Well it has taken me the best part of the week to get used to being back home... not that I have managed to get all my washing done yet or indeed unpack everything... but thank heavens a Bank Holiday is approaching.
We saw a lot of sights on our epic family road trip this summer en route to my cousin's most awesome wedding... Any wedding that finishes at 6 a.m. with guests still dancing to this...
...and other Modern Talking hits after copious amounts of vodka (without a hint of drunkenness) and course after course of food deserves the title of Awesome. In fact the day after the wedding, well about 4 hrs after going to bed and getting up again, my brother and I were still unable to get Cheri Cheri Lady out of our heads... and kept bursting into song at the most bizarre moments... mostly while waiting for our kebab pizza to arrive at our table (the ideal afternoon-after-the-early-morning-before pick-me-up).
So I only feel it right to share the joy with you all. It was definitely the hit of summer 2012 for us! ;o)
Ah Modern Talking, really big in Poland in the 80s and it was nice to enjoy such a big blast from the past!
Oh go on... enjoy this one too:
And this one...
Oh and I think this remix only got played after 4 a.m. with the prerequisite rap section:
Anyway... here are a few of the sights we saw on our 3-week adventure (in addition to quite a few cemeteries as part of the family history research bit - shame the two big ones in Lwow were on steep hills and absolutely massive!):
First stop - Wroclaw:
Have to say this was the home of one of our favourite eating establishments of the trip - Karczma Lwowska which we later found out after visiting Lwow was the best place to eat traditional Lwow cuisine!
Then it was off to Rzeszow nearer the Ukraine border:
Source: polishprincess161.blogspot.co.uk via Natalia on Pinterest
Boy was it hot when we arrived - it had been close to 50 degrees on the road surfaces, and 39 degrees outside - an ice cream was definitely in order!
The next day we headed off for our long weekend in Lwow, but that involved a 6 hour wait on the Ukraine border (blatant corruption despite all the notices declaring the threat of prosecution and hefty fines for even attempting to bribe an official as people bribed officers to queue jump and paid other people to carry cigarettes and booze in for them) - have never seen anything like it before. Even back in the 80s at the height of border tension between countries behind the iron curtain we never had to queue as long as this for seemingly no reason. So my advice to any travellers... don't even bother trying to drive from Poland to the Ukraine - it is not worth the hassle for the unpredictability of what you will experience on the border, but have to say driving in the Ukraine was a lot better than expected and once we were past the border we made good time to Lwow. :)
Source: facebook.com via Natalia on Pinterest
It was absolutely sweltering the entire weekend, and this was one place where we really could have done with air con in the hotel, but the hotel was a historic gem in its own right - we stayed at the Hotel George and in the room used by Honoré de Balzac no less:
Source: img.dooyoo.de via Miranda on Pinterest
You can understand why this city was the Paris of the east before the war - it is just one amazing building after another, alas not all looking like they did in their former glory, but so much has survived in its original state compared to cities like Warsaw and Krakow.
The journey back into Poland only involved a 3-hour wait on the border, where again for €50 a bloke could get you through the border quicker... whatever... we were quite happy to just wait our turn and hope for the best while keeping very close the bumper of the car in front so no one could push in from the organised border crossing system!
So once back in Poland we headed for Krakow, my birthplace:
Thankfully the weather had cooled down a bit to the mid/high-twenties in Krakow for our two-day break so we managed a lot of sight-seeing, plus a trip to the Hungarian restaurant my parents used to go to as students... one of the few places you could eat well back in the 70s.
After Krakow it was wedding-central and we hit the road for Plock for family time and gearing up to the big day:
Source: google.com via Natalia on Pinterest
And what a day it was. The wedding was at 6 p.m. in the church and since my brother and I were staying just round the corner we headed out for lunch in the afternoon and saw about 3 weddings take place before we had to get back and get ready for the big one! There was even a gypsy wedding that afternoon which looked lovely, but a lot more low-key than you see on Big Fat Gypsy Weddings!
So after almost a week catching up with family, etc. we headed for Gdansk - alas the weather only perked up when we were leaving, but last time we were there it was sweltering - have to recommend the Novotel Gdansk for price and location (especially if you have a car) it was a really good choice:
Gdansk too had an excellent restaurant that serves Eastern Polish cuisine plus Lwow favourites including Kvass (which has become my dad's non-alcoholic cool drink of choice and my mum used to drink it as a child - it is actually very tasty and refreshing). It was funny as we ate at this restaurant the first night and our table was across from a Swiss couple who seemed to be enjoying the various treats the restaurant offered. The next evening we ended up sat next to them again in a totally different restaurant - who knows which eating establishment we might have bumped into them at had we stayed another night. They were very good sports about it and said we should all just decide on the next restaurant and eat together. LOL
Anyway, I thought I would post this mini-trip report now (even though technically I should be celebrating my birthday this evening, but it's a "school night" and you can't celebrate properly on a "school night") because who knows what the weekend will bring. ;) Tomorrow night birthday celebrations will be in full swing, a nice Chinese take away (ooer living it large) and no doubt full-on depletion of the vodka supplies that came back with us from the wedding:
This is what every guest was drinking and managed to stay awake and dancing on until dawn.
And the other new vodka to try which I got as a present from my cousin and his very lovely wife:
We will see what the verdict is and how much sleep I get after them - I've never had a hangover from vodka, just cannot sleep. In fact after the wedding I slept until about 9.30 a.m. (so just 3 hrs) then read a book cover to cover until my brother was finally in the land of the living and ready to get up and have his "kebab".
Lets hope Saturday morning I have a bit more of a lie in, but I'll have my Kindle with me just in case!
Wow, what fantastic photos - and what amazing buildings and scenery. Looks like a fabulous trip. Hope you have a lovely birthday and lots of vodka tonight!
Posted by: sharon | Friday, 24 August 2012 at 10:06 AM