Big Adventures, Little World

We had never really planned on going to Poland at all, but the option was there for a while. Kate had planned on going there with Lucas and John, and had asked me a number of times if I had wanted to come too, but I didn’t really thing I had the money to do. It wasn’t until one night Kate and I were working on the roof top bar together with not much to do where we got to talking about going to Poland and once again she asked if Elese and I wanted to come. I’d said no once again, but for something to do and pass the time, we looked up flights on my phone to see what was available. Last time I had looked, it was going to cost about £300 pounds for the both of us, just for flights, which was too much. Though this time, RyanAir were having a sale as they do every few days it seems, and we found return flights for the both of us for less than £120. I went home to Elese and asked if she wanted to go to Poland, and then we booked the tickets.

It was a day after the others that we left, and we flew into Krakow whereas they flew into Warsaw to catch up with some of Lucas’ friends. So after going straight into the city from work the night before, (struggling as well because of the damn Tube strikes that seem to be happening once a month now), then catching a bus, we spent the next few hours waiting at the airport before we were able to board our flight.

When we touched down in Krakow, we walked off the plane and straight onto a bus, which once everyone was on, took us about 25 metres to the terminal. I don’t know why they didn’t just have us walk there, it would have been quicker, and then everyone would have made it through quicker as well. All in the name of safety I guess though. Once we had cleared customs it was an apparent 200 metre walk (which was more like 800 metres) to catch a train into central Krakow and then onto our hotel.

We were staying at the Holiday Inn, a 5 star hotel which we had booked as a Top Secret hotel on www.lastminute.com and it was extremely cheap. We had also booked a 5 star hotel for our 2nights in Warsaw as well, because we could. That’s one of the things that becomes apparent about Poland very quickly is how cheap everything is. The train tickets, the hotels, the clothes, but most of all the food! Our first day we spent having a bit of a sleep in the hotel, seeing as we hadn’t slept the night before, then later that night we headed out to find something to eat and for a bit of a look around. We ended up finding a place which was a bit Western themed but had some decent food on the menu and had Polish options as well. We didn’t go for these this time as we thought we would wait until we were with Lucas and he could tell us what was good. We had some good food and some Polish beer to go with it, and the beer was delicious. Probably some of the best beer I have had. When we went to pay, the bill only worked out to about £10 each, including drinks! We were always amazed at how cheap it was, but not only that, but how good the food was for the price you pay!