Where We Stayed During Our Two Month Vacation in Poland

Here’s a special mid-month update from Root of Good! A reader asked for more detail about the lodging we usually book on our multi-month vacations. 

Phillip wrote:

“I am constantly amazed at how frugal you are able to travel, especially on big ticket items like lodging. It would be great to see lodging pictures, like the apartment and hotel you stayed at. That would greatly help me understand what value for the buck you are getting in different places.”

To summarize our overarching philosophy on lodging choices, we’re looking for a good value for nice, comfortable places to stay. 

High priorities to us:

• Cleanliness
• Convenience
• Quiet
• Simple
• Affordable

Our usual search filter when four of us travel as a family is “highly rated, two bedrooms, and three beds”. This filter gets us apartments where the kids have their own bedroom to share and each kid has their own bed. And no one has to sleep on a sleeper sofa in the living room.

I set the price filter to max out somewhere at or just below the median rental price for the area and start looking at the less expensive properties first. If nothing acceptable appears in the search results, we go up in price in $10 per night increments until something nice shows up.

For stays over 2-3 nights, we book apartments and for shorter stays we’ll often book two hotel rooms for the family. 

Occasionally we’ll add more search filters like “air conditioning” or “clothes washer” if it’s important to have those in a given area. But they’re usually included if AC is necessary, and clothes washers are very common in most 2 bedroom listings.

Let’s take a look at some of the Airbnbs we booked across Poland during the summer of 2024. All prices are in USD’s and all the places we stayed had two bedrooms in general. 

• Krakow – $86 per night
• Zakopane – $60 per night
• Paczkow – $65 per night
• Klodzko – $102 per night
• Wroclaw – $112 per night
• Jelenia Gora – $102 per night
• Miedzyrzecki – $50 per night per room in a “palace” hotel
• Poznan – $73 per night
• Gdansk – $123 per night (5 bedrooms!)

Krakow – 2 Bedroom, 2 Bathroom, $86 per night

We stayed in a very nice, clean apartment about 10-15 minutes from the tourist part of town. It was quiet and relatively spacious by European standards.

The apartment advertised air conditioning as an amenity, but like many places in Europe, that meant it had one AC unit in one room (the living room) so it was almost completely ineffective at cooling the bedrooms on the far side of the apartment. And the one night we cranked the AC, the condensate line backed up and dumped a gallon or two of water all over the couch and floor (!!).

Overall a very nice place to stay for under $100 per night, AC unit issues notwithstanding. The apartment complex felt solidly middle or upper middle class, and I spotted a ton of international businesses located in the adjacent office park next to the apartment. I think the apartment is only a couple of years old. 

Zakopane – 2 Bedroom, 2 Bathroom, $60 per night

We stayed about 15 minutes outside of the mountain resort town of Zakopane in one of the dozens of small, rural villages dotted across the region. The apartment was basically one half of the large house where the owners lived. Basically a “duplex” to use an American term. The owners had a separate entrance on the other side of the house and our two apartments were connected internally by a door that was always closed and locked. 

We had our own entrance and usage of the main floor with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, plus the lower level where the kitchen, living, and dining room was located. The downstairs floor was slightly below the outside ground elevation so it was a partial basement. This kept the inside temperature fairly low which was actually too cold at some points in time (but we brought coats with us on the trip so we were fine). 

Paczkow – 2 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom, $65 per night

Unlike most of the apartments where we stayed for a week or a week and a half, we only stayed in this apartment in Paczkow for 4 nights. We had to rearrange our schedule a bit and needed a 4 night stay in this part of southern Poland before continuing on our journey, so it worked out well. 

The apartment itself was pretty nice but probably the smallest place we stayed all summer. But it had everything we needed – living room, dining room, full kitchen, clothes washer and dryer, hot shower, and 2 bedrooms. The Airbnb listing mentioned the entryway and exterior of the building need to be renovated because it’s a 1930’s building and that was accurate 🙂  

The biggest problem at this apartment was the lack of air conditioning. Usually it’s only in the 70’s during summertime in Poland. However, we visited during a heat wave when it was in the high 80’s and even went over 90F one day. When we arrived there were no fans but the host quickly dispatched his caretaker with 3 fans-in-a-box that we jointly assembled while sweating profusely in the heat.

The fans helped keep us cool but there’s no point in lying: it was really hot in the afternoons until the sun went down. 

It being Europe, there were no screens on the windows. But we had to have the windows wide open at night to cool off from the oppressive heat.

The bugs proved problematic. Once the sun set, the swarms of bugs quickly found their way inside. We tried turning off all the lights at night and just pretended we were camping and it mostly solved our bug problem. 

At $65 per night, it was an incredibly good value but I would definitely pay a higher price if it had some air conditioning or at least some window screens. 

I didn’t put all the pics in but the bathroom and bedrooms were all nice enough. 

Klodzko – 2 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom, $102 per night

We spent seven nights in this apartment in the resort village of Polanica-Zdroj, only 15 minutes from Klodzko in the south of Poland. We only went into the town of Klodzko once during our stay, since most of our itinerary had us exploring the countryside or going up the mountains for some hiking and sightseeing. 

