Morskie Oko in Poland is situated just like 30 minutes drive from the famous town Zakopane. This mountain lake was on my bucket list ever since i saw a beautiful photo of an emerald lake located right in front of a high mountain, giving it all a stunning look.
Eventually we got the chance to visit the polish mountains along with Zakopane and Morskie Oko itself. What was our experience and what can you expect from this place?
First we have to say, that it is not possible to travel to the Tatra National Park with your dog (the Polish side, Slovakians don´t have problem with that)
We have visited twice actually, once we had arrived at 8:40, waited in a long car queue for an hour and a half just to be told, that the parking lot is full and we can´t but leave. There was an option of leaving the car in the closest village and take a bus or a taxi, but we decided to do something else that day (our dog was in a hotel room) and try it the next day and be more clever.
The other day we arrived at 7am already, paid 30 PLN for parking (which was half full already at that time). You can actually book a spot on a parking lot right by the park entrance.
There is a paved road all the way to the lake and so anybody can come.
The trip is 9km long with two spots, where there are "dry toilettes" in case of need. If you really do not want to walk the distance, you may get a ticket for a horse carriage with 11 other people. We personally did not like this option. When the carriages were full we could clearly see it was not easy for the horses to go 9km uphill so easily. Though there was more of them and they did take rest on the top and also they have work schedule, only allowed to work couple days a week and then other group comes in. So they aren´t treated badly, but still.
There is a wooden cottage with a hotel and a restaurant (more like a bistro) and some outdoor seating space to grab a snack. You can also sit by the lake, but only in the morning as then it gets ridiculously crowded. We were returning around 3pm and had a hard time even finding a path through without stepping on anybody.
So we highly recommend you to continue around the lake and maybe get above the lake on some other hiking paths, but be ready for some serious workout.
We chose the shortest of them all and that was the Czarny Staw which took us only like 40 minutes. Another beautiful lake with way fewer people and it is much more peaceful.
Comments