krakow

as we approached the street we had been desperately searching for, florianska, i immediately find our hotel entrance. our hotel was conveniently named after the street and wasn't hard to find. by then the only difficult part was trying to stay focused enough to enter the building because the rest of the street was so distracting. many glorious things caught our eye and drew out our curiosity to explore in depth everything we could see in our line of sight.

(the street names are posted on the side of the buildings)

by then, we finally got it! it clicked as to why everyone was insisting we see this magical place. as beautiful as old town warsaw was, this place was incredible. chad and i had to pinch ourselves to really believe we were lucky enough to be vacationing here for the weekend. this is why they are so proud of krakow. this is why they wouldn't accept no for an answer. this is why the pushed us into going right away before we could scheme a rational reason out of it.

we walked through the narrow entrance that lead to the front desk area. the lady behind the desk spoke english and was very helpful. she showed us points of interest on the map and explained the two tours that they offered conveniently leaving from the hotel. one tour took you to the salt mine and the other one was nearly a 7 hour tour of auschwitz concentration camp. we chose to do the salt mine tour later that same day and then planned to take the long auschwitz tour the following morning.

the bus for the salt mine wasn't leaving for a few hours, so we had time to get settled and head out to explore the market square that we were so eager to see.

(this was our first time seeing a bidet (beday) and i tried to stay as far away from it as possible)

we made our way up the stairs to the first floor (as they called it) and turned the key several times around before the door opened to our newest hotel room. the entire layout reminded me of an ikea catalog. it was beautiful. i think my favorite thing about the room were the windows. we do not have windows like these where i'm from. i'm used to windows that have screens behind them to keep the bugs out, locks on them to keep the burglars out, and the only option in opening them is to slide them up. but the windows in this room opened up like tiny french doors. they didn't have screens on them and not one bug flew in. one window also leaned in slightly to open just a little if we wanted. the cool air from outside worked as the room's only air conditioner and i never remember feeling hot. the view outside below was something i'd seen in a movie. we were told that we were given a quiet room to enjoy and we never had a complaint about noise or anything for that matter. as exciting as it was to be in a room like that, we had time to kill and wanted to hit the town.

 
(the roof tops with the skylights below were part of the hotel's restaurant)


(the day we left, there were yellow buds forming on the trees)

we grabbed our many cameras and hurried out to capture the amazement of krakow. we acted like two excited newlyweds away on their honeymoon and in someways this was sort of like a second honeymoon for us. it has been a long time since we have taken a trip together and experienced something new and different.

our days in texas are usually filled with the routine of work, school, and if we are lucky, the pleasure of spending the whole weekend at home trying to do nothing. i love our lives and i love routine, but this place can be a refreshing adventure if we let it. we chose to celebrate the moment and ignore our sore and tired bodies. we chose to have fun and enjoy krakow and we did!