Zakopane/I have no idea what to call this (Donna)

So, there's been like three posts about Zakopane already, but I am in love with this place. If I ever get married, this is where I'm coming for my honeymoon, no joke.

Anyway. It is refreshing to see mountains after driving in a bus all day yesterday, and though I flew over the Swiss Alps on my way to Italy, I've never seen mountains this beautiful in my entire life.

Dinner last night was quite the adventure. After wandering around the town at about 9:45 and not finding anything open that we wanted to eat, we ended up heading back to the resturant connected to the hotel called Roosters. Now, we heard Kimmy tell us a story about this place on the bus, and we were kind of iffy about going there, but we decided that we were too hungry to not.

Turns out, Roosters is the Polish/European version of Hooters.
Regardless, it was an entertaining night.

This was one of my favorite days here. First of all, we got to sleep in until about 8 (which means i got up at quarter after seven, which really isn't sleeping in at all). Then we wandered around the town. We saw the oldest cathedral in Zakopane (Which was completely wooden and sweet). It was really little and it didn't look like a lot of people could fit in there, but there was a nice wooden version of the Our Lady picture, which was very interesting to me, because there's a copy of it in almost every cathedral we visit.

We also saw a really neat cemetary, that had famous Zakopanians buried in it. There were two that went to the Olympics in Berlin. One barely escaped the Nazi's and one was killed in Auschwitz, which was depressing. But our guide told us that there is a festival for him here every year, which is cool. We also saw the statue of a "Sad Jesus," which is native to this part of Poland. My roommate Maggie let be borrow batteries for my camera, so now I can take more than five pictures a day =D.

Then, we hopped on the train (as someone else posted) and rode up the mountain (and recieved the finger from a little girl who had to walk up the mountain, hahahah.)

The mountain was beautiful, and Jeremy, Dr. B, Kristin and Kimmy went on a gravity tobaggon (sp), which was totally worth Five Zloty. Anyway, I couldn't figure it out at first, but the guy showed me had to press the lever all the way down (though I couldn't really reach because I'm so short) and the it picked up. It was kind of like going down a giant waterslide with no water. It was so beautiful.

After, we wandered around and saw a St. Bernard, which was adorable. And we wandered around on top of the mountain for a while, then left. When we returned to the base of the mountain, we got a lot of free time, and I bought really cool presents for a lot of people.

Anyway, this is really long, so, All is well and we return to the states in less than a week.

<3 Donna