This was one of the nicer, more comfortable apartments during our time in Poland. The weather was a lot cooler, which helped the place feel more comfortable. 

The master bedroom in this apartment (not shown) was very large. But the kids’ bedroom was on the smaller side.

We had the whole apartment building to ourselves during our stay including on-site parking in the driveway. The village was very quiet and peaceful too. 

Wroclaw – 2 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom, $112 per night

We spent a week in Wroclaw in this 100+ year old apartment just a few minutes from the edge of the historic center of town. At an advertised 90 square meters, or 968 square feet, it was one of the larger apartments we stayed in. 

The decor was nice overall but it was lacking in some regards. Some of the furniture was worn out with holes in the fabric. However, there were several nice canvas paintings from local artists and elaborate light fixtures. This apartment felt like a work in progress with a lot of potential. 

There were a couple other problems I won’t get into but it was an interesting experience staying in an old but mostly renovated apartment in the older part of town.

The apartment was on the third floor which means fourth floor in America. I counted the stairs on the way up to the apartment. 70 stairs to climb every time we came home. Sometimes carrying groceries. Good leg muscle workout! 

Jelenia Gora – 2 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom, $102 per night

Jelenia Gora is another mountain-adjacent city in the south of Poland. We stayed a few minutes south of Jelenia Gora closer to the mountains in the village of Piechowice.  Even though we were in a fairly rural area, we had a decent grocery store just a few minutes away from us. 

We spent a week in this apartment. It was pretty comfortable overall. I think the apartment was built in the last year or two as it appeared brand new and doesn’t show on aerial photos yet. 

The living room and upstairs loft bedroom had air conditioning, however the master bedroom did not have AC. It was cool enough at night during our stay that the master bedroom didn’t get that warm so it was a comfortable stay. I also cranked the AC in the living room all night to help keep it cool in the rest of the house and it seemed to work fairly well. 

Miedzyrzecki – $50 per night per room (in a “palace” hotel)

We wanted to experience living in an old palace in Poland. This place, at $50 per night, was perfect for a quick two night stay. The room wasn’t the most comfortable and the floor squeaked horribly. The upside was that each room came with a bathroom.

A nice surprise were the giant hares and wooly highland cows on the palace grounds for us to look at. Okay, I admit I also went inside the giant hare enclosure to pet them. The owner of the place was nice enough and it was an interesting experience overall for $50 per night. We were also staying in the middle of nowhere to visit one particular attraction, so there weren’t a ton of other great places to choose from within 45 minutes. 

Poznan – 2 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom, $73 per night

We spent five nights in Poznan at this apartment located on the edge of the historic part of downtown close to most of the tourist attractions in town. 

At $73 per night, this place scores pretty high on the value scale. Everything worked just fine overall. 

This was another “air conditioner in only one room” setup which seems common in European apartment rentals. Fortunately it wasn’t that hot so we didn’t have to rely on the windows at night as much. At least our kids got to enjoy the cool AC in their room (again). 

Gdansk – 5 Bedroom, 1 Bathroom, $123 per night

We had a hard time finding a good place in Gdansk, so we stayed a bit further out in the community of Oliwa. It was pretty quiet at night and still convenient to everywhere we ended up visiting during our stay. 

This was our most expensive place during the whole summer, in part due to the fact that it came with five bedrooms. Technically more like four bedrooms plus a big walk-in closet with a twin size bed in it.

The listing advertised it as accommodating 10 people but I think it would be pretty tight with any more than 5-6 people since the apartment only had one bathroom.  

At 1,600 square feet, it was much larger than all the other places we stayed during the summer. It felt very spacious in some parts but the slightly odd layout made it cramped in spots. The kitchen, for example, was very long but narrow so the four of us got into some traffic jams while prepping meals. 

Each of the kids got their own room, and we used the extra bedrooms as a closet and as a laundry drying room. 

I didn’t include pics of the bedrooms but they were plenty spacious in general.

Final Thoughts

That’s a good overview of the kinds of places we stayed in during the summer of 2024 in Poland. I didn’t show several places we stayed for the sake of brevity. There were a few 1 night stays in basic hotels that were fine, all priced around $50 per night per room. 

For all of the apartments we stayed in, the prices ranged from $60 per night on the low end to $123 per night on the high end for what were mostly 2 bedroom apartments with one or two bathrooms. 

During the entire trip, we spent 65 nights in Poland at an average price of $94 USD per night for lodging expenses. 

I referred to all of these apartments as “airbnbs” but we actually booked several places through booking.com this year. However most apartments were listed on Airbnb (or listed on both sites in one case). 

We came up with a few conclusions after this summer:

1. New build apartments are much nicer than older, historic structures. You have better odds that everything works well and it’ll be more likely to have modern amenities if you go with a newer place.
2. Places near lakes or rivers will have more bugs that fly inside during the night (because I have given up looking for window screens in Europe)
3. If the listing says “air conditioning”, check exactly how many units and where the AC unit(s) are located. We keep forgetting this.
4. Places that are slightly removed from the most tourist part of town will probably be quieter, for those that enjoy peace and quiet.

How do the places we stayed compare to the vacation lodging you usually stay in? Were these places in Poland as nice as you thought they would be?

 

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