Wroclaw treasures

Tommy Smith has stolen my laptop and I can't download the pictures from my real camera to the blog from my iPad so this will be a limited picture post. He leaves tomorrow (hopefully without my laptop) so I'll share some more pics then. In the meantime, you can check out the Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram for visuals.

We have made it to the halfway point in the trip and are now in Wroclaw, Poland. Wroclaw is a great university town that is kind of a hidden gem in European travel. It's the 4th largest city in Poland, only a few hours away from both Berlin and Prague, and has been named Europe's center of culture for 2015.

There are 4 universities, 120 churches, and over 150 bronze gnomes. That's right! I said gnomes. The locals call them dwarfs, but they really are little gnomes scattered all throughout the city. It's really fun to just stumble across them and today Daddy and I went searching for 'em. Each gnome is different and they all have some sort of significance or represent a historical event or group of people. For example, there are two little fire fighters outside of a church in the town square. They are fire fighters because that particular church has caught on fire 3 times. These gnomes are so stinking cute I can hardly handle it!

Outside of one do the universities is a little professor gnome. I wasn't with my dad when i first saw the little guy, but all of the people I was with decided it looked a lot like Tommy. When I took my dad back to see it, he really got a kick out of it. It's his new profile picture...

Pictures from Prague

I know I haven't posted anything from Prague yet and while I would like to go into great detail about all of the wonderful things I've been doing, it's late so you're just going to get a photo dump. The pictures are the best part anyway, right?

Lovely Views from the Castle Hill

Old Town Square

More great views

AMAZING french food at the Prague Food Festival. That strawberry sorbet and macaroon were the bomb dot com

Prague has been filled with lots of tasty Czech beer

Wenceslas Square at night. Yes, the Wenceslas from the Christmas song.

Delicious Trdelnik. So good!

Yet another view. Dang, this city is pretty

I really liked this graffiti on the Lennon Wall. My parent's didn't give me this trip, but they did light my passion for travel and learning and growing. Can't thank them enough for that priceless gift.

Old Town Square

The Astronomical Clock

Oh yeah...my dad came into town for part of my trip. We've been exploring Prague together in my free time. Yesterday we stumbled across a random car show with some pretty cool antique cars. Not sure why my face is so weird here. Oh well!

Incredible stained glass in St. Vitus Cathedral.

St. Vitus

Books of the lords of the land at Prague Castle

Guard Tommy

Medieval torture chamber. Yikes!

We toured the Jewish quarter today. Pretty incredible and heartbreaking. I'll tell y'all more about it later. This is the old Jewish Cemetery

Took a day trip to Franz Ferdinand's Castle, Konopiste, today. We couldn't take any pictures inside, but it was a pretty cool place. More on that later.

the last few days

Tomorrow morning I say goodbye to lovely Budapest and hello to Prague. I'm super jazzed about Prague because I've heard nothing but amazing things about the city, but first I wanted to share a few photo from the past few days.

I visited the Hungarian Parliament. It is one of the most incredible building I've ever been in.

Just look at this stained glass. Amazing! It was everywhere too! 

  A little blurry, but you get the point

 The tour took us to the grand staircase, the former house of lords lobby, the grand dome and the session hall. They didn't let us take pictures in the grand dome because the holy crown of Hungary is kept in there, but it was really something special. You should look it up! The picture below is from the session hall. Pretty spectacular! 

 

Budapest is also known for its coffee houses. There are 5 or 6 historic houses and a few of us ventured out to the oldest and most famous one, Gerbeaud. This is a beautiful macaroon tower. I bought a poppy seed blueberry mac to go. Yummy!  

 The lovely interior. I was a little bit obsessed with this ceiling. Love the green!

 My insanely rich and delicious chocolate cake!

 In between all of this eating and sightseeing, we did go on a few more company visits. One was to Raba- a Hungarian axle manufacturer. Raba used to make cars and was very famous for this super bus. I thought it was precious! Now they only make gigantic axles mostly for military and farming equipment. One of their biggest customers is John Deere and another is a US government contractor who makes tanks.

 Our next stop was to Zwack, the makers of a very famous Hungarian liquor, Unicum. The company is more than 200 years old and had a fascinating history that included interesting relationships with british and Austrian royalty, the facility being boomed, the owner's family being sent to concentration camps, another owner escaping Soviet occupation by hiding in a barrel with the secret recipe in his pocket. Crazy stuff. The liquor tasted like it could kill you, but it was a very interesting visit!

The have the world's largest collection of minis...

Their oldest barrel. Most of the barrels were destroyed by the soviets, but this one was so large, they couldn't move it. It was massive!

   Tonight we look at river cruise along the Danube at sunset. It was fun seeing all of my favorite building lit up at night.

Goodbye Budapest, it's been real! 

Budapest free day

Today was our first free day in Budapest. I took the opportunity to visit the zoo, do a little shopping at the market, and tour the royal palace.

The Budapest Zoo was pretty dang cool! They let you pet a lot of the animals and some of them are just roaming around the compounds. It's also right in the middle of the city but was full of such beautiful vegetation that it feels like you're out in the country. I was pleasantly surprised with the variety of animals and quality of the facilities- even if I did almost get attached by an ostrich (they don't play around).

The first critter we encounter was a very happy Iguana. Look at that smile!

 I'm not sure what kind of bird this is (all of the signs were in Hungarian) but it is native to Australia and knows how to pull off an awesome hairpiece. 

 These bears were very snoozy (and massive).

 These monkeys were eating orange and it was the cutest thing. It always amazes me how human their mannerisms are. I can definitely see all of the DNA we share.

 A sample of the gorgeous landscaping

 We watched these giraffes for about 30 minutes. We were feeding them apples and they were absolutely precious. I'm going to try to add a video I took of them eating. It was hilarious.

 Baby Elephants are the best!

 The zoo is right by Heroes' Square, which is one of the major squares in Budapest. This monument is called the Millennium Monument and was built in 1896 to celebrate Hungary's 1000th year. No wonder this country has so much amazing history. 1000 years is a long time! 

After the zoo, we went back to the market to pick up a few souvenirs and finally get the langos I'd been dreaming about. Notice the bite taken out of it. I couldn't wait to dig in! Langos is a traditional Hungarian dish. It's a large piece of fried dough traditionally topped with sour cream and cheese (as you see here). You can also get ham, onions, olive, tomatoes, etc. or sweet ones topped with nutella and fruit. Yum!

After a quick stop a the hotel, we headed over the the Buda side and took a ride on the funicular up the hill to the royal palace, also known as Buda Castle. Here is a shot of the Chain Bridge (the oldest bridge connecting Buda and Pest) and St. Stephens Basilica, which you can see in the background. 

 We saw the changing of the guard ceremony. Very cool.

 Look! Proof that I actually am on this trip and not just stealing these photos from Google image.

 This is where I'll be heading tomorrow!

This is a view of the palace from the chain bridge. Such an enormous palace and so beautiful.  (I have a better picture somewhere, but can't find it and I'm sleepy so I'm not looking too hard)

These are the ruins of the original palace dating back to the early 13th century.

 The courtyard behind the palace.

 A ridiculous fountain with a hunting theme. That's a dead deer on the top and hunting dogs on the bottom there.

They didn't let me take any pictures of the inside of the palace, but it now houses a fine art museum and the Museum of Hungarian History.

It was a fun, but exhausting day so I'm off to sleep! On tomorrow's agenda: visiting Parliament, St. Stephens, and maybe one of the Turkish bath houses.  Later Gators!