Świnica House

The living room is on the ground floor, so from the sofa by the fire you step straight onto the terrace. Coffee in the morning, a fire in the evening, and the Tatras in the big windows in between. Three bedrooms are upstairs and the fourth is downstairs: right for grandparents, for friends, or for whoever wakes up first.

Świnica (2,301 m) sits on the Polish-Slovak border and is the first high peak of the High Tatras when you look from the west. Its three summits form a trident on the skyline. It used to be called Świnnica and Dźwinia Skała, and the Slovaks named it Hlúpy vrch, the Foolish Peak, because it could be treacherous. The first documented ascent was in 1867, with the guide Maciej Sieczka. Tatra rescuers and Polish Himalayan climbers, Wanda Rutkiewicz and Jerzy Kukuczka among them, trained on its walls. From the Świnica house you see it at dawn, when the granite turns pink and then gold.