Adventures in Krakow

Friday- February 24

I didn't hear Yelena's alarm go off at 3:45, but thankfully she did. She told us all to wake up and start getting ready. I didn't crawl out of my top bunk until 4:00. I mozied — very slowly — to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. When I got back to the room, I got everything ready and at 4:15 we left the hostel. 

I felt bad because the owner woke up with us and it was so early. But he was very nice about it and said goodbye.

We walked to the Roma Termini, which was not even a five minute walk to catch the bus shuttle at 4:30, which we had paid for already. We walked up to the line to get on the bus and a worker there told us we needed to go check in inside. We all said "crap" because there were so many people lined up for this bus and we were on a tight schedule. 

When we went inside I walked up to the desk where a man summoned me over to him. He checked out printed out ticket for four, gave us four passes and told us to hurry outside because they were waiting for us. We walked back outside and the man who had told us to go inside told us to go up front. We didn't know if he was telling us to hop in line or just go to the front, but we went to the front and ended up cutting a ton of people. 

I didn't understand why the man inside told us they were waiting for us because the bus had just started loading.

Thank goodness we ended up cutting all of the people because the bus filled up really fast and the rest of the people had to wait for another bus to come, which came as we were pulling away. 

We arrived at Rome Ciampato Airport about 20 minutes later. They said the shuttles usually take about 30-40 minutes, but because there was no traffic we made it in excellent time. 

When we walked into the airport, it finally hit us as to why the airline wanted us there an hour and half before our plane took off. The line was super-duper long to just get your ticket and visa checked and check in a bag if you were. We hopped in line and it ended up moving quite quickly. It took about 20 to 30 minutes to get through and then we headed over to security where we waited for another 20 to 30 minutes. 

Good news: I didn't set any alarms off or have to get felt up while going through security! After gathering all of our things we went to find our gate and we hopped in line at 6:00. As we waited, there was an obnoxious group of Italians, who were probably our age. We thought, who is that awake this early in the morning?

Our gate finally opened and we hopped on a shuttle which took us to the airplane. On RyanAir, you don't have assigned seating, so everyone makes a mad dash for it. Yelena and Kate were determined to get good seats and seats sitting together so they bolted out of the shuttle as soon as the doors opened. Jess and I followed and we ended up being the one of the first people on the plane. 

It really is the funniest thing to watch because these shuttles just open their doors and blobs of people run out and try to squeeze onto these small boarding steps. 

When we landed in Krakow, Poland, it scared the heck out of me. I was half asleep and the plane bumped the ground pretty hard and then everyone started clapping. I was so scared I slept through something bad and we somehow safely landed. I soon learned that's what people do on planes here. When the pilot lands, everyone claps and then this funny music plays announcing our arrival. 

We then hopped on a shuttle waiting for us when we got off of the plane. Once everyone was off the plane, the shuttles took us to the airport, which was literally 20 feet away from where we were. The four of us looked at each other and said, "Really?! We couldn't have just walked that? Most pointless ride ever."

When we got to the entrance of the airport we exchanged some of our euros for zlotys. When I exchanged 50 euro I got 179 zloty back. I was shocked and so excited! Their currency is so much better than the euro because I gained money instead of losing it, like I do all the time here in Italy!

Then Yelena decided this sign said to catch the train into town was this certain way. So we left the airport and of course it was misting and windy. We walked for about 10 minutes down the road and we still saw no train. We said, "Yelena are you sure this is the right way?"

She said she saw a sign for a train, but Kate thought she saw something else, so we turned around where we saw a sign about shuttle information. We walked on this muddy driveway near this house and a woman came out and asked if she could help us. 

We told her our dilemma and she directed us to the train station. Yelena had ended up leading us in the right direction anyways. 

We walked about half a mile and saw the train. One pulled up to this deserted train stop, which looked like a city bus stop. The train said it was going to the airport, so we were very confused, since we didn't need to go back there. 

As we were walking away we saw a line of taxis and decided to ask one how much it would cost to take us to the city centre. We walked up to the black mercedes and he rolled down his window. He thankfully understood English and he said it would be 50 zloty, which is about 10 dollars. So we decided to do that and he put our bags in the trunk. When we got in I asked him how he was. He just stared at me and smiled, so I thought he didn't understand me, so I gave him the thumbs up and said "good?" and he just stared at me. Most awkward moment ever. 

After that the car was pretty quiet, so I just looked out at the scenery. It was dreary with the rain and overcast skies, but the countryside was very green and the houses were very different from the ones at home. 

