Polish pottery

So a couple weekends ago, I went to Poland with some ladies from our church. Ezra came along with us, as he's only 4 (now 5!) months old and Stella spent the night with the Blokers since Daddy had to work on Friday. We ladies (plus our little "dwarf" as Ezra was nicknamed) left EARLY in the morning, right after I realized (DUH!) that I forgot my passport. As did Melody. We even had e-mail reminders and everything. So instead of getting out of town at 6 am, it was 7, but that's alright. Funny thing was, I ended up only bringing my passport and not Ezra's, even though they were right next to each other. Thankfully, Poland now has open borders, and we didn't get stopped at all. I hate to think what may have happened otherwise.

We drove about 8 hours and arrived in Boleslawiec around four (okay, almost 9 hours). We hit up some pottery shops the moment we stopped. It was quite a lot of fun looking at all the variety they have there, MUCH more than the traditional blue polka dots you see everywhere here or in the States. After we got a few hours of shopping in, we checked into our very nice hotel. (Obviously they get A LOT of Americans that come over there--they take polish money, Euro AND American dollars!) Our hotel even had a small pottery shop inside, with the best prices we found. They also had some lovely dried flower arrangements that were quite tempting.


We had a lovely dinner at our hotel--very good Polish food. I had some cabbage rolls, and we all shared some pierogi. We started calling Ezra our little pierogi. We had a few translation issues, as the waitresses didn't speak extremely good English. Jen asked for some apple pie, and the waitress replied that they were all out. So then Jen asked what was the fruit in the "fruit pie" that was listed under the apple pie. To which the waitress replied quickly, "Apple." And then both she and Jen started laughing. We never did find out what the fruit pie was. Then, Sandy asked what "bobka" was. (It was on the dessert menu.) The waitress replied, "Bobka," like we should all know exactly what she was talking about. "It's Polish." Really? So we had NO idea what that was. Turns out it was a fabulous sweet bread. Bobka!

We then went to bed. Next morning we got up early-ish (7 am for breakfast, if I remember correctly. Maybe 6:30?) and hit the shops about when they opened. There was even MORE to choose from. It was rather overwhelming. I found some really great stuff, and as far as shopping for dishes can be fun, this was great. We were planning to get lunch, then hit the road, but the pottery shopping took over lunch, and we just snacked out of the cooler we brought along. I think we finally left Poland around 4. Oops! I was home and in bed at...1:30 am I believe. Not terrible. We had lovely fellowship the whole time, and if we do it again next year, well, I might just go again. You can find more pictures on my friend Krissie's blog.