Wroclaw Weekend

As part of my now rather infamous Skyscanner addiction (!) I had booked an amazing deal with Wizzair for 2 nights in the wonderful Wrocław, Poland. Just £49.96 for two! Possibly a personal best. We had been to Poland back during our February Half Term road trip and had spent about 24 hours in Wrocław where we'd seen the Old Town for an evening and visited the Aquapark the next day. The weather had been quite chilly then, but as I kept a close eye on Yr.no, I was hoping for warmer temperatures. What we actually got was one sunny and one rainy day!

Unlike the majority of our trips from London Luton Airport, where we like to stay at the Premier Inn Luton Town, this time the flight was at 21:20 on Friday evening so we had to address this slightly differently and didn't need to stay overnight at Luton.

Car parking at Luton has always been a bit precarious since an enormous fire in October 2023 which destroyed one of the airport car parks and with it almost 1400 spaces. The official airport parking is now expensive and limited and there is a £5 charge for taxis to pick up/drop directly from the airport. So, having picked Tiger up from school, we did a quick change into our travelling clothes at home in Bordon, then drove to park on a local driveway with JustPark at 60 Eaton Valley Road, LU2 which cost us £36.94.

Due to traffic, the drive took us about 2 hours and we arrived just after 19:00. From there, we paid the JustPark owner £10 to drive us to the Mid Stay Car Park drop off point (avoiding the £5 drop charge) and walked a few minutes from there.

We of course do know Luton airport quite well having travelled to Georgia there the previous month as well as many other times. You can pre-book a free security slot for flights from 3am to 3pm and you can also pay to book fast track security for £6 per person. But as Luton now have the system of "Bag. Tray. Go" so all your electronics and liquids are scanned in your bag so we didn't pay any extra and security was speedy. We headed straight to The Hawker bar which had a MyLLA offer of two gin and tonics for £15 - fab - and much needed by Mummy by this point!

I'd got Tiger changed into her PJs in the airport so she was ready for bed. The flight to Poland from the UK takes about 2 hours but there is a one hour time difference so our flight departed at 21:20 and landed at 00:25 into Wrocław Airport. As soon as we got out of the airport we went out of the airport to order our Bolt taxi via their app.

The Bolt pick up area is the middle lane of the pick-up zone directly outside the terminal. Despite the hour time difference being in our favour, Tiger was a bit grumpy when we landed but we survived! The taxi ride from the airport to the ibis budget Wrocław Południe took just 20 minutes and was £10. Our twin room was basic with a shower inside the room (slightly strange!) but an absolute steal at 225 PLN (£46).

Having had a good rest, the next day, Saturday 13th September, we had breakfast in the Novotel next door. Now this was something that is really worth a mention as the basic Ibis and the far nicer Novotel Wrocław City are essentially next door to each other and share a children's playground. You can also eat your breakfast in either hotel - it is slightly more expensive in the Novotel (45 PLN, £9) than the ibis (35 PLN, £7) but well worth it and they didn't even charge me for Tiger. The kids facilities in the Novotel Reception area are also fab!

After breakfast, a bit of a play in the rain, and checking out we jumped in a Bolt (£5) to our next hotel, Great Polonia The Granary La Suite Hotel (400 PLN, £82). More on the hotel later.... As we were driving to the hotel, we spotted a park just one block behind the hotel (Nicolaus Copernicus Park) which seemed to have loads of kids stuff going on. So we dropped our little suitcase at Reception and walked back to find out what it was all about. Well, what an absolute stroke of luck as it was the annual Wrocław Dwarf Festival. Apparently this is always in the second half of September so it is definitely worth watching out for if you have kids. Wrocław is famous for its dwarf statues, and the dwarf festival is essentially a children's festival. There were were bubbles, puppet performances, dancing, face painting, juggling, building, figurine painting and all kinds of amazing activities all for free!

