The beauty of Rhodes...

The ancient Greeks believed that The Rhodes Island in more beautiful than The Sun. This year I decided to verify it ! :)
Fist week of september I spend at Rhodes Island in Faliraki. Faliraki is a tipical city created for tourism, it's full of hotels, pubs, restaurants, tatoo studios, KFC's and McDonald's etc. In general there is no differences between Faliraki in Greece, Lloret de Mar in Spain and Rimini in Italy. Therefore spending time in this kind of place is not my cup of tea. However, I' ve had a great time at Rhodes because me an my fellow traveller decided to rent a car and explore all island by our own. This decision turned out to be the best we could make. So We spend a few days in a car (We even slept in this car ) but We' ve seen everything that is worth seeing in that Island. We've dicovered the beauty of Rhodes' west coast full of small beches which looks like a part of desert island, charming Greek's villages, we've tasted a local cousine and finally we could see how the real Greeks life looks like.
To sum up, Rhodes is a beautiful place, but is it realy more beautiful than the Sun? I do not know , frankly I've never been to Sun...

Wave jumping and sea walking

Last summer I visited my frieng who lives by the Baltic Sea. She has a boyfriend who was having his birtday party during my stay and I was invited. Party was in his cabin near the forest with barbeque and lots of drinks. I met a boy there and after couple of days he invited me for a pizza. He bought one and told me to follow him in the forest, which I did. After a short walk I saw a big tower in the middle of this forest which we started to climb up. After we reached the top we finally started to eat. Pizza was almost cold but the views were amazing. We stayed there for some time and safely climbed down. After that adventure he told me that the first girl who's going to climb that tower with him will become his wife. I was taken aback by his confession and I politely refused. He wasn't sad because I think he knew what I was going to say. After that "event" we went to the beach and walked by the sea shore towards the sunset.

Lazy vacations

This summer I spent at home. I haven't been in any interesting places, just hanging around my hometown.
I was helping around the house and making compotes from apples, pears, plums and other fruits and vegetables.
Also I tried not to spend all day in house so I was taking short, one-day bike trips to the near villages or to the lake. The distance we travelled was about 40 - 60 km for a day, but we did it just about a few times in a week.
On the other days I was staying at house and reading book or hanging out with my friends. It was just a normal vacations and nothing special happened.
But I rested well and after that I was relaxed and refreshed so I could come back to Wrocław with full reserves of energy :)

Waldklettergarten

Another lazy “weekend”(read: Sunday)  after hardworking week? Not with my sister and brother-in-law! She decided to go out somewhere and because she likes to spend active her free time we went to Stuttgart. But not to discover this beautiful city...

                         

...just to behave like a monkeys.

In the middle of the city is a “Waldklettergarten” - Ropes course.

http://www.waldklettergarten-stuttgart.de/

5 parcours of 4,7,8 and 11 meters, each consisting of 7-17 elements. “Pretty easy… “– I thought.

First we’d  had lesson how to safely enjoy the time and then we started to climb. The first one was easy not to high and obstacles were easy to overcome. So we took another one… After two hours my sister sad that she’s exhausted and decided not to climb anymore – but me and her husband wanted to go on 11 meters…

When he came up the ladder to the 3 / 4 height said that it was too high - who would have thought that my brother in law  is afraid of something. But when I went to the same height I understood ...

It would be to exhausting to went through 17 elements – because when you start you have to go to the end of the route.

But there is always the “next time”.

…

Next day 5.30 – time when I had to wake up to go to work – “HELP!!! I have muscle fever!”

My first airplane flight

This summer I was in Skorzęcin. It’s a small city in Poland near the lake. It’s a nice place but there were nothing special happened. So I want to tell you something what heppened before holiday. It was June, I and several people from that direction (GP) flew to Rimini. It’s a wonderful place in Italy located on the Adriatic Sea. We met there a very interesting people but we had a problem communiacating with them because they don’t sapek English, only Italish. It was incredible experience for me because I flew a plane for the first time. At first I was scared but later I realised that it wasn’t as horrible as I thought. I spent great time with my friends laughing and watching unforgettable views, for example Alps. Thanks to it I forgot about fear.

Ania P.

It was also a roadtrip!

This summer I wanted to go on a "roadtrip", so my aim was to visit all places at Baltic sea. I packed with my friend some clothes and food to the car and our roadtrip started. We began from Szeczin, through Kołobrzeg, Mielno, Łeba to Sopot and Gdańsk. This trip was full of adventures because every day we slept in other towns in a small ten at camping. Exciting an a little bit scared was when our GPS told us to go through wood and we hadn't got any idea where we were, but altgough the viewa were stunning.Very interesting was also to see in Sopot some famous people from Tv. For example we saw Dariusz Michalczewski drinking with friends or Kuba Wojewódzki with new girlfriend. I must say, that they look better in the television, than in fact.

On this holiday I didn't do nothing interesting. My all time I spended in job but I was three weaks in Gdańsk. I worked but I had time for walked and relaxed. The last time on polish sea I was with my parents when I had two years. After I was only on peninsula Hel's and I have never been in big sea resort. Gdańsk was wonderful. I had a flat near Neptun's so I spent my all evenings on old city and in nice restaurants. I walked along river Motława. I saw so many old buildings and churchs. This city is very nice I was there only three weeks but I'm fealing like at home. After Wrocław this is a second city where I will able to live in.