When we got into the city, the taxi driver busted out maps at a red light and asked in perfect English, how long we were staying and started spurting out my language. I stared in disbelief because 10 minutes before he stared at me like I was a goof. I was not too happy because I had even given him a thumbs up sign. 

We finally arrived at Atlantis Hostel. We walked into the reception office where the receptionist gave us our keys and told us some useful information. We walked up a flight of stairs to a door that had rooms 1-9. We walked through into the hallway and went to find room 5. When we found it at the end of the hall, we walked in and were so happy with the place. It was ten times better than our last one and was so cute. 

After we got settled in we decided to go get food. It was only 10:30 but we hadn't eaten all morning. I had recommendations from my friend Carolyn who had gone two weeks ago, but we looked on the map and also asked the receptionist for good places. She recommended a place called Koko, which we went on the hunt for. 

We ended up going the wrong way about three times because we were looking at the map wrong, but it was okay because we found pretty buildings and on our correct route we found a beautiful castle. 

We finally found the restaurant, which was an excellent hole-in-the-wall place.  I ordered vegetable soup and some kind of breaded cheese with delicious colsla and french fries for only nine zloty!

After our delicious lunch, Yelena and I wanted to go find the Starbucks we had heard of because we hadn't had it since early January. We wanted a little taste of home. We ended up having a detour on the way because we saw this cupcake shop and we HAD to go in. We all asked if we were full from lunch and we all agreed we had room for cupcakes. 

It was the cutest place with cupcakes painted on the walls and comfortable seating areas. I had a Grasshopper cupcake which was mint chocolate chip with dark mint chocolate in the middle. I also ordered a medium cappoccino, which ended up being the size of a large! It was all delicious, but by the end I was ready to be rolled out. 

Yelena still wanted her Starbucks so we went on the adventure still to go find it. We ended up finding it in this giant mall. I've never seen such a big mall and it was so pretty!

She ended up paying 15 zloty which is equivalent to the same price as home, which bummed her out. I decided not getting any because I was too full. I figured I could wait another two months. 

After walking through the mall for a little bit, we started walking home, but then Jess wanted to try to find a museum. At this point I was starting to feel the tiredness of being awake for about 12 hours and for some reason I was starting to get body aches. We tried finding two museums, but both were under rennovation, so we went back to the hostel. 

When we got back, I began to feel worse. I thought maybe I was just tired, but I took Iviprophen just to be safe. 

We ran back out to another exchange place to get more money out because we had to pay for our hostel and pay for the Auschwitz tour, which was set up through our hostel as well. The exchange place ended up being better than the one at the airport because Kate exchanged 50 euro here and got 200 zloty back, about 20 more than I did at the airport. We were rather happy we got more!

When we got back to the hostel we relaxed for a bit and I started feeling better. We went out to dinner at a place called Chimera, a restaurant Carolyn highly recommended. It was a bit of a walk, but it was worth it. 

When we walked into the restaurant we didn't know whether we were supposed to seat ourselves or wait to be seated so I walked up to the buffet where there was a worker. I didn't know if they spoke English and I really should have just asked because I spoke slowly to her (for some odd reason) and asked if we could put two tables together and seat ourselves. I used my fingers showing how you put two tables together. During this she stared at me and after said "yes," with a smug look on her face. I don't blame her. I talked to her like she was dumb and in fact I was the dumb one.

I decided to order pierogies for dinner since I was in Poland. I don't eat them at home because I'm not a fan, but figured maybe my taste buds had changed since high school and boy did they! The pierogies were out of this world, stuffed with the best cheese. I also had these shredded carrots that had this amazing sweet sauce on them and beats or whatever the purple thing was! It was the best meal I had in Poland!

When we got back to the hostel we all decided to shower. It was good for the first five minutes until the water heater decided to stop working correctly. I could feel it slowly start getting colder so I hopped out before it got worst. Yelena was yelling in the bathroom saying it was freezing and Kate said she was standing in the corner of the shower because it was ice cold. Yelena wasn't able to get the conditioner out of her hair and Kate was in mid shampoo. I was glad I decided to get out when I did. 

We were all exhausted from being up since 3:45 that morning so we all crawled into bed by 11. I was out, but I woke up at 1:45 thinking it was time to get up. I did this every hour through the rest of the night and finally realized at 4:00 when I went to the bathroom that I had a fever. I had that body ache feeling and when I stood up my head felt like it was going to burst. 

The immediately thought to myself, "I don't care if I have a 110 degree fever, I'm going to Auschwitz!"

Even though I woke up every hour throughout the night, when I woke up at 8:45, I was covered in sweat. I still felt funny but I was so happy because I knew my fever had broke.