Here are the available villas for rental in Poland.

Baltic adventures

From the Daily Mail

The woman at the travel agents couldn't believe her ears. 'A beach holiday in Poland?' she exclaimed. 'But there isn't any sea, is there?' Well, as it happens, there is just the tiniest bit of Baltic at the country's northernmost tip.
Hardly a regular haunt of UK holidaymakers, not least because the nearest town is Gdansk - which conjures up images of grim shipyards bedecked with Solidarity banners, rather than golden sands.
However, the shadow cast by the cranes and industrial chimneys of the Lenin Dockyards does not stretch the 10 miles up the coast to Sopot, the seaside resort that is Poland's Brighton and Blackpool all rolled into one, as well as home to the magnificent Grand Hotel.
Over the past 75 years, the long, dark red corridors of this palatial Art Nouveau pile have been trodden by such distinguished figures as Charles de Gaulle, the Shah of Iran and Val»ry Giscard d'Estaing.
This summer, it was the turn of myself, my wife and three children.
In terms of looks and location, the Grand more than lived up to its name, not merely adjoining the beach, but dominating it.
The hotel even commanded its own private corner of the Baltic, thanks to a thin, ET-like finger of land called the Hel peninsular, which keeps out the chilly, weed-clogged waters that characterise this part of the world.
Five minutes after pillaging a breakfast buffet that included everything from salami to scrambled eggs, and rollmop herrings to honey and gherkins, the children (ages six to 12) were agitating to be out on the beach they could see through the restaurant window.
Only endless repetition of the let-your-food-go-down-first lecture managed to stem the tide of trunk-donning.
And so it continued for the next three days, with swimming and sandcastle-building interrupted only by spells in the hotel beach bar, swigging fizzy drinks and tucking into giant, juicy frankfurters and gently-spiced kebabs at just nine zloty (£1.50) each.
No question that Poland is cheap to visit. Full-scale restaurant-meals for the five of us never rose above the £25 mark and while some of the local dishes were a bit too pickle-and-cabbage flavoured for young palates, we grown-ups loved the bigos (meaty, smoky stew), pierogi (stuffed pasta dumplings) and zurek (sour chicken and potato soup).
Sophisticated would not be a word to apply to Polish cuisine - witness the golonka (fatty boiled pork knuckle) and the ubiquitous chicken and chips (kurczak z frytki), washed down by beer (piwo) or vodka. ... more

Krakow's a cracker

From the Daily Mail

The sound seems to drift in on the breeze, an eerie echo disappearing almost as quickly as it arrived. The second time, it's sharper but none the less disconcerting. By the third time we are confused.
It is only when a waiter at our pavement cafe points up at the church clock tower that the realisation dawns on us. It is 7pm and, from his eagle's nest, a trumpeter is heralding in the hour before, bizarrely, cutting off mid-tune.
For Krakow, this ritual harks back to a 13th-century Tartar raid on the city that was beaten off after a watchman took up his horn, getting an arrow in his throat in the process.
On the hour, his bravery is honoured with a short trumpet blast that is cut off mid-melody.
The story sums up the troubled and turbulent history of Poland's cultural capital. It's amazing that this medieval gem is still almost intact, having survived the violent tides of European history.
The other great Polish cities of Warsaw and Gdansk were almost destroyed during World War II. But it is in Krakow that the Nazi legacy has really left its mark.
It was home to the best-known Jewish ghetto and it was in nearby Auschwitz that Hitler's Final Solution was put into practice.
Krakow was home to Oskar Schindler, the Austrian industrialist who saved the lives of more than a thousand Jews and whose story was told in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List.
A walking tour of the city, taking in sights featured in the film, is the best way to get to know Krakow.
Beginning in the district of Kazimierz, which by the 16th century had become the biggest Jewish community in Europe, we find a wealth of Jewish architecture and synagogues, beautifully preserved with the help of £400,000 of Hollywood money. ... more

Doing the locomotion

Maybe it's a generation-thing. When I was a boy I wanted to be an engine driver, so did lots of my friends.
That was in the days when steam was king and the men who worked the footplate were demi-gods, as deserving of reverence as any airline pilot.
Part of the pleasure of steam trains was the smell - the pungent aroma of coal smoke shot into the air by a panting locomotive.
You can recapture a flavour of those golden days on numerous preserved rail lines in the UK. You can even turn fantasy into reality on many of them, buying time on the footplate as a 'trainee' driver.
But where do you go to become a working member of a crew on engines operating regular passenger and freight schedules? The unlikely answer is Poland.
Steam is alive and well around the country town of Wolsztyn, in northwest Poland's Wielkopolska region.
Here you can learn to drive locomotives that are an essential part of the region's transport system. Upwards of 4,000 passengers each day and 2,000 tons of freight each week are steam-hauled.
For the past five years small bands of enthusiasts have been making the pilgrimage to Wolsztyn to live out their dreams.
Each course lasts a week and usually involves eight duty spells or some 500 miles of footplate time. Neither age nor sex is a bar. The oldest recruit so far was 81.
The steam network, shared with diesel-hauled workings, runs over three lines and almost 100 miles of mostly single-line track from Wolsztyn to the mainline junctions at Poznan, Leszno and Zbaszynek. ... more