Diving lesson in Cracow

This holidays I visited Cracow. I have been in this city a few times before, but it wasn’t an usual trip. It was connected with a diving lesson! My cousin found it in the Internet on the website www.groupon.pl. There was the opportunity to buy “First meeting with diving” at really attractive price. It was sixty zloty for thirty minutes of theory and one hour activities under water.
We (I and my two cousins) arrived to Cracow early in the morning and decided to go for a walk because our diving was booked on 3 p.m. So, we visited traditionally the Market Square and went by the Wisla River.
In the afternoon we went to Zakrzówek, the area situated near of Cracow, where is located Zakrzówek Bay- place of our diving! It is an ideal place to taking up this kind of sport because it is a flooded quarry where John Paul II was working. Under water there is an opportunity to see really interesting things, for example old cars, a bus, a mirror or flooded trees.
At the beginning of the lesson, we received special equipment- inter alia flippers, wet suits and a bottle of oxygen. When we dressed them we looked really fun. Later our instructor show us some ways of right breathing under water. It is important to breath constantly and slowly. We known also special sign, which are necessary to communicate under water.
After a theoretical lesson, we went to train our new abilities in practice. The Lake was amazing! The Sun, blue water and white rocks- it looked great! Underwater world was also wonderful! We came down only 6 meters, so we couldn’t see cars but we saw flooded trees and small fishes.
Our trip and diving was unforgettabe adventure for me, but diving won’t be my hobby for sure. I like when I have ground under my feet, sun over my head and the oxygen around of me.

Road trip

During this sommer holidays I went a couple of times to Adrspach- it's a small town near Teplice in Czech Republic. It's famous for it's stone formations and astonishing landscape. Right on the beginning of the trip you can see a great view of bright blue lake surrounded by stone cliffs. Unfortunetaly you can not swim in it :( However, you can rent a boat to swim around the lake. Further on huge stone formations you can see some old writtings on the wall from 1870's. Sightseeing takes about 3 hours, it's not far from Wrocław so it can be one part of a one-day-trip.

Free beer at the Baltic Sea

It was nothing special, but it was an interesting experience. I was on holiday at the Baltic Sea in Kąty Rybackie near Stegna. It was my single-motorcycle trip from Suwałki (369 km). In the evening I was very tired after 200 km tour, so I went to the local shop, of course for beer :-). It was 2nd September, the last days of tourist season, so shopkeeper was closing shop early, something about an 8 pm. If I had come five minutes later, shop would have been closed. He was fisherman, but in every tourist season he is shop owner. The end of this day was great, because we told about holidays and fishing a long time, and we drank a lot of beer, of course from his shop. He told: “It is the end of tourist season, so you don’t have to paid”. It seems, that he was typical shopkeeper. It was interesting experience, drank beer with shop owner and don’t paid. I have only one photo from this evening. In this photo you can see my motorcycle with all equipment in front of this shop.


If you want to know more about my 6-days trip, I invite You to my presentation on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjxFWmqW2fc

Working holiday

This holiday I had an opportunity to work abroad at the Campsite in Belgium, in a very pleasant city called Arlon (near Luxembourg). Most of the time I was working as a waitress.
For the whole July I was forced to use English to communicate with Dutch people. What really shocked me, was the fact that almost everyone had no problem with speaking English. Male, female, young or old, everyone was smiling kindly to me after being asked to speak English. That would be unthinkable in Poland.

a Campsite before guests' arrival

It is also worth to mention about my boss and his wife. They were amazing people, very nice and understanding and had an unusual pasion. Martin (the boss) used to be kind of a sailor and together with his wife menaged to (almost) go aroung the world on their yacht. This holiday they were planning to finish their journey and sell their boat on Thaiti to end up their incredible "mission" and go back on a board of an aeroplane to their business.

Even though, my work was not always very easy, people I've met and things I've experienced, made it up for me. Incredible time with even more incredible people. Yes, it was worth it:)

Luxembourg

Water and movies in Łagów.

I've spent my last holidays at home in Zielona Góra and a month in Wrocław.

During this time I didn't have any opportunities to go abroad but I did a few short trips around my place.

One of that trips was my stay in Łagów. Łagów, (placed in lubuskie) is a very cosy and charming small town situated around lake. Water in lake is first class of clarity, so it's really rarity and attract a lot of tourist. There is also old castle, open-air theater and common attractions like restaurants and bars.

In Łagów is orgaznised annual independent film festival - "Lubuskie Lato Filmowe".
At this time to this small place come actors, directors, journalists and of course movie fans.

This year I wasn't at the time when festival took place but two years ago I've seen there Bogusław Linda and Artur Barciś. Festival is a chance to meet interesting people and movie-freaks. Once I've met a couple of old people (I think they were around 70-80) who looked really weird, like hybridization of hippies and tramps. They have noted every film which they saw with short description, plot and other technical stuff in a very big book-catalogue which was beautified with flowers and materials.Only in this one book was around 5000 entries and, as they told me, it was only one of many books in their collection.

So if you like water, calm local colour and movies next year go to Łagów.

Lądek-Zdrój

This summer holidays, me and my family visited Lądek-Zdrój. It was one-day trip.

At first, I want to write about the journey to this town. The road’s last distance was in the forest and there wasn’t any straight length. We were going on the route which had a lots of hairpin bends. On the one side we had a precipices, on the other side – rocks and cliffs. And of course the road wasn’t in a good condition.

In the town, I was on the Market and then I went to the health resort in another part of town. There are the Town Hall and lovely tenement houses in the Market. I was there when local people was selling honey and Christmas baubles.

The Town Hall


Lądek-Zdrój is one of the oldest health resorts in Europe. I was in Mineral Water Pump Room “Wojciech”. It is located on the first floor of the building and it is stylized for a Turkish bath.

With my sister

Inside, under a wonderful dome,

we drank “Zdzisław” and “Maria Skłodowska Curie” .

There was also an exposition of graphics about The Polish EU Presidency.

In Lądek-Zdrój we could visit arboretum, but unfortunately I was’t there.

In conclusion, Lądek-Zdrój has the charm and unique atmosphere.