After receiving numerous signs from some of our little angel friends, it was clear that our next adventure should be to Poland......so we decided why not? May as well check out our Polish roots and see why we're so darn....Polish.
Upon arriving, we discovered we weren't fluent in the Polish language (definitely a surprise to us.) Communicating with the locals and figuring out the public transportation system ended up being a little more work than we had anticipated. But after walking around in circles, getting yelled at in a language we didn't understand, and asking people for directions (who couldn't understand a word we were saying), we somehow figured it out. :)
Warsaw and Krakow are both beautiful cities packed with a ton of history. Warsaw had been completely rebuilt after WWII so it was pretty darn amazing to see the architecture....and I'm not even into architecture!
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| Old town, Warsaw |
Krakow's city center has the largest medieval market square in all of Europe with a beautiful castle overlooking the city. Both Warsaw and Krakow seriously made us feel like we were walking into a fairytale land. And that's not a joke! It felt like we were constantly walking into the scene of a movie.
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| Core must be looking at something.... |
It didn't take us long to find some quaint little restaurants that smelled exactly like our grandma's homemade cooking. We definitely took advantage of the ridiculously cheap prices and splurged on hot mulled wine, traditional polish soups, potato pancakes, pierogis and a whole bunch more....even polish lard. It was gross.
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| I think she was getting excited to try the lard.... |
Although we knew it wouldn't be an easy visit, we spent a day visiting both Schindler's Factory and the sites of the Nazi extermination camps- Aushwitz and Birkenau.
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| Schindler's Office |
I think it goes without saying that the extermination camps were quite a disturbing place. As Core and I neared the ruins of the gas chambers, we noticed a very distinct smell. Instantly we knew what it was....it was the smell of burning bodies. I looked around expecting to see a lot of incense burning or something like that....but there was nothing. It was coming from the ruins....and there was of course nothing that remained there. Extra prayers are clearly still needed for these millions of souls.
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| Ruins of the gas chambers. |
Our final destination was to a small mountain town, Zakopane, located in the Tatra Mountains bordering Slovakia. It was the perfect place to eat the local smoked cheese and enjoy many of the small mountain pubs - they were so cosy! Most of them had a fireplace and served up some pretty tasty polish cuisine.
We ventured out for a day hike to Morskie Oko, located up in the mountains. The views and journey along the way were spectacular...and the company wasn't too bad either! ;)
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| Morski Oko! |
Poland was an interesting country to visit and has darn good reason to be known as the Paris of Eastern Europe. If you're looking for a budget trip to Europe with a ton of history, super tasty food, and awesome mountain hikes, check it out. :)
