It was nice to arrive in Lublin after ten hours of travelling and be able to see a new city for both Heather and I. We had three nights staying here as we wanted to not only see the city itself but also travel out to Zamosc.

The railway station was a bit of a walk from the central area, but after the long journey by train it was nice to stretch the legs. Our hotel - Vanilla Hotel - was located on the main pedestrianised street in the city which gave easy access to the old town area too.

With an early start we collected our hire car at just after 08.30 in order to make the most of our day 'with wheels'. Zamosc is about an hour and a half by car from Lublin and it was an easy drive to arrive in time for a morning coffee.

The central area of Zamosc is stunning, typically Polish, and even though most of the city is restored they still have plenty of work to do. We had a good wander around the historical city centre area before finding a cosy restaurant for lunch and a warm up. Sadly our day was marred a little by grey/white skies as the place looked much better on the postcards with a blue sky!

After lunch we headed to Chełm (pronounced something like Hume) a place that features just two things to do on TripAdvisor! Having found the number one attraction, the underground chalk mines, we booked into the 16.00 tour expecting to be the only tourists in town. With some time to kill we paid a visit to the impressive church/basilica (number 2 on TripAdvisor) perched on the hill overlooking the town before grabbing a coffee and cake in a very pleasant café.

To our surprise when we arrived for our 16.00 tour six Polish people were also ready to go underground. The guide was enthusiastic, provided enough information in English, and also had a sense of humour. We think he worked in the UK for a while in order to have sex with chickens - hopefully that was lost a little bit in translation!

We were back in Lublin by 19.00 having driven around 250 kilometres in our rental car. It was definitely time for some food and a drink which we had in the old town area of Lublin at a pub/restaurant called Szeroka.

The following morning there was rain, not too much, but enough to put a bit of a dampener on the day exploring Lublin. The old town area of Lublin is worth a visit, plenty of colourful buildings, narrow alleyways, and a pleasant Rynek area. There is also a castle, now a museum, situated just outside the old town, that contains the stunning Chapel of the Holy Trinity.

Overall Lublin didn't quite 'do it' for us and maybe the weather contributed a bit to this too but it was hard to say exactly why. We had some decent food (our hotel had a very good café/cake shop) and we had some rather poor food too (Pub Sarmata was a let down on many levels) but compared to other places we have visited in Poland Lublin didn't give the 'wow factor' we were maybe expecting.

With just one more night in Poland still to enjoy on this trip we left Lublin and headed to Rzeszow by train early on the Saturday morning.