A land fit for heroes

The Gdansk shipyard protests 20 years ago, led by Lech Walesa, put Poland in the forefront of the Eastern Bloc countries keen to try to shake off Soviet control.
Following the eventual collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989, however, Poland has been slow to emerge from the shadow of the Red Flag.
Other former communist countries have successfully relaunched themselves as mainstream holiday destinations - Hungary and the Czech Republic, for example.
Poland, however, is still largely seen as a slightly forbidding Stalinist place. A great shame, because Poland is one of Europe's friendliest countries - and as I discovered in many ways it is the perfect holiday spot.
One of the more fortunate consequences of becoming an Iraqi prisoner of war at the start of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 was that I became one of the youngest members of the Royal Air Force Ex-Prisoner of War Association.
It was a real pleasure to spend time with the veterans, sharing many cups of tea, or even pints of beer, and chatting about war.
But my band of elderly friends has diminished in size and over the years I have watched as history passes away. I decided I wanted to write a book and record their amazing stories before it was too late and their experiences were lost for ever.
The first step in the writing process was to try to find some of the old Second World War PoW camps and so I set off for Poland with my co-writer Tony Rennell, alongside a group of air force veterans and their families.
Now in their late 70s and early 80s, they were all anxious to revisit the site of their incarceration for the first time since 1945. Of course, in their hearts, most of them also knew that it was almost certainly going to be their last visit.
After a flight to Berlin we took a five-hour coach journey across the Polish border, north through the industrial areas around Szczecin and into the heart of Pomerania where the main focus for tourists is the multitude of seaside resorts on the Baltic coast. ... more

Fashionable getaway

From the Daily Mail

Coming up fast on the heels of Prague and Budapest is Eastern Europe's latest fashionable getaway spot. The Polish city of Krakow the country's ancient capital, boasting a remarkably well-preserved Old Town - is an impressive short-break destination, less than three hours' flight from London.
A long weekend is plenty of time to enjoy the flourishing cafe society, historic neighbourhoods, monuments and museums, all under Unesco protection as part of a world heritage site. British citizens don't require visas for short stays. The currency is the zloty: cashpoint machines and currency exchange counters (called kantors) are widespread. English is spoken in hotels, cafes and restaurants, though a phrasebook is useful for deciphering menus.
It's safe to say that you can't miss the Rynek Glowny, or Market Square, Europe's largest medieval square and focal point of the city. Day or night, it's a free show, with its busy covered craft market, felt-hatted coachmen tending their horses, flower stalls and buskers, portrait painters and pavement cafes.
The square sits at the heart of a network of courtyards, churches and flower-decked mansions, which make up the vibrant Stare Miasto (Old Town). To set your watch, listen for the trumpeter's hourly mournful melody from the Gothic St Mary's church Head down beautiful ul. Kanonicza to see the restored mansions at their best. Cafe U Literatow (at number seven) has a shady courtyard, which makes a great cappuccino stop.
Then it's on up to the cathedral, open daily 9am to 5pm (Sunday, 12.15pm to 5pm). Situated on Wawel Hill, the castle is of historic importance to all Poles. Fewer tourists make the 20-minute walk beyond the castle to the Kazimierz district, Krakow's former Jewish ghetto, which thrived from the 16th century until the Nazi occupation in World War II.
This was the location of much of Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List, and at the Jorden book shop (ul.Szeroka 2), you can sign up for a tour of places associated with the film, as well as for excellent historical walking tours. The former Auschwitz concentration camp, 45 miles west of the city, is an even more sombre destination.
Krakow's most popular half-day tour is to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Salt has been mined here for more than 700 years. The two-mile guided walk through cavernous tunnels and galleries is a blast - religious statues carved in salt, gnomes, chapels and chandeliers and, 300ft down on a platform above a salt lake, a brass band playing Roll Out The Barrel. You couldn't make it up. The underground shopping centre does brisk business in bags of natural salt and rock-salt lamps.
The city centre is fairly compact and the largely traffic-free streets make it easy and pleasurable to walk to all the main sights. A yesteryear feel is bolstered by the ubiquitous clip-clop of horse-drawn traps. Boat trips provide fine views of castle and cathedral. The pier is near the Grunwaldzki Bridge and departures are roughly hourly.
Eating out is excellent value - even near the main square you are unlikely to spend more than £10 a head, including drinks, while a beer in one of the pavement cafes costs about 70p. Polish cuisine is not noted for its subtlety, and you can expect hefty servings of meat in sauce, with local specialities such as beetroot soup, stuffed cabbage, dumplings, goose, duck, pike and trout. Trendier restaurants are making an impact, with new takes on Polish and Central European cuisine.
For crafts, the 16th-century Sukien-nice (Cloth Hall) in Market Square is first call for leather handbags, painted and lacquered wooden boxes, jewellery (especially amber) and lace. Kleparski farmers' and flea market (closed Sunday) offers a crash course in the local economy, selling everything from beetroot to fur coats. ... more