Adventures In Lithuania: Krakow, Poland.

So I'm on a bus once again. As I write this. Yes, a lot of my vacation time is spent on buses. It is sort of a bother, because that leaves less time to actually spend where I am going. And yeah you may say "getting there is part of the fun." HA! I'll tell you right now, riding buses is not. Fun. You're squashed together like Sardines, everyone wants to recline their seats so your knees are uncomfortable, getting to the water closet is a journey in itself because you have to crawl over people's legs and squeeze through the tiny aisle, and they lie and tell you on the website that they have tv screens with movies but nooo...they most certainly do not. Well, at least this ONE bus lied. Back on my 10 day vacation, we had a 13 hour his ride ahead of us. I knew it would be horrible, but on the website I read that this bus was very fancy and had nice screens with movies and music available for you. The bus pulls up and there were no screens to be seen. I wanted to cry. I was now unprepared for the ride and it made me quite angry. Anyway. Back to the point. My group and I went to Krakow, Poland this weekend for our last little vacation off of school. We left Thursday night after school got out. Before my host mom dropped me off at the bus stop, she handed Kelby & I a bag full of bus goodies. She called it our midnight lunch :) my host mom is the absolute sweetest. She packed us each our own little goodie bags with an orange, a banana juice box, tons of chocolate candies, instant oatmeals, chocolate cinnamon buns, and my FAVORITE cheesecake bars. And this part kills me: she knew my favorite bar was the double chocolate and that Kelby's was the vanilla, so she packed our favorite flavors. Is that not the sweetest? She's just so thoughtful. I don't think she understands how much the little things like that mean to me. To have a mom this far away from my real mom, that not only just does the necessities, but actually does care about you. I couldn't ask for a better host mom <3 we got on the bus an headed to Warsaw where we had to make the connection to get to Krakow. If you didn't already know, Krakow is near Oscewim which is home to Auschwitz concentration camp. That's our main reason for deciding to go to Krakow for this last vacation. We made it Krakow Friday afternoon, but you'd think it was 10:00 at night. Since the time change, it has been getting dark here around 4:00pm. We arrived around then and it just felt like I should have gone to bed. Haha. But we settled into the Atlantis hostel and headed out to Old town. It was only a 10 minute walk so it was convenient to not have to take the tram. Krakow is chalk full of cathedrals. I think it definitely had the most. And the few that we went into were completely breathtaking. I wish we had structures like them in America. I've never been inside an LDS temple, so I'm not sure what they look like inside but I can't imagine anything being more beautiful than these European cathedrals. The Alexander Nevsky cathedral in Tallinn, Estonia; St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest, Hungary; St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, Austria. Look them up on Google right now!!

We found a lot of lovely souvenir shops where I bought the rest of my souvenirs/Christmas gifts for everyone. Poland is the cheapest place I've been so far. I got 2 nice leather bracelets, 3 pairs of earrings, and 3 shot glasses for $10! And plenty more. It's so nice to have all my souvenirs bought. I just need to buy chocolate and that's all :) we headed back to get some sleep around 9 or so. I read some of Grandma's book (which I am LOVING by the way.) it makes me feel a lot closer to her when I read these personal accounts of her life. I cannot wait to get home so I can discuss it with her. I know she will love that.

The next day we spend in Auschwitz Concentration camp. I will write a post after this about that day, because I think it deserves its own post. After Auschwitz, we got back and relaxed for a while. We were all pretty drained from seeing all that we did, so a rest was needed. Then we headed back out to town and bought more souvenirs. And I ate a delicious Kebab! YUM! I'm going to miss those a lot when i go home. They don't have them in America, as far as I know. They're similar to gyros, but better. And then i got a McFlurry at McDonald's because they are the best in Europe. They have magnum flavor! It's so chocolatey and has almonds in it and chocolate chunks! a dream. Oreo doesn't even compare.

The last day in Krakow is when we saw all the sights. The 2 previous nights it was dark when we went out so we didn't get to see the pretty castles and cathedrals much. So we woke up and went to the Wawel castel, which was right around the corner from our hostel! It was BEAUTIFUL! It was set on a hill, with a huge wall surrounding it. It was just so cool. It had a nice courtyard up top that had pretty green grass and walkways. I really enjoyed it. And then we found a statue of a dragon that blew actual fire (ever few minutes or so.) We climbed up and took pictures with it! Krakow had a lot of dragon things, like in their souvenir shops and stuff. I like that :) It went well along with the castle! We sat in on sunday mass at a cathedral, which was really neat. They handed us a hymns music sheet and I KNEW one of the songs that was on there! It blew my mind that I would even recognize anything there haha. It was "Kyrie Eleison." If you were in Snow canyon middle or high school choir, then you know this song :) We didn't have time to stay so I didn't get to sing it with the congregation, but how cool would that have been? We walked around to a few more sights and got some lunch. Then we sat at this little cafe under some umbrellas for a while as it was downpouring. Then we got some subway to go and headed back to our hostel to check out and head to the bus. My last vacation in Europe for the duration of this trip. Twas sad :( But I'll be back. I'd love to go back to Europe and I believe that I can! On our last bus ride home, this guy decided he didn't have a bubble and laid his head on my shoulder the whole ride home. He had his eye mask and ear plugs in and just went right off to sleep. I don't even think he realized the whole time that he was on me. Maybe he was drunk or something..It was funny though!