From the park, we walked to the Wrocław Old Town Square (Rynek) and had our lunch in McDonalds (£18). The toilets cost 3 zloty but there was some kind of a complicated way to get it for free by using the code on your food receipt!

We also started to see the dwarf statues here and had great fun spotting them. I managed to download a map of them for free from Scribed (to do this you need to create an account and then cancel your subscription) but there were actually far more than were on the map. Apparently there are around 800 - these are the ones we spotted during our Wrocław weekend!

Tiger also got completely in on the dwarf action and started to pretend to be a dwarf herself!

After our lunch we watched a fantastic street performer before walking to Cathedral Island (Ostrów Tumski). I had come prepared with a "love lock" for Tumski Bridge but we ended up putting it on the Tumski Bridge dwarf! What I wasn't prepared for was the fact that once she had it in her hands, Tiger didn't want to let the love lock go. So actually locking it took a bit of persuasion!

One of the absolute highlights of our weekend was seeing the Wrocław Lamplighter. There are 102 gas lanterns which the Lamplighter lights every evening and then extinguishes every morning - a job which takes about an hour. We'd swotted up on where to find him, worked out what time he would be doing his rounds (this is on the link above, and for us was at just after 6.30pm), even spotting his car arriving and it was terribly exciting when he eventually did appear. It is such an interesting sight to see, especially for children, and also a little strange as crowds follow him about!

After seeing the Lamplighter we walked back via the Rynek to our hotel and rather than eat out as we were both getting rather tired at this point we just spent about £11 in Zabka, the local supermarket, on snacks for dinner! The walk back to our hotel took about 20 minutes but when we got there we had an amazing surprise. I had followed a tip on how to ask for a hotel upgrade and had emailed the hotel a few days before. And to my great surprise we were upgraded from our executive room to a duplex apartment - wow! We had a living room, kitchen, dining room table, and both had a "princess bed" each. It honestly felt the biggest luxury to us - especially after staying in the ibis just the night before!

On Sunday, it was very rainy so we took a Bolt taxi (13 PLN, £3) to the fabulous water museum, Hydropolis. Once inside via the "water printer" (a moving water curtain which you could run through), the museum has 70 interactive installations as well as VR experiences - we really enjoyed. On the weekend, tickets were 47 PLN per adult, 38 PLN for kids and children up to 3 are free. Our bill came to £17, we spent £24 on four VR scuba dives (well worth it!) and £19 in the shop!

We hadn't eaten breakfast and lunch was beckoning so we whizzed back by Bolt (14 PLN, £3) to the Rynek for more McDonalds and then took another Bolt (£3) to Kolejkowo, which is the largest railway model in Poland - essentially all the sights of Wrocław and Lower Silesia in miniature. I really loved a rave scene on a car park roof and the fact that the whole display turns from day to night! You could spend my longer here but of course Tiger's attention span wasn't too long and we spent just under and hour there. It is actually cheaper to buy tickets online so I bought the tickets on my phone when I arrived - 45 PLN for adults and 35 PLN for kids. From here, we headed back to the airport in a Bolt (41 PLN, £8.50).

At the airport, there was a bit of a queue at security. Fast track at Wrocław airport is 30 PLN (£6) if you book in advance and may well be worth it to avoid the queues. Once through security we bought a few snacks, had a second stage of passport control, and were moved into a very crowded seating area where we were able to charge devices. We did see a cool kids play area but it was unfortunately closed!

Our flight was another 2 hours back, leaving at 19:55 and landing at 21:10. We had a fine old time on the aeroplane finally playing with the plasticine which had travelled all around Georgia without the packet being opened! The absolute hit was the Narwhal cardboard model kit which we'd bought in the Hydropolis museum gift shop. These model kits for age 6+ are around £8 - £10 and kept us very entertained as it formed part of our sea life shop!

Back at Luton, we walked to the Mid Stay Car Park pick up point, booked an Uber to take us back to our car (£8.80), drove home and were tucked up in bed by midnight! What a fabulous weekend. We'll be back soon Poland!