Krakow and Prague!
So let me just begin with saying that it would figure that I go away for a week and come back to find the Red Sox up 3-0 in the World Series, and that JK Rowling announced that Dumbledore is gay.
Ok. So. Break was excellent. We got up ridiculously early on Friday morning to make our flight out of Bristol to Prague. The cab picked us up at six am. There were no problems getting through security, the flight was fine and on time. We landed in Krakow and our first adventure was buying tickets for the bus to take us downtown so we could get to our hostel. The bus driver spoke no English, and I (I ended up being the one elected to deal with this) speak no Polish, so there was some awesome sign language going on there. The tickets cost 3 zlate each, which is less than a dollar. The exchange rate was awesome for us - $1=2.5zl. The bus ride took forever, we had some issues trying to find the train/tram and then figuring out which tram we were supposed to get on and in which direction we were supposed to get on it from, but we eventually managed - on our own too, because no one around us spoke English or was willing to volunteer that they did to help us.
Our hostel was nice. We had the room to ourselves, and we had a shower ensuite, which was amazing, and it was extremely clean with amazing water pressure. I love showers with water pressure. There is none at St. Mikes and there is none in the shower here and man do I miss it. There was a cafe on the ground floor of the hostel, and they made excellent pizza. We met Jen's boyfriend Pat at the hostel - he got into Poland the day before we did. He already knew his way around a little bit, so he took us to the Market Square and we explored a bit. We ate at this funky little resturant and I had the most bizarre pancakes I've ever seen. They were basically a crepe with some sort of cottage cheese-esque concoction in them, with caramel and chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Very bizarre. The soup, however, was amazing. It had half of a boiled egg in it, and kilebasa and pork and other yummy goodness. In fact, all of the food in Poland was amazing. Glumpkies and perogies and all sorts of fantastic yumminess that was the best I'd ever had. I guess the mother country knows how to make her home dishes. ^_^
We went to Auschwitcz on Saturday. There are really no words for that place. Intense. Heavy. I felt like I was going to puke pretty much the entire time I was there. The wall of death and the standing cells were the worst. I can't even comprehend it, really. It's too much for me to understand. They had exhibits of all of the stuff that the Nazi's had taken from the prisoners - tons of human hair, thousands of suitcases, glasses, teeth. Baby clothes. I broke down at the baby clothes and ran away. The whole place had such a surreal feeling to it. Hallowed ground, for sure. No one was talking. Well, no one except a few fucking retarded American girls whom Kiki said were laughing and talking loudly to each other as they were walking into the gas chambers - I didn't see/hear them, but I was so upset when Kiki told me about it. The two Danish couples who were with us on the tour seemed surprised when I said I was embarrassed that they were American and behaving that way. I was, though. It's people like that that give Americans a bad reputation. Despite it not being the most uplifting of days, I feel like visiting there was the most worthwhile thing we did during the whole week.
Sunday was a crazy day. Got up early to go shopping in the Market Square, but as it was Sunday and all of Poland was at Mass, there wasn't much open. Jennie and I met the rest of our group at Wawel Hill around 10am and we went for a tour of the Krakow Castle. The castle was amazing and I'm so glad that we went. The tour guide for teh royal apartments was extremely good - as were almost all of our guides for the whole week. The armory was kid of meh - lots of swords/cannons/ other tools and instruments of death. I git in trouble for taking a picture of a sword. That security man was going to take me down if there hadn't been a pane of glass between us. The dragon's den was by far the coolest - it reminded us of Smaug's lair in The Hobbit (yes, we're geeks and we embrace it). It was all dark and rocky and cave-like.
We left around 3:30 to go to the salt mines for a 5pm tour. That was so. cool. I got distracted quite a bit by taking pictures and such of everything around me that I missed a lot of what the guide was telling us about the history of the place. There were salt statues everywhere. By far the most amazing spot in the place was the cathedral - a full out cathedral where they celebrate Mass and people get married and there was a salt statue of JP II that I was a particular fan of.
Monday was our day trip to Zacopane - a small town about 2 hours outside of Krakow that is supposed to be the center of Polish cultural heritage. It was winter in Zacopane; there was about four inches of snow on the ground and it was COLD. I was not prepared for the weather in Krakow (I wore the two sweatshirts that I brought the whole week. It was pretty raunch by the end). We only ended up staying for about four hours because 1)there wasn't a whole lot to do, or see, because the weather was bad and 2) we were absolutely frozen.
So that was Poland. Our lasti day in the country was spent mostly in a mall and in the airport, because it was hardcore raining outside and again, we weren't properly dressed. We didn't have a hostel Tuesday night because our flight for Prague left at 5:30am and we would have had to leave the hostel at 3am, and that wasn't worth it. It was a very long day, tempers flared a bit, but we got over it and we managed to make it to Prague in one piece.
