where they make the cheese!

BACK FROM POLAND!

Poland is awesome! Everyone needs to go there. I need to go back. Let me tell you about how great it is!

Jeff and I met up with Sarah MILLER on Friday night, after a little confusion on where we all were -- she had gotten in earlier that day and had been exploring, so she knew all the cool places to walk to. After we got situated in our hostel we went to walk in the center of Krakow. There is this huge wall that you walk under to get to the REAL KRAKOW.

We explored a little and marvelled at how cheap everything was and then went to a restaurant that had 25 DIFFERENT KINDS OF PIEROGI! I kid you not! Also, the ceiling was decorated with swirls akin to Starry Night, because the place was called Restaurant di VINCENT or something Polish to that nature. I had delish pierogi filled with SHEEP'S CHEESE and potatoes, and for dessert we all shared a plate of fruit-filled pierogi. SO GOOD.

Yesterday we did a lot of sight-seeing. We started off at Wawel Castle, which had a beautiful courtyard and also housed a gorgeous cathedral. The state rooms in Wawel were pretty interesting; the throne room had these stucco faces hanging from the ceiling which were entertaining and creepy.
The cathedral was amazing, it was named for St. Stanislaus and had his remains there (I think), as well as a lot a lot of important dead people, like the first Queen of Poland, whom JPII made a saint, and a ton of royalty. We also climbed up to see a very large bell. Haha.

We checked out another cathedral and had some Polish pastries (yum yum, from the pretzel lady) and then found where we needed to meet for our tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau.

The tour was very informative and worthwhile, and, as you would expect, incredibly sad. I was really glad we went though.

After the tour we went to dinner back in the center of Krakow. Sarah and I both had a CHICKEN ROLL which was yummo. She had to ask the waitress what exactly a chicken roll was, but it was a very adequate description, actually.

All of Krakow was so Eastern-Europeany, it was so great, and so different than Italy. I really want to go back and spend like a week there. ALSO I used my mad Polish skills -- I said "thank you" a lot in Polish and "excuse me" a couple times. When I listened to announcements I could pick out numbers and I read COLD BEER on a sign. Life was good!

Amazing trip all in all, despite the 12 hours of traveling we did on Friday and 10 hours today. Definitely worth it.

OH AND TWO PIECES OF GREAT NEWS: my baby jar containers worked PERFECTLY, and I bought a Very Excellent Winter Hat! HUZZAH!