Yesterday, Grant and I did our first EDT (Extreme Day Trip… it’s a real thing, honest, there’s a facebook group and everything 😉) and I have a feeling it was the first of many. We went to Wroclaw in Poland (ticking off our 26th country, nice!) I have to admit that Wroclaw was never on my “destination” radar, but then I saw they have gnomes and boom I was sold. I’ve always been a sucker for a gnome! (Also, the flights were really cheap.) Wroclaw was FANTASTIC! Such a quirky place. I absolutely loved it.
We started our day with a 2:30am alarm, which was bad, but
what was worse was the fact that I had only managed to get to sleep after
midnight – a combination of nervous excitement and mental list-making will do
that to you. Consequently, I set off on
this adventure with less than 2 ½ hours sleep behind me. A coffee and pastry at the airport bolstered
me up a little and by the time we got on the plane I could more-or-less form
coherent sentences.
The flight was uneventful and we landed in Wroclaw, caught
the bus into town and spent the day wandering around the cute little squares,
spotting gnomes and getting happily lost in the quaintness of it all.
I can tell you that Wroclaw has:
· gorgeous buildings, and the cutest squares that will have you taking about a million photos and needing a powerbank to keep your phone going.
· gnomes… oh the gnomes ♥…. They are hidden everywhere and are just adorable… I may have to do a post dedicated entirely to the gnomes. There are apparently about 400 of them and we only saw a fraction of that number, so I may have to go back and hunt down the rest! (heads off to google flights to Wroclaw…)
·
a tower with about a gazillion stairs that has
amazing views that make you feel happy to be alive (or wait, maybe that was
just the fact that I had survived climbing all those stairs? 😉)
·
extremely delicious pierogis
·
schnitzels the size of your head
·
flipping amazing caramel vodka
·
a beer that had Grant raving and wishing he had
a son-in-law there to discuss it with, because my responses were clearly not
enthusiastic enough. Also, it was cheap.
· did I mention the caramel vodka was quite something?!
·
A statue of a goat pooing that brings you good
luck if you rub the poo and make a wish (well I hope it does, I’ll let you
know after the lottery is drawn this week.)
·
REALLY good donuts – we had the plum one, it was
SO good!
·
Friendly, helpful people (we could potentially have
ended up in Russia had that lady on the bus not set us right!)
·
A wonderful sweet shop that would have had my
grandchildren on a sugar-high for a month if they’d been let loose in there.
·
EXTREMELY good fudge (including a liquorice one
that in my opinion tasted of smelly feet, but that had Grant in mystic raptures
– different strokes and all that…)
·
Probably the best lemon cheesecake I’ve ever
tasted (gosh, we did spend a lot of time eating and drinking, it’s quite embarrassing!)
·
A chap who goes around lighting the gas-lamps,
wearing traditional costume, as it’s getting dark – I know this because I read
about it on the internet. I didn’t see
him in real life…. this is because I was sitting in Starbucks when I looked
outside and saw it was getting dark and remembered about him…. Oh the shame of
it!
And then there’s the bit where our flight home was delayed
and we only got to bed at 3:45…but, moving swiftly on….
I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Absolutely! Wroclaw was LOVELY.
More than that, heading out of your comfort-zone, seeing places you wouldn’t normally go to and just EXPERIENCING things… that’s what makes this crazy old life we’re living worthwhile. (Goodness, that caramel vodka was CLEARLY really potent wasn’t it?!)