Prague is absolutely gorgeous. The air quality was horrendous, but the city was amazing. Kiki, Jen and I walked around for a few hours until Ben got into town (because the hostel was under his name). We didn't want to do too much the first day because Regina wasn't getting in until Thursday-ish, and we were exhausted. Thursday we explored on our own during the morning. We went up to the castle and poked around, ate lunch (The waiter hated us because we asked for separate checks - the Czech currency is ridiculous, 20kc to $1, so we all had huge bills out of the ATM, etc etc)
When we got done with lunch, we went back to the castle because we wanted a tour - but we couldn't get back in! It was all blocked off because the Czech military was doing something - we couldn't really figure out what, but it looked like they were practicing for a speech or ceremony or something later on. So, we made our way back to the hostel (on the metro - the metro on Prague is dead easy, it was so nice) and found Regina. We tried and failed to find the observation tower - we ended up taking the tram to the end of a line and wound up in a residental area. So we gave up on that, went back to the city and found a jewelery shop that sold lots of nice amber earrings and rings and such with an owner who was willing to barter with us - he knew that he was going to make some sort of sale with five girls all tromping in, so he was willing to take down his prices a bit.
Friday was the best day in Prague. We spent about $45 for a six hour tour of the city and it was the best investment we could have made. We spent four hours walking around with this girl named Theresa, and it was just the six of us, which was amazing. Lunch was included in the price, and I had fruit dumplings and they were amazing. I also tried the first beer that I actually enjoyed - I'm not sure what it's called, but it's a Czech beer, and no one else liked it because it was bitter, but I thought it was quite good. Go figure. After lunch we took a boat tour, which was a lot of the same stuff we had heard from Theresa, but from the mouth of a very good looking Czech man dressed in a sailor's uniform with the most gorgeous blue eyes. That alone made it totally worth it. We went on a ghost tour that night, which was the most disappointing part of the day, because the girl didn't speak very good English and it was very difficult to figure out what she was saying.
Yesterday we had half the day, and we spent it in the markets near Old Town Square. I spent a lot of money this week, but it was mostly on Christmas presents, so I'm not too bothered about it. The flight back to Bristol was easy, and I was very very very happy to be back home in Bath with clean clothes and my own bed.
I have a presentation due for my education class tomorrow. Blargh.
Ok. So. Break was excellent. We got up ridiculously early on Friday morning to make our flight out of Bristol to Prague. The cab picked us up at six am. There were no problems getting through security, the flight was fine and on time. We landed in Krakow and our first adventure was buying tickets for the bus to take us downtown so we could get to our hostel. The bus driver spoke no English, and I (I ended up being the one elected to deal with this) speak no Polish, so there was some awesome sign language going on there. The tickets cost 3 zlate each, which is less than a dollar. The exchange rate was awesome for us - $1=2.5zl. The bus ride took forever, we had some issues trying to find the train/tram and then figuring out which tram we were supposed to get on and in which direction we were supposed to get on it from, but we eventually managed - on our own too, because no one around us spoke English or was willing to volunteer that they did to help us.
Our hostel was nice. We had the room to ourselves, and we had a shower ensuite, which was amazing, and it was extremely clean with amazing water pressure. I love showers with water pressure. There is none at St. Mikes and there is none in the shower here and man do I miss it. There was a cafe on the ground floor of the hostel, and they made excellent pizza. We met Jen's boyfriend Pat at the hostel - he got into Poland the day before we did. He already knew his way around a little bit, so he took us to the Market Square and we explored a bit. We ate at this funky little resturant and I had the most bizarre pancakes I've ever seen. They were basically a crepe with some sort of cottage cheese-esque concoction in them, with caramel and chocolate sauce and whipped cream. Very bizarre. The soup, however, was amazing. It had half of a boiled egg in it, and kilebasa and pork and other yummy goodness. In fact, all of the food in Poland was amazing. Glumpkies and perogies and all sorts of fantastic yumminess that was the best I'd ever had. I guess the mother country knows how to make her home dishes. ^_^
We went to Auschwitcz on Saturday. There are really no words for that place. Intense. Heavy. I felt like I was going to puke pretty much the entire time I was there. The wall of death and the standing cells were the worst. I can't even comprehend it, really. It's too much for me to understand. They had exhibits of all of the stuff that the Nazi's had taken from the prisoners - tons of human hair, thousands of suitcases, glasses, teeth. Baby clothes. I broke down at the baby clothes and ran away. The whole place had such a surreal feeling to it. Hallowed ground, for sure. No one was talking. Well, no one except a few fucking retarded American girls whom Kiki said were laughing and talking loudly to each other as they were walking into the gas chambers - I didn't see/hear them, but I was so upset when Kiki told me about it. The two Danish couples who were with us on the tour seemed surprised when I said I was embarrassed that they were American and behaving that way. I was, though. It's people like that that give Americans a bad reputation. Despite it not being the most uplifting of days, I feel like visiting there was the most worthwhile thing we did during the whole week.
