Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts

Merry Christmas

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.

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?!" 

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. 


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. 




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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Hello Zakopane!

Christmas

So today we said goodbye to the lovely Krakow. We had such a great time exploring the city. Last night we went to see a Chamber Orchestra perform in the oldest church in Krakow, which was built in the 1200's. Then we had a lovely dinner at a very nice restaurant in the Jewish District. One of the best things about Krakow is how affordable it is - for a three-course, delicious dinner, with a bottle of wine and special treats from the kitchen we paid about $65. 

After dinner we had a couple of drinks in a basement bar. It was about 9PM, but the bar was empty. Europeans don't go out until around midnight apparently. We are just not cool enough for their hip, night owl ways. 



This morning we took the bus to Zakopane. It's a 2-hour bus up into the mountains. Again, super affordable. It was about $4 each for the bus. 



The drive was very beautiful. The countryside has lots of little villages. Our trip to Zakopane was initially planned to be two days of skiing, but its been so warm there is no snow. Our host at the inn says there is typically about 2 meters of snow at this time of year. 


It was a bit of a walk from the bus station to our Inn, but it is so warm and beautiful out. It seems like all of Poland is here. There are many, many families and groups of people walking around. Zakopane reminds us a bit of Telluride or Ouray or Carmel - a posh little mountain town. 







Apparently Christmas Eve is the most important night in Polish holiday celebrations. Everyone meets with their family and has big, traditional meals together. As we were entering town every restaurant and shop seemed to be closing up so their staff could go to their holiday celebrations. Our host at the inn was very, very concerned that there would be nowhere for us to eat tonight as all the restaurants will be either closed or booked. They called a nearby restaurant and asked if they could squeeze us in. So we are going to a traditional, 20-course Polish Christmas dinner. It begins at 5 and is expected to last until 11!

We took a nice long walk around town to get hungry for our big feast. The city is so quaint and beautiful. The air smells like firewood and there is lots of moss and little babbling brooks running through town.

Our host here is very sweet. She just knocked on our door with a big plate of food from her family's Christmas dinner downstairs - all sorts of homemade things like bread and fish and pierogis. Even thought we're eating in less than an hour she just assumed we must be hungry. Polish people are so nice!

We hope everyone has a great Christmas!

xoxo
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Day 1: Kraków Rocks!

Christmas



So we made it!

There was (of course) a little trouble actually finding the apartment. The address we had was for a restaurant. Luckily the hostess was nice enough to let us use the WiFi to contact Maciej, our AirBnB host. Maciej's niece, Kasia, had to come find us and lead us to the right building.

The apartment is right in Old Town on the third floor. It's small but very comfortable and cozy. It has a tiny fridge and dish-washer and dryer. It's crazy to think that the U.S might be the only place in the world where it's normal for everyone to have full-size appliances (and a dryer) in the home.

This morning we started things off by trekking to the drug store (their chain is called Rossmann's ;-) ) to buy shampoo and conditioner (thanks British TSA), coffee and breakfast pastries. 








Then we had a nice walk around town. Kraków has an amazing Christmas market in the Main Square.  It's so quaint and adorable with all kinds of little stalls and shops selling tchotchkes and traditional Polish crafts (aka overpriced tourist bait!). Jillian splurged on a mink hat - essential for those frozen New Orleans winters. 








The Christmas Market has little wooden huts that sell all kinds of traditional Polish food - pierogi, kielbasa, mushrooms, potatoes, sauerkraut. A very good (and cheap!) lunch. 




In the afternoon we took a tour out of town to visit a salt mine which has been operational for over 600 years. It was really awesome. You start the tour by taking 387 steps down to the first level. They have many statues carved of salt, various chapels (when the mine was operational there were more than 30 chapels throughout because 10% of the miners would typically die), and of course, gift shops.






Josh's favorite fact from our tour: Legend has it that there are dwarves deep inside the mine that will grant you good luck if you smile at them.

Jillian's favorite fact from our tour: The air in the mine is so salty that no bacteria can live in it. Josh started breathing more deeply after that - he has a sore throat.

I gets dark so early! The sun sets at 3:39. We are looking forward to seeing some of the countryside tomorrow on the bus to Auschwitz.

We made an American friend, Chris from Cincinatti, on the salt mine tour. Tonight we will all go to the Old Jewish ghetto, which is now the cool, hip part of town with all the nightlife. 
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