Prague to Poland- the closing of a chapter

Prague-

We had high expectations of Prague and somehow, it lived up to every one of them and more. It really was the magical, medievil city everyone claims it to be- the winding, labyrinth like streets, castles, gorgeous buildings with lots of little shops...it was all very cool. Nothing exciting to report besides lots of walking, site seeing and just enjoying our time travelling.

In sticking with our eastern Europe journey, we decided to take a train to Poland because word on the street was that some city named Krakow was cool and had the biggest square/plaza in Europe. So off to Poland we went.

Poland is ghetto. Really really ghetto. There isn't much to say about it other than it is probably one of the randomest places we have gone and dont have much desire to go back. We are really happy we went but wow...its ghetto.

Some Poland highlights:
1. The bathroom doors aren't marked by the usual pictures of a man and a woman. Oh no, they are marked with pictures of tigers and hippos. After several "mishaps", we came to realize that as much as we wanted to be tigers...we are definitely hippos. Tiger=men Hippo=woman. lame.

2. Krakow was cool...until my wallet was stolen. We were chillin in the market with all the polish people, thinking we were all cool and blending in like locals when I went to buy something and realized my wallet was gone. bummer...but i guess it was bound to happen to us eventually and hey, at least i have my passport. things could be worse.

3. Krakow was only an hour from the infamous Aushwitz death camp of WWII so we took a little day trip there. Having spent the entire bus ride spacing out, this guy sitting in front of us who looked like he knew what he was doing, got off the bus with his family. I, all of a sudden deciding that this was where we should be getting off, hopped right off the bus with Laura confusedly following. It turned out it was the wrong spot which we quickly realized as the bus drove off with all the other tourists laughing at us out of the window. luckily, the concentration camp was only like a mile away so we rolled up to Aushwitz on foot. kind of awkward. But the experience of seeing something you read about constantly in history books was really moving. and too hard to describe.

4. From Krakow, we went to Warsaw and Warsaw was ghetto-est. It was all destroyed in the war and then they frantically rebuilt it...which is quite obvious by how ugly everything is. Laura and I ended up going to the movie theater twice in the day we were waiting to go to the airport because sighteseeing failed miserably.

From Warsaw we flew to Dublin where we find ourselves now. We are putting our travel plans on hold for a while as we are settling down in Dublin with some jobs, working for a startup and hanging out. Its a nice change of pace...more to come on this later.

So its the close of our easter European adventure and in honor of it, we've tried to sum it up a bit. Here is what we have come up with:

Best city: we cant decide (istanbul, athens, budapest)
Worst city: Bucharest, Romania

Best Monuments: 1. the Acropolis 2. Aya Sofya (Istanbul) 3. monastaries in Meteora (Greece)

Best beach: Mylopotas on the island of Ios, Greece

Best people: hungarians, slovakians
Worst people: bucharest, romania people

Memorable adventure: Hungarian baths

Best drunk night: our first night out in Athens

Best plaza: Prague

Ghetto-est place we stayed: Hostel Aphrodite (Athens, Greece) and the Casino we stayed at in Burgas, Bulgaria

Most memorable moment: eating greek salad, on top of a hotel, during a thunderstorm, looking out at the acropolis