Zakopane

Morskie Oko one day, Kasprowy Wierch the next

Walk to Morskie Oko on day one: take an early minibus from the station to Palenica Białczańska, pay the national park fee, and walk the car-free road about two hours to the lake, arriving before nine for a quieter shore. On day two, ride the cable car from Kuźnice up Kasprowy Wierch, booking tickets ahead.

Eat at the mountain hut by the water, walk part of the way round the lake, then head back down. In the evening, ride the Gubałówka funicular from the top of Krupówki to watch the light fade on the Tatras, and have dinner in a wooden bacówka in town.

On day two, go up Kasprowy Wierch by cable car from Kuźnice, with tickets booked online, and walk along the ridge on the Slovak border if the weather is clear. Come down by early afternoon, when storms often build in summer. Then turn to the town: the carved headstones of the Pęksowy Brzyzek cemetery by the old church on Kościeliska Street, the Zakopane Style at Villa Atma, home of the Szymanowski Museum, and a last stop at the cheese market for oscypek to take home.

Oscypek, trout and kwaśnica in the Tatra highlands

Oscypek is the taste of the Tatras: firm sheep's milk cheese pressed in patterned wooden moulds and smoked, sold every morning at the market below Gubałówka. Restaurants serve kwaśnica, a sour sauerkraut soup with smoked pork ribs, and mountain trout. Choose carefully on Krupówki, where many places aim at passing crowds.

Stalls at the cheese market at the foot of Gubałówka sell it every day, best early in the morning, and it is usually served grilled with cranberry. Only cheese made to the traditional recipe in the highland season can carry the name, so the stalls also sell similar cheeses under other names.

Restaurants serve kwaśnica, a sour sauerkraut soup often cooked with smoked pork ribs, and trout from local farms is the fish to order, grilled or fried at the many fish places around town.

Krupówki is lined with places strung with coloured lights; skip those and look for a plain wooden hut with a highland menu. Bacówki just off Krupówki and Chata Zbójnicka on Jagiellońska are dependable for traditional food. For a cheap lunch, a bar mleczny on Nowotarska serves canteen classics, and Bar Górski on Weteranów Wojny cooks home-style meals.

Storm afternoons, snow into June and the ski months in Zakopane

Zakopane sits at 800 to 1,100 metres and is wet: July brings almost 200 mm of rain, much of it in afternoon thunderstorms, so start hikes early. Late June to September is the hiking window, with September often the most settled, and snow lingers high into June. Ski season runs roughly January to March.

Even in high summer the day's high is only about 21°C in town and much colder on the ridges. January averages around 1°C by day and -7°C at night.

For hiking, late June to September is the window, with September often the most settled and less crowded than the school holidays. High routes can hold snow into June, and anyone on the exposed trails should start early and be down before the afternoon storms.

Winter is ski season, roughly January to March, on Kasprowy Wierch, Nosal and Polana Szymoszkowa, with larger resorts at Białka Tatrzańska and Bukowina Tatrzańska nearby. Over Christmas and New Year the town is at its fullest. In August, the International Festival of Mountain Folklore brings highland groups from many countries for concerts, parades and dancing.