Krakow

There's no better time to visit Poland than December, in my opinion. Sure it's cold, but I'd rather be cold in an inland country than in one where I am looking wistfully at the sandy beaches wishing it was warm enough to swim. Also, Eastern Europe is the perfect place to do some Christmas shopping...not that I have anything against expensive Swiss prices...wait a minute, yes I do.

Bringing back the max amount of Zubrowka (polish vodka) from Krakow.
back row: Vance, Tommy, Richard, Travis, Warren
front row: Adrienn, me






Vance worked some magic and found us a reasonably priced flight for the weekend, the only odd part was that we connected through Milan (it's ALMOST on the way...). We arrived late Friday night and avoided the tourist trap cab drivers, instead finding a cheap van cab that only made me fear for my life momentarily. Warren was already at the hostel, since he had flown in that morning. This wasn't on purpose...the night before Travis happen to notice that Warren had accidentally booked the super early morning flight, so Warren had to rush around getting ready. Haha, would have been funny at check in if Warren had assumed he was on the same flight as us....well, not funny for Warren.

The hostel we stayed at was called...are you ready?...The Bling Bling Hostel. How can you go wrong with a name like that? Lol...actually, I think it was the best hostel that I've stayed at over here, all things considered. It was clean, good location, good breakfast, nice beds, nice staff, nice people...all for the low price of about $18/night. Woot.

Our first stop on saturday was the Krakow Castle, which was in walking distance (as was almost everything else in Krakow, yay for not having to deal with public transit). It was up on a hill, in true castle style, and had an odd combination of architecture all mashed together in one building. We checked out the Cathedral, and then split up to see various sights...Richard and I spent our time looking at the weapons, armour and treasure exhibit, where they had lots of cool stuff. We managed to join up with a tour group and get all the inside info on everything (yay!). One of the coolest things we saw was the swords that had guns attached...and lots of other neat crossbows, swords, etc.

Inside the courtyard of Krakow Castle...check out all the various domes they put into the design.












Astrological clock


















The castle also features a Dragon's Den which was closed (this disappointed me greatly, thought, I heard it's just a big cave). The legend about the dragon is that it used to terrorize the people, but then a clever traveller tricked the dragon into eating sulphur, and it was so thirsty that it drank itself to explosion in the lake. Sweeett..... Even though we couldn't visit the Dragon's Den, we found a cool statue of the dragon, and settled for a picture in front of that. The statue even breathed flame every 4 minutes, much to our delight.



Rrrawwww! We're dragons! Pay attention Richard...


















Tommy, Adrienn and Richard hanging out at the castle











After the castle, we were all starving so we wandered around looking for a restaurant. We ended up at a little place that had amazing food, at low, low prices (do I sound like a commercial?). Our table shared some fruit perogies (mmm, who knew sweet perogies would be so good?) and some cabbage rolls, and then I had plate of good old fashioned cheese and potato perogies. Did I mention that perogies are one of my favorite foods? And they're even better not frozen from Costco (but Costco is still awesome, don't you worry).

Renergized, it was time for some shopping. We visited the local mall, and discovered that this is not one of the places where super cheap prices are found. Still managed to get a few gifts though. Next we hit up the Krakow Christmas Markets....jackpot! Stall upon stall selling cool handmade stuff at low low prices. Buy now and pay no GST until 2007, and receive free shipping and handeling!!.....ummm....er.....

SO! We bought lots of stuff, walking home was quite the struggle. Especially since we were already loaded down with bottles of vodka and mix for later that night.


The Krakow Christmas markets in the center square











Back at the hostel, we chilled out in the common room enjoying Zubrowka, this awesome polish vodka that comes with a stalk of grass in the bottle. It's especially good with apple juice, which is what I had. I taught everyone how to play screw your neighbour (the card game....come on people).

We met some other people staying at the hostel: Shawn (from the US), Lotta (from Finland) and Candice (US) and invited them to join us that night. It worked out well, since Shawn had already been here one night, and knew where some good bars were.


Vance laughing hysterically at a classic Tommy randomness moment....it continued for longer than you could imagine, haha














New friends! Lotta, Shawn and me!













How do Warren's glasses taste Travis?










We started out at a bar that was decorated with what seemed to be polaroid pictures of random people all over the walls, it was pretty cool, though it took us a while to find a place to sit. A hour or so later, Warren wondered where Travis was....which ended up with Warren escorting a very drunk Travis back to the hostel. What a good roommate, lol.

The rest of us continued on to a nearby club, which had 2 floors and was pretty cool. We danced a lot and hung out with our new hostel friends. One negative feature of the club is that they must have only recently discovered the strobe light, and were still so impressed with it that they didn't understand that sometimes you should turn it off. I'm just glad that I don't have epilepsy, or it would have been a rough night.

The night progressed as most nights do, with random events, and we all returned back to the hostel at different times of the night/morning/late morning. One of the most entertaining parts of my night was walking back home with Tommy, and running into Vance and Richard, who were walking AWAY from the hostel in order to take some pictures. It takes a special kind of tourist to be visiting sights at 3am...lol.

