While researching for hidden gems to visit in Europe, we saw a few posts mentioning Wroclaw, Poland. Our Polish coworker, Rafal, mentioned that Wroclaw (apparently pronounced “vr-oat-swavf”..?!?) is his favourite city in Poland, so we decided to book a weekend there.
Despite arriving quite late at night, we decided to bus and walk to the apartment we had booked. We arrived at a an older run-down building and quadruple-checked that the address was indeed correct. We pushed open the large, rotting wood door to reveal a pitch black hallway and staircase. The walls had graffiti and there was litter on the floor.
Thank goodness for cell phones.. we managed to navigate our way up the creaky wooden stairs and found our apartment. We opened the door to our beautiful apartment room! ..and breathed a small sigh of relief! ;)
We spent the first day wandering the city’s parks, huge square, and eating yummy food!
We did decide to check out the Racławice Panorama, which houses a 100 year old painting of the
Battle of Racławice.
We ate at a “milk bar”, which is a cafeteria-style restaurant serving traditional Polish food - we had no clue what any of the items on the menu were. Fortunately the staff was super friendly and helpful. Everything was very inexpensive, so we just pointed to random items on the counter and were really happy about how delicious everything was! Of course, we returned to the same place for lunch again the next day :).
Our co-worker, Rafal, also happened to be in Poland visiting family/friends for the weekend, so we met up with him for dinner and a beer.
We were supposed to meet up with him at the beach on Sunday, but we got a little distracted on our way there...
We heard some music in the park and saw hints of an ongoing festival… a rum festival.
After slight hesitating, we decided to pay the admission and enjoyed a lovely chill afternoon lounging in the warm sun sipping rum and watching bartender competitions in Polish. They gave out free cigars and poured samples of many different rums from around the world. The 2 we enjoyed the most were:
1) "A. H. Riise" from Denmark
2) "PuntaCana" from the Dominican Republic
After closing down the rum festival, we took a short stroll through the Japanese Gardens.
Interestingly, you will find little gnome statues along random sidewalks throughout the Wroclaw core. They’re usually doing something related to the store/restaurant that they’re near. So, for example, one Bank had a gnome counting money, and one bar had a gnome pouring a drink, etc. Lucky for us, Jen had an strange innate sense for spotting them everywhere we went :).
