Arrived in Krakow!

Matt and I have arrived in Cracow safely and so has one of our luggage - his. Hopefully mine will be delivered to our hostel tomorrow.  

The biggest mall I've ever seen The biggest full moon I have ever seen

 An ice cream sundae with wine and cherries, and a polish beer.

 Old town Cracow

 Market Square

 St. Mary's Church

 So romantical. There's lots of horse drawn carriages and flower stands.

Countdown to EUROTRIP 2013!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's the Browns and crew at Ed (Matt's dad's) birthday party two weeks ago.  (left to right) Dominic and Susie, Rachel and Gabe, Matt and me, Ed and Alice with grandson Liam, Chris and Christina with their baby Edie (not pictured, Lucia), and Dan and Stephanie with Ezra.

Everyone here is going to meet up in Muros, Spain (minus Dominic and Susie, who are going to NC, and Ed and Alice). 

Matt and I leave for Krakow in just three days - July 20.  We've been looking forward to this vacation for SO LONG!

I am bringing my iPhone, which has the Blogger app, so I will probably be posting pictures and maybe some text here.  Then I'll probably clean it up and add more when we get back.  So check back for more next week!

Polish calendars from my landlords

These 22 calendars belong to my landlord, whose sister passed them along for me to look at. I looked at all of them. They are Polish, both their parents came from different parts of Poland. I live in a house their parents built, directly across the freeway from the Polish Hall. We still need to go to the Hall and check out the private restaurant in the basement. Dropping the family name will get us in. They have imported Polish beer and snacks for sale, and homemade Polish food.

A couple months ago, my mom, Matt and I went to a new Polish restaurant in SE called Bar Dobre. It was super tasty. So was the food at the summertime Polish Festival last year. I can't wait to eat in Poland!

We are now done with booking all our accommodations. We're staying in a nice, non-partying hostel in Krakow, a cool apartment in Barcelona, and sharing an apartment with Matt's sister and bro on law, Rachel and Gabe. They're all super nice and not too expensive. I think we got good deals!

Saturday we're celebrating our one year anniversary!! :D

The flight is booked!

Booking our roundtrip tickets to Europe was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.  After months of procrastinating, eventually we just had to go into work on a Sunday, put our laptops side by side in the largest conference room, use a whiteboard to figure out time zones and flight length, both looking at the same shared Google doc, and spend a couple hours running different flight options til we were satisfied.  Only, when I tried to actually buy the tickets, both my cards were declined. The frustration took over, we gave up for the night and went to Breakside Brewery for sustenance.  Amazingly when I called my bank to get help, they called me later that night, and explained the cost of the tickets were slightly above my daily limit.  Also a couple days later my credit card company decided on their own to raise my monthly limit.  Score.  So thanks Umpqua and Discover for increasing my buying power.  Anyways the next day I finally did buy the tickets.

We are leaving mid-afternoon Saturday July 20 to fly to Krakow with a stopover in Frankfurt, which I read is Germany's business and transportation capital city.  It didn't seem like a city I'd want to visit, so I guess we'll just have a bier in one of their fine airport bars.  We will stay at some youth hostel in the heart of Krakow, and check out the whole chunk, including the Kazimierz old Jewish quarter, which is rich in history and is now more bohemian and artsy.  The have a big market there that I want to check out.  I'm hoping it's the opposite of a Generica strip mall, and I'll want to buy everything instead of being disgusted at everything.  I'm just excited to be going to a really old city where there's very few new buildings, and still feels authentic and cultural. After four days there and thereabouts we're taking off for Spain.  We thought it would be good to hang out in a Spanish city on our way to Muros.  We chose Barcelona over Madrid, lots of our friends and family said it's better.  I haven't done any research on Barcelona yet.  I do know that there's huge unemployment especially in younger people.  It will be very interesting to go from a large chaotic city where they speak Spanish and Catalan, on the Mediterranean Sea, to the tiny town of Muros, in a bay of the Atlantic, where they speak Galician (and hopefully English).

In this satellite image of the town of Muros, you can see there's only a few noteworthy places.. One of them is the vacation house the Browns and kin will be staying in, and one of them is a hotel on the waterfront that I want to book for Matt and me, and Rachel and Gabe.  (Rachel is Matt's big sister, she's a lot of fun.)  We are going to have such a great view!

a link to 2010 Peru trip

My mom made a really informative and interactive way to plan our 2010 vacation to Peru - you can check it out here.  Totally different kind of trip.  This one's going to have a lot less humidity, insects, and jungle, and have a lot more.. CASTLES.

How it all began

Matt's family, which is much larger than mine, is planning a "once in a lifetime" trip to Europe next summer, specifically to Spain, for all the Browns and their kids.  Some of them have been to Spain before and wanted to go back, but in a more off-the-beaten path kind of trip.  They wanted to find a small town where tourists don't usually go, and you can have a more authentic experience.  After looking around for places with large houses for rent on the Atlantic coast of Spain, they found Muros.  The purpose of the trip is to relax, spend time with the family in an incredible location, eat lots of great fresh seafood and wine, and also to explore some historic sites.  Muros is known for it's exceptional tapas.

The Browns from oldest to youngest:
Dan and his wife Stephanie, and kids Liam and Ezra.
Chris and his wife Christina, and kids Lucia and baby Edith. Chris is a Spanish teacher for middle schoolers.
Rachel and her husband Gabe
and Dominic and Matt!

Muros is a fishing town, in the area known as Galicia, just north of Portugal.  Many people there speak both Gallego and Castillian Spanish.  They aren't very used to having American tourists in Muros, but some British people go there, so I think some people there probably know some English too.  My Spanish is pretty bad. Galicia has Celtic roots, and isn't very traditionally "Spanish".  That may be why British people like to go there.

Since the largest vacation rental house in Muros isn't large enough for the whole family, we'll have to get one more rental.  Matt and I plan to rent a house or apartment with Rachel and Gabe.  We plan to be in Muros for a full week: July 29 - Aug 5.

So far that's all we know - oh, and since we are going to Europe anyway, we figured we'd visit one more country besides Spain.  We talked about it a lot and decided to go to Poland.  We'd go there first, then fly to Spain.

So this blog will be both a place to share our planning and eventually it will be where we post pictures of our trip from Europe, on the Blogger app on my iPhone.

Another big adventure we are planning, more immediately, is that my roommate is moving out on Jan 1st, a month from now.  If Matt can find a replacement for him where he lives now, he is going to move in with me.  We're pretty excited about upgrading our lifestyle by getting some nicer new furniture, having a separate office, connecting all our devices for easy media sharing, and creating a well-stocked basement pantry with emergency supplies.  If he can't find a replacement in time, then I will get a new roommate.

First trip planning meeting

We came to amnesia brewing at noon to get a pitcher of Trailhazer and brought our laptops to start trip planning.