Advertisement
Published: October 30th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Classic breakfast/lunch
I bought the honey and peanut butter in London and the peanut butter lasted me until Berlin! And the honey is still going! Hello everyone,
apologies for not writing more but I really haven't had the time, which, when traveling, can be used as a valid excuse (read, I'm having a good time). So, a lot has happened since I last wrote, and I don't know how much time I'm going to have, so bear with me and my terrible typing.
Budapest was fantastic. I went to gorgeous baths with wrinkly (but supple) skinned old men. At the bath, if you don't wear a bathing suit, they provide you with a...handkerchief, its basically a small hand towel with a string that goes around your back, which means your tooshie is exposed to all and your front...well, lets just say I had a good time examining the ceiling. But the baths, oh the baths, they were sooo relaxing, beatifully ornate, i actually fell asleep at one point.
The next couple days in Budapest were spent rather casually. Everyone in the hostel would sleep in pretty late and then just wander about the city and see the sights which was fine by me. It was beautiful and just really pleasant. So Budapest gets two thumbs up. On to Poland
So, Poland. Many of you
The Baths
This is just the pool. The thermal baths were in another room that was even better. Sorry its blurry. might be scratching your heads because i had no plans in going to Poland, however, James, a kind, generous, well natured aussie, whom i met at the hostel in Budapest, had studyed Polish in poland for a couple months and had just gone down to budapest for a break was then heading back to poland to tour a couple small cities. Now, i had planned on going to Czech republic but, going by myself would have been lame so, whilst eating my 1000th Doner/gyros/kebab i said, 'can i come with you', he said 'alright' and a day later on was on my way to a couple cities which i certainly can't pronouce. My first stop was Rzeszow (i think) which had an old manor/castle which was apparantly worth seeing, so we did, but you could only go in with a tour and all the tours were in polish. Pffff, no problem, James knows some polish, however, the difficulty in translating paintings and such became readily apparant and our tour guide (a short old pole with a rather pleasant demeanor, which was...different. Tthe pleasant demeanor, not the short old pole...) noticing the constant whispering in another language and my complete obliviance
James and I
My Co traveler to anything he was saying, realized that I don't speak Polish! And so, being the pleasant old pole, he asked some of the other people in the group if they knew any english, and subsequently, after making an important note on a particular painting, he would then point to someone in the group and they would have to translate for me! Momma always said I was special.
After that, we went to Zamosc where nothing really happened. We spent a afternoon there and walked around the old town which was nice, however, we didn't walk for too long because it was unbelievably freezing! It was so cold i had my sweater and fleece and jacket and toque on and boy was it cold. To put the icing on the frozen cake, we checked into a hotel where we were greeted with, 'we have room but no heat' ...Pffffff, no problem, we're men, big strong men with long hair, we can do anything...big mistake, neither of us sleep well that night seeing as how anytime you would move, the sheets would adjust allowing just a wee bit of cold in which is not your average cold. It was like rolling over
in bed and jack frost giving you a little kiss goodnight.
From there, the cold wind blew us to Lublin, which didn't start off too well but finished rather nicely. We arrived at 5:00 in the afternoon and made our way to the tourist office to find a place to sleep but by the time we arrived it was 5:05 and as we all know, no tourist exists after 5:00 so the place closes at 5:00 and we couldn't find a place. No matter, we had our lonely planet travel guide to shine the bright light unto our hostel path. So we went to one hostel...full. second hostel...full. Hmmmmm, that brings us to the end of the guide save for the high end places, which are like 100bucks a night. Luckily, we went to the internet cafe and met some mormon sisters, who were there to convert the catholic poles to mormons...oh brother. Who were kind enough to ask some of their friends if they knew of a hotel. They knew of one place, we said thank you and checked it out...full. ugh. We then met up with 2 of James' friends who within minutes, had us checked into a
Traditional Polish dinner
Foods a big deal for me, so i take pictures of it. This is perogis. YUM YUM sweet hotel with a private bathroom and for only 10 bucks a night. The poles are okay in my books. The next day we toured around with the aid of these two friends and had a gay old time enjoying 'amazing frescos!' and polish cabbage. The next day i went to Warsaw, but because James and I took our time in getting up in the morning and finding a bus, we didn't get to warsaw until 6:00 and i had a night train to Berlin at 11:00 so i didn't exactly see warsaw, except for the 'elephant in lace' which is a huge building that stalin gave poland but the poles hate it, so they gave it the said name, which i thought was pretty funny, because its big and has a lot of statues on it. Good ol poles.
And then there's Berlin. Berlin was cool. I met up with some people I had met earlier in my trip and was able to celebrate my birthday over a plate of delicious Indian food which was all i needed. I saw some sites, walked around a little bit..it was nice, and no troubles, but resultingly, i can't think of any stories.
I then flew down to athens, hopped on a ferry to Naxos, and here I am! I've finally reunited with the with newly united couple, Aren and Deborah, and we've had an awesome time here. We rented some scooters and have toured around the island and its just been so absolutely fantastic. After being in big city after big city, its wonderful to be able to get away from that and enjoy some mountains and the ocean...hmmm, sounds like home, however, i doubt home has the same sun as here. Not to gloat, but I was walking around in high 20 degree weather today!!!! After the bitter cold of Poland, its a bit of a shock to the system, but an oh so glorious shock.
So, we're to stay here for another day and a half or so and then its off to Meteora, then Turkey, so we'll see how that goes.
I apoligize again for the lengthy hiatus in my blog entries and I apoligize in advance for more delays as finding internet i'm sure is only going to get harder. With that being said, I hope you are all doing well, and DON'T FORGET TO WRITE! I love being subtle
Ich liebe Sie alles
Jordan
Advertisement
Tot: 0.092s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0526s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Nikki
non-member comment
Poland = tasty carbs
I love how 3/5 of your pictures are about food!! There's no getting enough of the pierogi. Does peanut butter from London taste different? I noticed that they love serving pâté up there. Ugg. Hopefully no trace of that in the peanut butter. Did I ever tell you about the time I mistook a pâté sandwich for tuna? Worst meal ever. love nikki