Sunday was a crazy day. Got up early to go shopping in the Market Square, but as it was Sunday and all of Poland was at Mass, there wasn't much open. Jennie and I met the rest of our group at Wawel Hill around 10am and we went for a tour of the Krakow Castle. The castle was amazing and I'm so glad that we went. The tour guide for teh royal apartments was extremely good - as were almost all of our guides for the whole week. The armory was kid of meh - lots of swords/cannons/ other tools and instruments of death. I git in trouble for taking a picture of a sword. That security man was going to take me down if there hadn't been a pane of glass between us. The dragon's den was by far the coolest - it reminded us of Smaug's lair in The Hobbit (yes, we're geeks and we embrace it). It was all dark and rocky and cave-like.
We left around 3:30 to go to the salt mines for a 5pm tour. That was so. cool. I got distracted quite a bit by taking pictures and such of everything around me that I missed a lot of what the guide was telling us about the history of the place. There were salt statues everywhere. By far the most amazing spot in the place was the cathedral - a full out cathedral where they celebrate Mass and people get married and there was a salt statue of JP II that I was a particular fan of.
Monday was our day trip to Zacopane - a small town about 2 hours outside of Krakow that is supposed to be the center of Polish cultural heritage. It was winter in Zacopane; there was about four inches of snow on the ground and it was COLD. I was not prepared for the weather in Krakow (I wore the two sweatshirts that I brought the whole week. It was pretty raunch by the end). We only ended up staying for about four hours because 1)there wasn't a whole lot to do, or see, because the weather was bad and 2) we were absolutely frozen.
So that was Poland. Our lasti day in the country was spent mostly in a mall and in the airport, because it was hardcore raining outside and again, we weren't properly dressed. We didn't have a hostel Tuesday night because our flight for Prague left at 5:30am and we would have had to leave the hostel at 3am, and that wasn't worth it. It was a very long day, tempers flared a bit, but we got over it and we managed to make it to Prague in one piece.
Prague is absolutely gorgeous. The air quality was horrendous, but the city was amazing. Kiki, Jen and I walked around for a few hours until Ben got into town (because the hostel was under his name). We didn't want to do too much the first day because Regina wasn't getting in until Thursday-ish, and we were exhausted. Thursday we explored on our own during the morning. We went up to the castle and poked around, ate lunch (The waiter hated us because we asked for separate checks - the Czech currency is ridiculous, 20kc to $1, so we all had huge bills out of the ATM, etc etc)
When we got done with lunch, we went back to the castle because we wanted a tour - but we couldn't get back in! It was all blocked off because the Czech military was doing something - we couldn't really figure out what, but it looked like they were practicing for a speech or ceremony or something later on. So, we made our way back to the hostel (on the metro - the metro on Prague is dead easy, it was so nice) and found Regina. We tried and failed to find the observation tower - we ended up taking the tram to the end of a line and wound up in a residental area. So we gave up on that, went back to the city and found a jewelery shop that sold lots of nice amber earrings and rings and such with an owner who was willing to barter with us - he knew that he was going to make some sort of sale with five girls all tromping in, so he was willing to take down his prices a bit.
Friday was the best day in Prague. We spent about $45 for a six hour tour of the city and it was the best investment we could have made. We spent four hours walking around with this girl named Theresa, and it was just the six of us, which was amazing. Lunch was included in the price, and I had fruit dumplings and they were amazing. I also tried the first beer that I actually enjoyed - I'm not sure what it's called, but it's a Czech beer, and no one else liked it because it was bitter, but I thought it was quite good. Go figure. After lunch we took a boat tour, which was a lot of the same stuff we had heard from Theresa, but from the mouth of a very good looking Czech man dressed in a sailor's uniform with the most gorgeous blue eyes. That alone made it totally worth it. We went on a ghost tour that night, which was the most disappointing part of the day, because the girl didn't speak very good English and it was very difficult to figure out what she was saying.
Yesterday we had half the day, and we spent it in the markets near Old Town Square. I spent a lot of money this week, but it was mostly on Christmas presents, so I'm not too bothered about it. The flight back to Bristol was easy, and I was very very very happy to be back home in Bath with clean clothes and my own bed.
I have a presentation due for my education class tomorrow. Blargh.