Winter trip : Poznan

Ostrow Tumski - Cathedral (yep, it's called that simply)

Ostrow Tumski - Church of Our Lady

Poznan Town Hall

The Town Hall with inscription on its wall. A great sight.

Poznan is a city in west-central Poland with over 567,882 inhabitants (2006). Located on the Warta River, it is one of the oldest cities in Poland, making it an important historical centre and a vibrant centre of trade, industry, and education. Poznań is Poland's fifth largest city and fourth biggest industrial centre. It is also the administrative capital of the Greater Poland Voivodeship.

-Wikipedia-

We stopped by Poznan for 6 hours before our trip to Gdansk.

Why Poznan? It's not famous at all?

Answer : Because my friend, Rafal was from there and Candice wanted to go there so bad because the Renaissance architecture is just stunningly beautiful. Just look at the Old Town. It's quiet because it's winter, people always find shelter for warmth.

So we didn't end up with meeting Rafal because he had an exam in Berlin to be attended. We also didn't have enough time to explore the whole city of Poznan. We only made it to the Old Town and the Ostrow Tumski. The Ostrow Tumski was huge and time wasn't sufficient to walk around. It was almost time to board the train so we rushed back to the Railway Station. On the way back to the Railway Station, we saw some really cool palace-like buildings and beautiful monuments but unfortunately, time was running out.

On train we met with Wojtek, who's a medical student in Gdansk. He was back to Poznan for study week. The next day was his exam on Chemistry. But we chatted the whole night with pauses in between for him to study and smoke. LOL. A nice guy and a cheeky one.

Next destination : Gdansk

Kochi~

Winter trip : Wroclaw

That's where I bought gloves and cap.

Leprechaun performing pole dance

Even Bata was there (It's an Italian brand though~)

My favourite store : H&M

The road to the old town(ul. Swidnicka), that's where all the stores were situated~

Tatuum

Pierre Cardin

Diesel

Terranova

KFC - almost 2 days we've been eating because we're living just above it LOL.

Restaurant Jadka, the only world class we've been to.

...and we ordered this "Pierogi" with duck meat, *slurp~*

Ostrov Tumski - Island of Churches

Another kind of Pierogi but it's with cottage cheese, urgh~

Old Town

Town Hall - rear view

Town Hall - anterior view

in KFC, hihi~~~

Wroclaw was built on 12 islands, surrounded by rivers and canals. There are 127 bridges within the city and only Venice, Amsterdam and St Petersburg can beat. Wroclaw is certainly not in the list of many people while visiting Poland, but it's worthwhile to explore around, especially the Ostrov Tumski (Island of Churches).

The weather was moderately windy and cold, but it didn't stop us from going around the beautiful city. We arrived the city at 1 am and there's no one to ask for direction. Luckily we hailed a taxi which refused to give us a ride because the place we're staying was just of walking distance. A kind man he was.

We stayed in Nathan's Villa which was on top of KFC. It's amongst one of the best hostel I've slept in.

It's the first city that we splurged because things were sooooooooooooo cheap!!! That's where I started my shopping spree~

Some say that if Krakow would be the 2nd Prague, then Wroclaw would be the 2nd Krakow. But personally, I count them backwards. Wroclaw-Krakow-Prague :):):):):)

Kochi~

Winter trip : Kutna Hora

Second stop : Kutna Hora, Czech Republic.

Kutna Hora is also a Bohemian city. It's a town full of "Kut" (bone in Hokkien, hahahaha.....my lame joke)

It's actually a small town, really small. It's famous for its Kostnice/ Ossuary aka The Bone Church.

We took a train from Prague to Kutna Hora. It's around 30 minutes to reach the destination. One way cost 73 crowns for student price.

Why is it called "The Bone Church"?

The church itself wasn't made to worship the devils.

The church originally was just an ordinary small church. After the attack of the plague causing numerous Black Deaths. So mortality rate increased and there's no place for burial eventhough the church was expanded once.

So there's a blind guy who dug up all the bones and an architect was asked to make something out of these bones of millions of humans.

