And by “affair” I mean the love affair with my vacation… The fun we had in the first half of our vacation, continued during the rest of our vacation as well. The most difficult part was the visit to Auschwitz, which my son doesn’t want to talk about any more, and we had some drama too.
The drama… we had a bit of an adventure with Cracow. As Cracow in Poland was quite far from our campsite in the Czech Republic we had rented a self catering apartment there for two nighs. The drive that was supposed to be 4 hours took 8 hours due to several traffic jams… so, no scenic stops on the way like we had originally planned. Then the next morning, my nice Canon EOS camera was stolen from our apartment, while we were inside having breakfast in another room! Who thinks to lock the front door when you’re all inside? That meant that instead of sightseeing we spent a few hours trying to get the camera reported stolen at the police station. First police station we went to no one spoke anything other than Polish. We got to speak to a translator on the phone who asked us to be at another police station two hours later. Once there, we had to wait another hour. This is the family at the police station making fun of having enough of waiting…
Being interviewed and having the report made up took another hour but as the office was too small, the kids and I had to wait outside. So, nope, never saw an actual Polish police officer’s desk myself but the officers we met were very friendly. After finally being able to make that report (we need it so we can claim the loss from our insurance), we had some time left to walk through Cracow for sightseeing and in the evening after dinner we took a little carriage ride through the city. All’s well that ends well.
The kids had a little more adventure than I did on our vacation (I’m not so much of an adventurer when it comes to this speed & climbing stuff): they went motor-karting and tobogganing, they went down fast waterslides at a waterpark and my daughter even perusaded my husband to go climbing with her.
What makes this vacation extra memorable are the beautiful mountains and the beautiful views they provide. We usually have very cultural vacations visiting cities, churches and castles. While we had done some of that as well, it mostly was a nature vacation this time around and it was great! We went hiking a few times; one time we hiked down a ski slope (but without the snow)…
Another time we went up the highest Czech mountian Snezka (1600 m) in a cable car. The views going up were beautiful…
… and the views from the top were awesome.
We also hiked up to the spot where the river Elbe starts. Basically that spot is a few pools of water and one pool that is walled and marked officially as the start of the river.
Even nuns hike up to the source of the Elbe… 🙂 I have a bit of a soft spot for nuns, I like seeing them around, but these nuns didn’t stay long to admire God’s miracle of creating a river (10 seconds at most) and quickly continued on their hike.
We also went back to Wroclaw again and on the way stopped at an old medieval church with beautiful murals and painted wooden ceilings.
In Wroclaw cathedral we lit candles remembering my dad and for my mom.
I had the best iced tea ever there as well!
I was also pleased to run into this little grafitti image of one of my heroes, David Bowie, on a wall in Wroclaw!
Oh, and popping bubbles was fun too.
We also visited a cave with an underground lake…
… and I played around with my camera (we bought a replacement camera even though we’re still awaiting an insurance refund) capturing the reflection in my son’s sunglasses or my daughter jumping into a ballpool…
The most heartwarming part of the vacation is that our kids still like to occasionally hug us, even though they are (almost) teenagers and basically too cool for this world…
And so the sun sets on our vacation (left is a view from our campsite, right a view from the pizzeria we had dinner at during our stopover in Germany on our way home)…
Yesterday I took my daughter and her bff to the beach (while my husband stayed home and my son went to see his girlfriend)…
… and next week it’s back to school for the kids, back to work for my husband and on with job searching for me (my contract to my last job ended this past Wednesay, just as I finished my accumulated vacation days). As always, I love these weeks I get to spend with just my husband and the kids and it’s always also a little sad when it’s over… seems like I will have to turn to Richard Armitage news (there’s been lots around lately I gather!) to soften the blow. 😉