, that was probably more fun than going around another palace anyway.
Well that’s your lot. We fly home tomorrow morning so no more blogs… until next Monday! Oh yes, holiday month continues next week with a 2 week break in Spain. This time we will also be joined by my sister Nikki (whose significant birthday we are all celebrating) and our friends Rachel and Tibu. So you will just have to keep yourself amused in the meantime. If you want to do some homework before then, check out the blogs from Spain 2016 and Spain 2013 by clicking the links in the menus.  
So pożegnanie Polska and hola Espana.