Here it is! The moment you've all been waiting for! The post of a lifetime! Well cross that. There will actually be three posts about Eurotrip 2011. As many of you know, my four girlfriends from Loyola came to visit me in Polska for a ten day trip. I must say that I had an absolute blast and never thought I'd have such amazing friends that would travel to the other side of the world just to spend a week with me and use up most of their vacation time as well. Cheers to five!
Part 1
I decided that it would be a great idea to not sleep the night before the girls came since my flight was at 5:45am and due to the fact that I almost missed my flight for Christmas, my thought process seemed flawless. Turns out that staying up until the butt crack of dawn isn't the best idea because my narcolepsy kicked in every time I sat down for more than a three minute period. Needless to say, I somehow made it to Krakow where I waited for the girls to arrive. Unfortunately, their plane was delayed 30 minutes, so I had to wait even longer to surprise them at the airport. When they came out of the baggage claim, I'm pretty sure everyone thought we were crazy. The amount of screaming and yelling and shrieking and sheer excitement was not visible anywhere, but in our corner of hugging and crying.
Our apartment in Krakow was right on the Main Square which was not only the perfect location, but also the perfect view. After we unpacked, our first stop was dessert and wine (Lauren's suggestion of course). After getting ourselves familiar with the area, we grabbed dinner at a place called "Miod Malina" where we had an assortment of traditional polish food complimented with some vino. After a long dinner, we decided to stop at an underground karaoke bar where we spent most of the night. Let's just say that after a few Polish beers we were ready to yelp out our Hamilton's classics (shoutout to LUC!) and represent. We met a lot of people, including a group of British army guys who were impressed by our unique rendition of Spice Girls. Although we were not planning on it, we went to bed very late. The next morning wasn't exactly the most smooth one, as we had a 12 hour tour scheduled of Auschwitz and Wieliczka (salt mine). We agreed that seeing Auschwitz was one of the most uncomfortable experiences that we had ever had, but was also a great way to discuss history and our opinion about the situation in the early 1940's. Our next stop was the Wieliczka salt mine which was incredible. We took many pictures in the mine, but the pictures don't do justice to the remarkable chapels and sculptures that were made of salt. You were allowed to lick the walls since they were made of salt (believe me, they really were!), but you were not allowed to lick the sculptures which the two Asian guys that were on our tour could not process since they kept getting in trouble for licking the sculptures.
The next day we explored the city of Krakow after we purchased good ol' Gill a new pair of shoes due to the fact that the ones she wore soaked through and would have caused her to have frostbite which none of us wanted to deal with. Our last night in Krakow we spent eating pizza and kebabs (very American of us, we know) and checking out an underground jazz bar. We had to wake up very early the next morning to catch the 8:30am bus to Zakopane which we made in perfect timing. What happened on the bus, however, was something that we were not expecting. Let me set the scene for you. There were about 20 people on our coach bus so everyone got to sit alone in a double seat. Unfortunately, after our filling breakfast on the bus, our little Theresa started feeling sick, so she decided to start switching seats towards the back of the bus and then the front and then the front middle and then the back middle and God only knows how many times she changed her seat. At this point, Jill was hiding in the back of the bus away from Theresa due to the fact that vomit and Jill just don't work well together. After a while, Lauren remembered that she brought some Dramamine with her just in case someone got motion sick. Fortunately for us, we had the perfect candidate for this motion sickness drug. Although Lauren said that it should take about 20 minutes for the drug to work, it took double that time due to the fact that our little Theresa was fighting it like it was her job. After about 40 minutes, Theresa started telling me, "Ola. I think I'm having a heart attack. My pulse is going so fast. Ola. Can you check my puuu...." Yes. That's right. Mid word. Theresa literally passed out in the middle of her word. Not even sentence- word! My reaction to this was, of course, "Oh my God! We drugged Theresa!" Naturally, being the good friends we are, we took a whole photo shoot of our dear friend completely coma-tosed.
Once we arrived in Zakopane, we dragged Theresa off the bus and made our way to our adorable cabin-like hostel where we quickly dropped our bags off and went on an adventure into the city. I had a whole fun filled day planned for us which included a quick hike or two. Okay. Maybe the hike wasn't exactly quick...it would have been three hours one way, then only 2km back plus a sleigh ride! What could be better than that? Well actually, I can name a million things that could be better than that considering that it was- no joke- 2 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Once the girls broke it to me that the last thing they wanted to do was get frostbite, we started our adventure through town stopping at four or five cute restaurants for some warm wine or tomato soup or just plain old hot chocolate. Later that night we even got to listen to a highlander band which doesn't sound too cool when I write it down, but it was really neat. The next day we took the bus back to Krakow where we had a flight to Poznan with a connection in Warsaw. When we got to Warsaw, we were exhausted and just needed some coffee. And a Polish beer. So, in college fashion, we all got a coffee and a beer at 1pm...hey it's 5 o'clock somewhere right?! The problem arose when we realized that we didn't have an hour and fifteen minutes until our flight, but actually fifteen minutes until our flight. Fortunately, we still managed to drink our coffees and our beers and make it to the plane with plenty of time to spare- I call that skills.
This all leads me to part 2 of our trip which will be posted tomorrow! Stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment