Happy 5th Birthday Amelia!

Luckily Kamil and Ania allowed Noah and Milly to spend a day at the kindergarten they run,  so we could have some time to buy birthday presents for Milly, as well as some other stuff we wanted to take back with us to Austria including a chin up bar to help Maciek along on his ongoing goal of trying to get big arms!  (to match his newly acquired beer belly!)

One of my favourite things to do in Wroclaw was to stroll through the Rynek (old town square) in the early evening and enjoy the sights and sounds.  It was always full of music and buskers and plenty of nice places to eat and drink, and one evening, thanks again to Kamil and Ania, we were able to go out and enjoy it alone so we could actually experience a couple of these places.  All through the city centre are little sculptures of gnomes which when you touch them bring you luck (see the pic in the previous post).  The Rynek is gorgeous.  The architecture; colourful buildings;  stalls bursting with flowers; clip-clopping of horse and cart; accordion players.  I loved it.

On one of the main streets there is a sculpture of men and women going under the road on one side and rising again on the other.  It symbolizes the ever changing Wroclaw through the decades.  Not sure if the photo of it really does it justice, but I found it quite moving.

On our second last evening there, Maciek’s other cousins took us on a walking tour of the oldest part of Wroclaw, which I always thought was the Rynek.  It was dark by the time we got to it, but I’d love to see it by day.  The stunning cathedral, which was destroyed during the war, has been rebuilt exactly as it was.



Milly's presents



Amelia and Noah were showered with books, toys, chocolate and sweets from family.  We spent Amelia’s birthday at the zoo, in 34 degrees.  It was a lovely place, with loads of nice cafés and restaurants to have lunch, a drink or an ice-cream, all with a theme from a different part of the world.  Then after tea we danced and popped balloons, had cake that Ania made and sang happy birthday, and Amelia was spoilt with so many presents including fairy wings, a sparkly lacy bejeweled princess school bag courtesy of Aunty Jo, an Ariel Barbie and the long awaited shiny black shoes ‘for parties and going out to dinner’ which she has been asking (whinging!) for since June.

There are so many layers to Wroclaw, and Poland in general.  It’s probably not a place to visit for a relaxing break, but if you’re interested in culture and history, there’s plenty of it here.

Make a wish

Amelia's favourite animal

Watching the seals

Rellie Bashing in Wroclaw

The Rynek

Kamil, Ania, Vicky

We arrived in Wroclaw one day early as previously mentioned. We stayed with my cousin Kamil (camel, to Melanie) and Ania and their daughter Vicky. They had just renovated their apartment in time for our arrival, we didn’t know any of this of course, if we had known we would have offered to stay in a hotel . Camel was supposed to have had it finished by the end of June and he was still painting as we arrived.

Bye Bye Babcia!

We had a very busy 10 days in Poland visiting all my relies, there aren’t that many of them but seeing as I hadn’t seen them in over 7 years I wanted to make sure I saw them a few times. Our time spent with Kamil and Ania was great.  Ania is a great cook and treated us to many home cooked dinners, which for us has been quite rare.  Kamil was busy with work but finished early as often as he could to catch up with us. The kids were kept entertained by Vicky and her array of toys.  She liked to wind Noah up by pinching a toy he was playing with and running off around the furniture laughing, Noah would of course chase after her shouting “my toy!”. This went on day after day.

Lucky Gnomes

The weather we had in Wroclaw was stinkin hot, it hit 30 most days and it was very humid. We escaped the heat one day by going to the new aqua park they built there. It was pretty awesome with indoor and outdoor pools, waterslides, a wave pool which felt just like the waves hitting the shore back home, except without the horrible sand getting stuck in your jocks, and our favouite - the lazy river - great fun watching the kids faces as they got pushed by the current.  The only problem was that there was a thunder storm that day and the indoor and outdoor pools are connected so they closed the pools for about half an hour so we wouldn’t get electrocuted.

Wujek's (unkle's) garden

Wroclaw has changed quite a bit since the last time I saw it.  It is undergoing a major facelift in preparation for the Euro2012 Football Finals. It’s quite difficult to get around the city as a lot of the roads are being worked on. There are plenty of fancy new buildings but also plenty of buildings needing renovation so at the moment at least it’s all looking a bit mixed up.

Keepin it cool

Agnieszka, Babcia, Milly and Pooh

Being in Poland did take some time to get used to, especially for Melanie not being able to communicate, it does feel like a different world from what we’re used to. We had a great time though once we found our stride. We lived like locals riding the buses and trams. Melanie got thrown into the tram doors when the tram was jiggling about while changing tracks, luckily she didn’t get hurt. The kids really loved the public transport, we even caught the bus one night at 10pm coming from my cousins house, they were trying so hard not to fall asleep. Ohh and speaking of jiggling, for the first time in my life I felt my pot belly jiggle while riding the bus. It was quite an experience for me, I am cutting out the beer as soon as we get back to Austria.

Rorbach Senior

Rorbach Junior

On to Wroclaw

In the car again. Are we there yet?

We planned to split the drive from Soest to Poland into two.  So we aimed to get close to the border of Poland for our overnight stopover.  Having seen plenty of Travel Lodges and Holiday Inn type accommodation on our travels we figured this would be an easy cheap option, but as usual, when you actually need something you’ve seen millions of times before you needed it, it doesn’t seem to exist! 

We found ourselves hovering along the border of Poland looking for a hotel, and ended up driving into the town of Gorlitz.  Coming from the excellent straight forward roads of Germany into this was like peacefully cruising down the Swan River sipping on your favourite glass of red, and then being suddenly plunged into white water rapids without any warning.  It was manic.  Trams everywhere, intersections with seemingly no structure at all (who gives way to who?), minimal road signs or lane markings, and cobbled potholed roads that felt like they hadn’t been improved upon since the days of horse and cart.  We asked ‘Karen’ for a hotel, she gave us the ‘Mercure’.  That sounded good, a familiar name, a reliable chain, so we followed her directions.  She brought us to a 3 storey carpark.  No sign of a Mercure or any other hotel that warranted consideration for an easy overnight stay!  So we legged it.  Let’s just get out of here as quick as we can, were the words I remember being shouted by someone.  But as we jiggled along we realized that somewhere along the way we had crossed the border and were now surrounded by number plates registered to ‘PL’.  So here we were, unexpectedly in Poland a day early, with no local currency to buy dinner.

So on to Wroclaw (pronounced Vrotswav) it was.  Maciek’s home town.  And as there was no sign of a welcoming hotel other than crumbling old creepy farmhouse types, we called Maciek’s cousin and announced we’d be arriving that evening instead of tomorrow afternoon.

The road a little way from the border merged into a new motorway and was smooth and easy, but arriving into the city became an encore experience of Gorlitz, only on a much bigger scale!  Hats off to Maciek’s driving.  Lucky for me he just gets on with it.  I’m stressed enough as a passenger.

We left Soest at 10am that morning, and arrived at the other Grabowski’s at 8pm, the longest driving day to date, but not for lack of trying.  Poor Ania and Kamil hadn’t even finished painting their apartment in preparation for our arrival!  Sorry!

Return to Soest

On the sundeck (or the wind deck!)

Kids play room

The Pride of Hull took us from the UK back to the continent arriving at the port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands at 9am. It was a 12 hour overnight ferry, absolutely enormous, with 12 decks (including the car and sundecks) at least 3 of which were full of bars and restaurants, quiet rooms and cinema rooms (which sadly we couldn’t experience!) and children’s play area (which we did experience – a lot!).  We spent the best part of the evening in the Showroom Lounge listening to a band and then watching a poor magician go down like a tonne of bricks in front of a dismal audience!  To be fair many of the passengers resembled the cast of The Only Way is Essex mixed with groups of dodgy looking Eastenders type characters, so they probably weren’t that interested in a children’s magician at 10pm after sinking 7 pints/Bacardi Breezers  in an hour.  We finally got the kids into bed about 11pm, and then lost an hour crossing the time zone before being awoken at 6.30am by the ships wake-up call.  But happy to say no-one was sick, not in our cabin anyway!  And it was a very enjoyable trip.

Hugs in Soest

We drove straight to Soest.  It’s on the way to Poland, and we thought it would be nice to stop here for a few days and rest, which is exactly what we’ve been doing.  Our hotel is situated opposite the old town Wall and so a stroll into the town centre or around the ‘moat’ isn’t far.  It’s lovely to be back here, where it all began.  We are more confident this time round, and not so afraid to practice our German as we’ve picked up so much more compared to what we knew in that first week away from home.  It’s amazing how different we feel now after travelling so much, we are used to it now, and so are Amelia and Noah, and everything is far less stressful than it was in those first couple of weeks.  Plus knowing Soest and knowing our way around makes it so much easier.

Can’t help feeling like there’s something missing though?  As we walked into town, passing a familiar street and a familiar little house, we half expected Sue and Frank and little Curly to appear to join us for cake and coffee!  It’s not the same without you!

Also we've noticed over the past couple of days that Noah is showing signs of breaking out into tremendous tantrums!  Terrible Twos have arrived we think!  Noooo!!  And he also likes climbing to great heights then announcing "Weeda weeda caackle!! (I'm the King of the Castle!)" whilst doing some movements that look like the actions to I'm a Little Teapot!

You aint sin me, right?

Bonnie Wee Scotland

Polish Clan

We arrived at the port of Larne in Northern Ireland in plenty of time and more to spare to find our ferry cancelled due to the weather conditions.  We’d booked a fast ferry, which would have brought us to Scotland in an hour, a strategic plan to avoid, or at best, shorten the time of potential sea sickness!  As it worked out a conventional ferry took us across a bit later in the day, taking two hours to get there, and as you can imagine it was absolutely packed.  But gratefully we arrived in Scotland well and happy, even if pretty tired.

Princess Tiana and the Snow Queen

We’d booked a night at Premier Inn, a chain of hotels much the same as Holiday Inn and the like.  We highly recommend it though.  Large, clean, comfortable rooms newly built or refurbished, yummy breakfast in the morning, late checkout of 12noon.  And cheap.  What more do you want for a good night’s sleep?

Due to the late ferry we arrived at our friend’s place later than expected.  But to finally sit down and relax with Paul and Lisa who we met at our first campsite in Austria was really nice and quite surreal as it seemed like so long ago that we first met them.  Amelia, Noah and Emma played together like no time had passed.  We had a lovely evening with them and grateful for the dinner they’d prepared after our long day of travelling.

Next stop was Edinburgh, as lovely as we remember it.  The only place on Earth where men can get away with wearing skirts………..those strong highland legs and deep gruff Scottish accents…….hmmmm……Anyway!  We definitely recommend it as a city break.  Lovely atmosphere and so much to see and do.  Perhaps without the kids and the rain though, it would make the visit a lot easier!  We were lucky enough to be able to stay with my friend Keara (Sinead’s sister – The Murphy’s should start a hotel chain!) who has two boys so all the kids entertained each other.

We met Maciek’s 2^nd cousin Pszemek, and his wife Kate who live in Edinburgh.  They welcomed us with loads of food and drink in traditional Polish fashion while ‘Cho Cha Babcia’ (Aunty Grandma!) looked after the kids for 6 hours!  Poor lady, up and down the stairs all day, and not even being able to understand what the kids were saying to her the whole time!  We were grateful though as it allowed us to relax for the afternoon.

Our last day in Edinburgh was unfortunately marred by the lashing rain!  Negotiating the streets of a busy city with a toddler in a stroller and a bouncy 4 year old is hard enough without umbrella’s and raincoats and leaky wellies.  It was off to a bad start as on the way to the bus stop (the car was in for a service) Amelia chased the boys and not being used to running in wellies tripped and fell and then sat on the puddly pavement staring at her muddy hands wailing like it was the end of the world!  Needless to say her bum was soaked.  But on we went.  The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is on throughout the month of August every year, and if we’d have known we may have planned our visit a little better.  We ventured into to town to catch a couple of shows for the kids and soak up the atmosphere, only to find the particular venue we’d planned to visit not open until the following week, and the only thing that soaked anything up were our feet as we hurried across Princes Street to avoid a bus and encountered an enormous puddle not unlike a river on the other side of the road!  I had luckily worn my new waterproof hiking shoes, but poor Maciek and Amelia squelched around for the next couple of hours until we finally gave up and went home!

Keara, Kenny and us

Love is in the air?  James and Milly

That evening though, after we’d dried off and warmed up, Keara and Kenny brought us into town to catch a snippet of the festival in the way of comedian Rob Deering.  We took a punt on buying tickets for his show as none of us had heard of him.  And we were glad we did as he was hilarious!  Laugh out loud funny all the way through.  So keep an eye out for him, you’ll not be disappointed!

It was lovely to see Keara again after so long, and meet her boys James and Conor (and Kenny of course!).  And thanks to Maribel for looking after the sleeping angels (?) while we escaped for an hour or two!

It would have been nice to head this blog with a gorgeous photo of Edinburgh Castle, but to attempt to take the camera out of the bag while outdoors would have resulted in it's death! 

Why did the chicken cross the road?

I’ve neglected to mention the traffic we’ve encountered. 

I’ve no pictures to account for it but rest assured we’ve been surprised by deer bounding across the road in front of us in France and Ireland; a herd full of cows surrounding our car (imagine the mooing coming out of Noah at that sight!); and a woolly cluster of sheep meandering over the bridge ahead of us. 

And lo and behold - la piece da resistance - one white lonely chicken, clucking its way across the road, in Fanad Head.

Booooookkk bok bok bokka!

Where on Earth is Fanad Head?



The Lighthouse



Well, it’s the second most northern point of Ireland, in County Donegal and my friend Olivia happens to live there, otherwise we’d have no reason to go!  But I’m glad she does live there, because we would have missed out on seeing a gorgeous part of the country.

It’s about a 5 hour drive from Dublin, so half way there we stopped at The Murphy’s for lunch.  I’m giving it capital letters, because even though it’s my good friend Sinead’s family home, it’s also good old fashioned Irish hospitality at its best, and we may as well have stopped in at a pub or restaurant of the same name!  Lovely Margaret treated us to a full lunch including desert she’d made herself as well as special orders for the kids!  I think they must have been happy to see the back of us though, as Amelia and Noah went absolutely mental in there, running laps around the table squealing and screaming.  I guess that’s what happens after nearly 3 hours stuck in a car! And it was lashing rain, so no hope of letting the energy loose in the garden.

The Murphy’s are in Northern Ireland, and the quickest way to reach our destination was to pass through it.  It was a bit unnerving when we passed through a town and came across thousands of cars parked near a field.  A music festival? A fair?  Men in bowler hats, others wearing some kind of uniform with sash’s bearing numbers/dates?, and Union Jacks flying all around.  It felt like a bullseye on the political dartboard of religion, or country, whichever rings the truest.  Not sure, but with the trouble going on in the North again we were glad once we’d left it behind.  Chatting to Mr Murphy about it later the words ‘march’ and ‘Black Saturday’ were mentioned.  Not sure what that really means, but haven’t heard any news about it since so all must have gone well with it.

As we drove further north out of Northern Ireland, the landscape became more rugged and wild, but despite this we found Olivia’s place with no problem at all thanks to her no nonsense straight talking right on the money brilliant directions!  We had packed all our woolies in the boot to have on hand as we expected our heads to be blown off by the gale force winds upon stepping out of the car on the driveway of the house at the end of the world!  But, not so, it was sunny and calm!  Albeit not so warm!

Olivia, Colin and little Ollie live in a gorgeous house with a sun room attached which has a spectacular view of the rugged hills and rocky cliffs that make up the coastline.  The one full day we were there the weather was great, and we spend time on the beach, exploring the rocks while the crazy Irish Fanad Head people actually swam!  Olivia thought we were mad, going to the beach dressed in our winter best with runners and socks on, while she sported flip flops and had little Ollie in a swimsuit!

We had a lovely time, beer drinking, chocolate eating, and catching up on the past seven years (Oh my God, we’ve got kids now!!) and Amelia scored an Oopsie Daisy doll complete with a musical bed!

Room with a view

Thank you for having us.  We’d love to visit again someday.  Apologies though for leaving you with the howling wind and lashing rain in our wake!  It appears we spent our one day in Fanad Head on it's only sunny day of the year!

Freezing feet!