Our first, fully day, in Boleslawiec, Poland!
A WHOLE DAY FOR SHOPPING!!
For some reason the boys did not want to join us...
They made other plans.
We started our day with a typical European breakfast,
rolls, sliced meat, cheese, yogurt's, tomatoes,
cucumbers, bananas and juice.
This is a small sitting area outside our bedrooms.
They occassionally serve dinner up here when busy.
The same sitting area, our bedrooms are behind us.
This is a front view of this charming hotel
made over from a 200 year old barn.
The owners are a married couple, the wife is Polish
and raised in England. The husband is British.
~The Blue Beetroot~
How the hotel got it's name:
In the late 1700's the fields were all planted
with beetroots. Moonshine was a popular use
for the crop. Besides selling beets for food
it was also secretly brewed into a strong alcohol.
The brew was hidden, underneath the beets,
in the horsedrawn carts going to town for sale.
The legend is that the horses were spooked one
night causing them to bolt and the horses, farmer,
cart, beets and moonshine mysteriously disppeared
without a trace...
The locals say every so often you will see
a beetroot float to the surface of the pond.
It is a very strange blue color and very saturated in alcohol.
Heidi and I's first stop of our
BIG SHOPPING DAY!
This pottery is unique to much of what is in the city.
A Polish woman running the shop.
After our first Polish store visit we stopped at a
local glass factory to watch the process of blowing glass.
This piece of glass is being shaped inside a metal mold.
Here the hot glass is being rolled back forth
as it is cooling so the glass keeps its shape.
Blowing into the pipe to enlarge the glass piece.
You need to have a good set of lungs for this craft.
These are some of the unique colored glass pieces.
These pieces have bodies made of metal
and are accessorized with blown glass.
We stopped in close to 10 stores in this little Polish city.
This is a view of only half this store!
Imagine this! Being 7 hours from Bonn and
running into our friend Jenny!
She was also here for some fun pottery shopping,
her husband and kids along for the ride as well.
You can find several roofs on buildings in Poland
decorated with tiles in beautiful patterns.
After a successful day of Polish Pottery shopping
Heidi and I drove into the main part of the city.
The pictures do not really give you perspective on
how poor and rundown some areas of the city are.
You can just make out the tops of this buildings
behind this newer wall.
This is always the typical front facade look
for ANY building within an old city in Europe.
I LOVE IT!!!
Here is the main town square newly
redone within the last 2-3 years.
The COOLEST color for this
house sitting right on the square!
A look up the pedestrian walking
area around the square.
This church that faces the square
is more than 600 years old.
A school building built in the last 100 years.
The city and court offices in this
building also more than 100 years old.
In the village just down the road from
our hotel are a variety of homes in
different stages of age or refurbishment.
I loved seeing these people in front of their property
working in their VERY LARGE garden.
Just across the road from the gardeners house
are some newer, brightly colored homes.
These cost about $200, 000.
You will find doctors and lawyers living here.
Back up the road is another view of our hotel.
Cody and I's window to our room is the middle one
on the long/front side of the building. The Millers
windows are the one just left of ours and the two
framed windows on the end. We would go to bed
at night hearing a few farm animal sounds.
For dinner this evening I enjoyed another
traditional Polish dish called Pierogi.
Dough that can be filled with things such as meat,
cheese, potatoes, cabbage, spinach and cheese,
curry or other fillings. It was reasonable
but needed a little sauce, so I enjoyed some
of the Polish Goulash sauce with this dish.
A GREAT day enjoying Polish culture!
