Poland

So as you may know, I got the chance to visit Poland the past few days. I left Dublin on Sunday Feb 7, because I felt that the best way to celebrate Andrew's 18th bday would be to go to Poland, and left Krakow today, Tues Feb 9. Let me tell you - it was COLD!! Since we were outside each day from morning til night, then we got to feel both the highs and lows. The high reached 21, and the low was 10... so... you can see I really mean it when I say it was cold. It was bitter. And I'm sure there are those of you who will argue (*ahem*, Lisa :P) that they've been in colder weather, but I havent, and that's the point. This is so not normal for me!! Plus, most people, especially in America, who live in this weather dont rely on walking at the main form of transportation. Stupid Europe and their walking! I'm thinking Poland most of the year is cold, so try not to visit in the middle of winter...

For only being there basically 2 days, I got plenty of pictures. I feel like many of them need explanation and I'm still trying to figure out how to do it.

LeeAnn and I arrived around 10:30am Poland time, which is 6 hours ahead of the East coast. The Krakow airport was tiiiiny! From there we hopped a train right outside the airport that took us into the city centre. The train station, which is also the bus station, is also the main shopping center/mall. It was actually really large. 3 levels of shops and eateries, and 1 thing I liked is that there was not just one main food area. There were several food areas and then restaurants scattered among the shops as well. The Polish money is not in euro, so we had to wrap our minds around prices a little harder. For instance, we both took about 140 zloty, which was only about 40 euro.

Leaving there, it was really only about 1 block or so to our hotel, which was very nice. The exciting thing was that it was only 15 euro a night per person. Cant find that anywhere! Just a block down the street from the hotel was the city square. So once we checked in we headed out exploring, heading down to the old Jewish town. We figured out just how incredibly cold it really was!

We found a restaurant to warm up in and eat lunch. I tried calling home before the meal to let the 'rents know I was there, but it was only just before 7am and those slackers weren't already up!! So giving them another hour and half, I tried again. The food we got was really good. We both ordered Pierogi, Polish dumplings, two different types, both veggi friendly. You will see our bill combined was 46 zloty, but that is really just over 11 euro. You can barely find a meal for ONE in Dublin that's only 11 euro, much less a meal covering 2 people.

Hopefully I can get these pictures to go in order. The first half is around the city square. After the picture of the castle with the red brick wall in front of it (I was on the phone with my mom at this point and cant remember the name, tho I hear it's a famous castle), the photos get into the Jewish quarter. All 3 videos, including the one of the 1 bird following the other bird, are in the old Jewish quarter.

After getting back to the hotel and defrosting, we ventured out into the square again to another Polish restaurant. I had polish sausage, which is like our smokes sausage, so very very good, and the Polish soup zurek, which was amazing to eat. I spent 16 zloty, which is a lot for dinner, even tho that's really only 4 euro! But to make the evening strange, a beggar came into the restaurant, walked right up to our table (since LeeAnn and I were the only ones in the room at the time) and started asking us for money and even tho LeeAnn kept telling him no, he wouldnt go away. He then got in my face and I just looked forward towards LeeAnn across the table. She kept saying very firmly "No". Finally he left. That's definitely something that would never occur in the US and something that I doubt would happen in Ireland either... so that was an interesting event.

Back at the hotel we watched the Polish version of Deal or No Deal, where the woman ended up winning 73,000 zloty.