And tadaaaa........these are the masterpieces~

After that we took the tourist bus which cost 35 crowns to the Gothic Cathedral on top of the hill. It's almost the same structure like the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague because the architect was the same. We didn't enter the cathedral because it cost money.

So I snapped the scenic photos of the town centre from the hill. And then we had lunch in a chinese restaurant (again).

Everything was going very fine until the time when we wanna get back to the railway station. There's fucking no bus. The lady in the restaurant warned us that there's no bus because it's Sunday. So we hurried outselves back to the town centre. There's also no tourist bus, even worse, the information centre was closed. We were 5 minutes away from asking questions. ARghhhhhh!!!!

So we met 2 gorgeous young Czech lads whom Candice fell in love with so fast that she stuttered while asking them for aid. Undeniably they're really goodlooking. Czech Republic really has good genes!!

They helped us to hire a taxi and asked us to wait with their bad English and good sign language. 5 minutes later the taxi came and cost us to pay 100 crowns to get to the railway station.

Reached the railway station and directly went to the counter for ticket.

This was when the TERROR happened.

We didn't have any money left in our pockets. I asked if the counter accepted cards. The answer was NO!!

So I asked for direction to go to the nearest ATM machine. I made haste of myself to the nearest machine, which was 5 km away from the railway station according to the locals. I was like "WTF!!!" So I ran there without wasting time.....panted.....and suddenly found an ATM machine which was approxly 4km away. Withdrew the money and ran back again to the railway station. Lady luck was with us that we're 5 minutes close before the train arrived.

We reached Prague and went back to the hostel to claim our stuff before we walked to the bus station to depart to our next stop, Wroclaw. While we were on the way to the bus station, we met the Hongkee couple again. Surprisedly they recognised us. We chatted, exchanged emails and took photos for memory before we waved goodbye to Prague.

The trip to Czech Republic wasn't so relaxing but rather thrilling, terrifying also exciting and interesting. It's sure also a memorable one because I snapped a picture of this beautiful girl while eating in the chinese restaurant.

Next stop : Wroclaw (pronounced as Vroshlav), Poland.

Kochi~

Winter trip : Prague, again~

Exams were finally over and I'm travelling again!!!!!

First stop : Prague, Czech Republic.

This is not the first I've been to Prague in Czech Republic. The last time I was here was dated 4 years ago while I was a young and stupid 2nd year student.

So why am I in Prague once again????

1. We all have a short holiday after the escape from ordeal of Epidemiology.
2. KD Avia offered a reasonable price to fly from Nizhny Novgorod to Prague.
3. I touched that stupid statue on Charles Bridge 4 years ago, saying that I would come back again.

Prague is one of the Bohemian city with lots of stunning buildings. It’s as though situated on hills. That explained why it’s so fucking cold!!

And so here I am, again. But living in another hostel.

Oh yeah, we went through a long delay in Kaliningrad. The flight was supposed to start boarding at 12.55pm but it ended up boarding at 13.40pm. The airport went from empty to congested. That's when the one and only cafe there had great business.

On the plane, I was terribly exhausted because I couldn't sleep well the night before departure. Nevertheless I managed to jolt myself up to take the beautiful pictures of the clouds~ (I think I've captured the Curonian Spit of Kaliningrad)

We checked in the hostel after arrival and hustled ourselves to the Old Prague Town. The hostel looked wacky. The doors were sprayed and the walls were yellowish, so cute to live in~

It was dark by then. So we took night views of the Old Town and dined in a chinese restaurant.

We became panicked when we couldn't find the metro station, practically none, it's hidden somewhere that we couldn't find desperately. So we walked from the Old Town, to a bridge, then took a bus, reached a totally new place..........That's when we found this specially lit human figure mosaic.
Then we walked again with the hopes to find the nearest metro station. We ended up reaching the Old Town again, realising we're walking in a circle. So we kinda gave up and decided to take any coming trams alongway. We hopped on to one and after a few stops we found a metro station. Credits to Candice though~

Reached hostel fucking late because we were absolutely lost in the mysterious old Prague. We met a couple of Hongkees who're pretty funny especially his wife but I couldn't speak Cantonese that well, so Candice was the ice breaker and the MC of the night. I was just listening until I fell asleep.

Next stop : Kutna Hora