For the first time in days I was thrilled to eat breakfast!! The watermelon and crepe were fun, but the real excitement was in the fried, circular treat before me.
To be honest, when I selected this mysterious ring of battered perfection, I didn't actually know what it was. I knew that it was fried and that was good enough for me.
As it turns out, my mystery food was a fried pineapple ring! It was absolutely delicious and such an unusual idea. I mean, where can you eat fried pineapple at home?! It was thrilling, and I just had to go back for another.
Fried pineapple...redefining Polish breakfasts one juicy ring at a time.
We had to leave our hotel earlier than usual so that we could make it to our first stop: The Black Madonna of Czestochowa.
The Black Madonna is beautiful.
She's located in the Jasna Gora monastery, in one of the most impressive churches I've ever had the pleasure to visit. The whole monastery feels so holy. You walk from building to building and you can just feel this presence. Standing in the church honestly brought tears to my eyes. I would hope that even people who are not Christian would be able to appreciate the beauty of the Black Madonna and her surroundings.
It was truly an awesome experience. I highly recommend a visit to the Black Madonna if you are ever in Poland. You will not be disappointed.
After all of the impressiveness of the morning, everyone in the group had worked up an appetite. It was lunch time, and we still had a long day ahead of us. That was when Ela told us we were going to get back in the bus and move onto our next destination.
No lunch? We were shocked. How were we supposed to make it through a visit to Auschwitz and another three hour bus ride on an empty stomach?
Seeing the absolute horror on our faces, Ela quickly found a place where we could get a bite to eat. It was amazing how she secured a restaurant that quickly. (It was a busy restaurant, too!) But I guess that's just part of being a tour guide. :)
Since we were short on time we didn't have a lot of menu options. But alas, who needs choice when you can have pierogies?
I was so hungry. So, despite the fact that these were cabbage and mushroom, I scarfed them down in a matter of minutes. Honestly, the details of these pierogies are a blur to me. I do, however, remember wishing that the onions were either caramelized or non-existant. I'm not a huge fan of sautéed onions on pierogies. But alas, it was a very, very, appreciated meal.
During our drive that day, I happened to discover another delicious juice.
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| Looks exciting, right? |
The color is probably what drew me to it. How can you resist something that fun?! Again, I wasn't quite sure what it was, but at this point, it didn't really matter.
Turns out it was passionfruit, orange, apple, and lemon and delicious! Another good juice in Poland. I could get used to all of the juice choices there. They definitely improved my opinion of Polish gas stations.
At the end of the day, we had another group dinner. Group dinners on tours are usually rather sub-par. We'd lucked out so far, getting pretty great food! That is, until tonight.
Things started out fine.
Okay, so it may look a little scary, but trust me it was actually good! This was a warm cucumber soup. The cucumber was shredded and in some kind of vegetable broth. It was light and slightly tart. All in all, a really interesting idea and unique flavors.
And then this happened.
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| Hungry? |
What is this? A lame excuse of a replacement meal for someone who doesn't eat red meat. Mind you, the others were given some kind of meat in brown sauce (again with the brown sauce!) over potato cakes. What happened to the other potato cakes? They could have given them to us! We wouldn't have minded.
But instead we were given a piece of chicken and three boiled potatoes with (you guessed it!) dill. I literally took one bite of this chicken and put down my fork. It was the driest, chewiest, most disgusting chicken I have ever tasted.
Neither Mom nor I had the will or desire to fight with this bird. It was such a waste. And a big disappointment.
Dessert raised the bar a little. The applesauce cake was sweeter than most cakes so far, though the texture was kind of unsettling.
The most redeeming quality of the cake was that it was served on a Polish Pottery plate. We have Polish Pottery at home, so it was kind of nostalgic to eat off of some authentic Polish Pottery in Poland.
Thus, our day ended on a mediocre note. But we had arrived in Krakow, our last city of the tour. So we went to bed, prepared to enjoy the final days of vacation.
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