The night that we arrived we were all quite exhausted from class that day, and Justin and Charlie were missing.. so we got ready for bed. Of course no sooner than we laid down they burst in looking for us and convinced us to go out for a night on the city with them. This was around 1am. By the time Megan and I changed and headed out it was a bit later and they were convinced that we would be able to find somewhere to go. Apparently people are given jobs in London to take tourists around to bars and clubs.. so we followed one of them. However, we were out so late that getting into any place was impossible and it was just a night of walking in circles. We had planned on getting up early the next morning and being tourists.. but of course that never happened...
Day 2 included us figuring out how to work the public transportation system and then just hopping on random buses and seeing where they took us. Eventually we ended up at the London Eye and decided to go for a ride on it. This was quite entertaining. You can see everything in the city from it and it was pretty much amazing.. they also take a picture of everyone in your tube, but we were clueless and got a good laugh out of the picture after we got off. After that it was a night tour of the city and back to the hostel for some fun. My night ended at the hostel.
Day 3 - We rode the double decker bus around the town, hopped off it here and there and even got to do a river cruise!! Some of the stops we made it to were London's Bridge, the London Tower, Parliment, Big Ben, Museums, parks, pretty streets, it just keeps going. It was a fun time and we had a lot of fun together. Oh and of course lots of pictures were taken :)
The last day we had our flight to Dublin, so we wandered to see Westminister Abbey and the Changing of the Guards but then we were off to Ireland for the St. Patty's celebrations. London was really nice, I just need to head back to see a bit more of the UK.
We (my friends Amber, Beth, and I) flew into Warsaw Friday evening (two fridays ago now). That night we figured out the bus and hopped on to find our way to the lovely Backpackers hostel. It was my first hostel experience.. so it was slightly scary and exciting at the same time. Amber being the lovely navigator she is found our way to the hostel where we proceeded to simply pass out. 
The next morning it was time to wake up and be on our way to Krakow. We arrived, dropped off all of our gear in the City Hostel and were off to discover what Krakow had to offer. Well my suggestion is definately go to Krakow if you want to see the Polish culture. Not only were the buildings just simply gorgeous.. but the Polish culture is very apparent as well.
One of the first stops, of course, was to find some perogies.. and they were pretty delicious.. we all enjoyed quite a bit :) Then off to discover the culture. In the centre of Krakow is a market of sorts. It is a building packed with vendors selling traditional polish clothing and items as well as the touristy materials as well. We all collected our souveniers and went to discover a Polish Castle.
The architecture of the Castle that we saw was just crazy. Our conclusion is that all of the different eras added their own touch onto the church that was located in it. Of course the grounds of the Castle were gorgeous.. But since we got there around sundown we were kicked out before we truely got to explore the castle. After leaving the castle we walked around the centre city a bit more and admired all of the buildings and architecture and parks.
That evening we decided to grab some dinner and then head off to a local pub. Well we decided it was a good idea to follow a group of guys that turned off the road and went through a hallway. We found ourselves in the middle of a beautiful courtyard with an adorable pub coming off of it. We stayed there for a little while and of course tried out some of the local drinks. The most popular one seems to be their local grass vodka mixed with some apple juice. It was quite delicious. The conversations we had there were quite entertaining and made me love those two weirdos a bit more.
The result of this adventure was a map that was drawn and we tried our best to follow it. After walking a little of a mile we somehow found our way into the camp and we were all quite relieved. Walking around the camp is quite shocking. We were unable to discover everything that there is to be seen there, however a lot of it sunk in and was pretty shocking. It is an experience that I am happy I never had to go through.
After walking around it was time to head back to Warsaw. Now, as I had previously mentioned.. No one there spoke English, not even the ticket place for the trains. So we attempted to ask them how to get there and they sent us on 3 connecting trians. Some how the one station we went to did not have the correct connection so we found ourselves traveling way longer than we were supposed to and eventually by a few miracles found our way home. Tip.. if lost in poland ask the younger kids.. like my age and younger.. they all know english.. anyone older.. not so much! Oh yea.. and from the train.. all the houses we saw were brightly colored.. like the one below..
So once we finally made it back to Warsaw we again checked into the hostel. We still hadn't had dinner even though it was 11pm thanks to the train mix-ups. So we headed off to a Cafe that serves breakfast 23 hours a day. They close from 5-6am. We enjoyed a delicious breakfast and had a little bit of coffee. Then the exhausting day of traveling hit us and we were off to bed by 1am.
That is about all (all.. quite a bit..) of the information about my Poland trip.. Back to the homeland as all my friends have teased me about :)
