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Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas everyone!
We can't believe it's Christmas 2015!
As we mentioned last night, we had a 5pm reservation at a nearby restaurant for a traditional Polish Christmas dinner. Apparently on Christmas you have to eat 12 dishes without meat and then you will have luck...or something.
We walked in and they sat us at this drafty table facing a heater. There was a spread of weird, unfamiliar foods.
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| 5 different kinds of coleslaw...Jillian's favorite. |
This was by far the most expensive meal we'd paid for in Poland and we were thinking "what the heck did we pay for?!"
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| This is salmon and herbs in a cold, meat jello. Not super appetizing. |
The table next to us started standing up to do some traditional Polish group communion thing and invited us to participate. When they found out we were American and visiting Poland (which they were incredulous about) they invited us to join their table. A 6,8" Polish guy (Piodr) who is a dead ringer for Ben Rothlisberger, his Belarusian wife Viktoria, and two Polish ladies who spoke no English.
Piodr ordered 3 bottles of vodka over the next several hours. He is a head chef in London, so he kept insulting the food, but the later courses like mushroom soup and pierogi a were quite good!
Neither of us can remember the last time we drank so much vodka! After dinner we went to a nightclub, but we were pretty drunk and tired. Viktoria was not, though...she wanted us all to drive to Kraków to go to a nightclub there. We Americans definitely cannot keep up with the European ways of partying all night.
We thought we were going to be too hungover today, but actually felt alright...maybe because the vodka we drank was so high quality. We were a little slow to get started, but spent the day walking around the town and out in the woods around Zakopane.
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| Our hotel is definitely not as fancy as this one. |
It is really beautiful here. You'd think you were in Switzerland with the beautiful mountains and forests. According to Viktoria, the town has been built up a lot in the last 5 years. It has everything - H&M, Adidas, Northface stores, carnival rides, wax museum, nightclubs. Josh says it reminds him of Breckenridge or the larger ski towns in Colorado.
Josh was especially surprised how nice it has been in Poland. He said he was expecting it to be "the Ohio of Europe" (no offense, granny), but it's almost like the Czech Republic and Russia had a baby.
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| Are you tired of babbling brook photos yet?! |
Unfortunately the night time photos of the twinkling lights and Christmas trees just aren't turning out, but the city center is very festive and warm.
Many places are closed for Christmas. We are so lucky that we got in to our dinner last night! So many tourists kept popping in to the restaurant and were turned away. Poland really, really shuts down everything for Christmas.
We did manage to get some tasty baked good which we're going to eat while watching movies in our attic room at the lodge.
Tomorrow we are going hiking in the morning and then shopping in the afternoon. There are so many things to do here, you could easily spend a week in Zakopane, even without skiing.
Hoping everyone has a great holiday!
xoxo
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