The next morning we left the hostel to visit the salt mines in Wieliczka. This involved taking a bus, which was a bit sketchy since we didn't know where the bus stop was. We were walking around for awhile, before some random guy approached us and directed us to the right place....to this day I still have no idea how he knew that we needed help...



Walking through the park to the bus stop
















The bus ride was about half an hour, and was filled with everything except 3D tic tac toe. We signed up for tours of the salt mines (you can't go in without a guided tour) and only had to wait a bit for the next tour time. Tommy and I used this time to discover a machine selling bouncy balls, and had a grand old time running around after them. Sadly, the balls did not make it to the end of the trip without getting lost...though mine lasted through most of the day, providing all sorts of bouncing fun times.

The tour lasted 2 hours, and was led by a friendly Polish woman, who made funny comments (that might have been scripted, but were still funny). She told us about the history (real and legend) of the salt mine and interesting facts like how the air has to be air conditioned to keep the moisture out, etc. We saw old devices for transporting the salt and some cool chapels that have been sculpted out of salt. Oh ya, that's something I didn't mention yet...all the walls, floors, statues, etc on the tour were made of salt. We were invited to lick the walls for proof (I did...it was salty...and hopefully disease-free, lol). Apparently our ticket included 1kg of salt, and since we weren't handed a big chunk at the end I guess we only got it if we licked the walls enough...that's a lot of licking. I think Vance was trying for his entitled 1kg, since he licked the wall in almost every room.




Group pic inside the salt mine deep underground













Statue made all out of salt! (We weren't allowed to lick this)

















Adreinn licking the wall in the salt mine










Huge underground chapel in the salt mine. You can rent this place out for weddings and stuff (how cool would that be!?)











On the salt mine tour....yes, I feel as good as I look











One odd thing about the tour is that there was a bunch of shows involving random flashing lights, and usually legends. It was a good attempt at something cool, but the problem was that they usually went on for a long time with the same weak visuals...it was lame to the point of funny. The best one involved a display of elves and dwarves (this excited me, as I fondly think of D&D....sigh) and cheesy carnival music...I wanted to jump in and start prancing among the dwarves.


Dwarves and elves dancing (?) to the music, another cheesy salt mine display, hehe









After the tour we had the option of returning to the surface (ooo, sounds like submarine talk or something) or going on the extra salt museum tour. I had had about enough salt at this point....but the group vote was to see the museum. Out of a tour of about 30 people, we were the only people who opted for the museum....man I feel like a dork. The museum ended up being alright though, and then we got to ride up in the smallest elevator ever (Travis couldn't even stand up straight, haha...he made his choice by being tall). Claustrophobia started kicking in right away, but luckily the ride wasn't that long, and I was distracted by the clanking of the rickety elevator.



Salt museum, showing all different kinds of salt growth













Bus ride back to Krakow...shockered!!!!!!!!















Signs we saw everywhere...I made sure to watch out for little girls with giant lollipop balloons
















Back at the hostel we were all pretty tired, so we chilled out for a while. Adrienn and Vance had naps, and the rest of us played cards. We saw Candice again, and she taught us how to play Euchre (I have always wanted to learn how to play!!!!). It's a fun game (though really complicated if you ask Tommy), but I think I still prefer Kaiser. Oh ya!!! I forgot to mention that I finally have people playing kaiser! I taught Adreinn, Warren, Travis and Richard on this trip, and they are totally addicted. Mwah ha ha!!! We played quite a bit on this trip, I'm getting my skillz back.




"Don't jump on me!!!!!"

















A bit later on we played a round of sociables (I don't know how we didn't scare away Lotta with our crazyness, haha) and then went out to find a bar. We went to the area around the main square, and after stopping for some food (mmm, shish-kabob...and meeting Polish guys) we found a quiet little bar. We chilled out there for awhile and had some drinks, and then headed back to the hostel.



Vance wearing the Village Idiot hat that Tommy made for him in sociables













Walking to the bar












Having a few drinks....mmm, coffee and Balieys














Tommy was sleeping, but woke up seconds before the shocker picture could be taken, boo










The next day we packed up (quite a challenge...I had bought so much stuff!!!) and headed to the airport. The highlight of the trip home was playing chess against Vance, but we both got bored and never finished the game (it was looking to be a long one, we both had lost our queens and a rook), plus the plane was landing.



Nice airplane pic by Richard












I got home around 6, and spent the evening baking cookies, and teaching Bernard to make a cake (he had to bring one in for work). I was almost foiled by not having baking soda...all I had was baking powder, so I had to scramble around for a different recipe. I also managed to master the shortbread recipe for awesome melt-in-your-mouthocityness. Hopefully they will be a hit at our Christmas party tonight.

In conclusion: Poland is a sweet place to visit, and I know more about salt now that I ever thought I would.

Thanks to Richard and Travis for sharing their pics :)