Flying to Warsaw

Oh my goodness, what a trial to get here to Warsaw! It's been a while since we've had a "bumpy" trip, but I do believe we made up for it this time.

Glo and I got home from Interlochen (cue sad face) on Sunday. We had two days to turn everything around before we left for Warsaw on Wednesday. I had been staving off a cold at Interlochen, but it turned into bronchitis and I started yet another round of antibiotics and steroids.

On the same day, I noticed Hootie acting weird, and I set up a vet appointment. Four days later and he's had surgery and is still at the vet's. It's costing us $4,000....for a rescue barn cat....with FIV. I couldn't leave all of this with the dog sitter, so we flew Hannie home on Tuesday. She's staying for a week.

And then, surprise surprise, Maize delivered six puppies on Tuesday morning. Yep, six puppies. We threw the pool in the mud room and left her to it. Again, I'm glad Hannah could leave school for a couple of days and come home.

Add to all of this that we had an open house for our house on Sunday, and nothing came of it. Looks like we're finally going to lower the price and see if anything happens. As much as we love our house and our land, other people obviously don't.

So, by the time we were ready to leave for Newark airport (after seeing Hannah for two hours after she flew home through the night), we were on edge to say the least. It didn't help that I (for the first and LAST time) made most of our bookings through a discount travel website.

Never again. No joke.

The information was wrong for our flight, and the rental van didn't come through. In other words, we basically walked onto the plane before it took off because we didn't have a minute to spare, and we will now be taking two cars around Poland because the company didn't reserve the 6-passenger van we requested.

Goodness.

I was thankful though that the flight was smooth, and our connection was easy. Glo vomited on the plane, and John's stomach is reeling (as usual) from the time change. One day at a time, right?

The view from our
hotel room.

Anyway, Rebecca met us at the airport, and wow, she was so impressive! She knew exactly how to get us on a public bus to take us to our hotel. Seriously, it feels like she's lived here for years! And she even had a fun little gift bag of Polish treats. Seriously yummy!

We have a beautiful hotel in downtown Warsaw. We unpacked and took naps, because we didn't have much time before our first big event in Poland: Polish Your Cooking.

Yep, as cheesy as that sounds, it's an actual event. Learning how to cook Polish food.

Ethan and Rebecca met us at the hotel, and we walked from there. It was a small room on the bottom floor of a very large apartment building. There were three Swedes who joined us.

I must admit that I really enjoyed the company of the Swedes. They were interesting (as I've found all Swedes are), and we could have done much more laughing and interacting if it hadn't been for our rather strange teacher. A young woman who is a student, but was rather socially awkward. Really, whenever I started laughing, she would call me out and go on with the lesson. No matter, I guess, because she taught us brilliantly how to make kielbasa and pierogi.

Oh goodness, when we walked in, we hadn't really eaten all day, so our stomachs felt like bottomless pits. However, there is only so much Polish food one person can eat at one time! If it hadn't all been so dang good, it might not have been a problem, but it was delicious.