out of office : Kraków, the most unexpected surprise

after Bordeaux and one night in Paris, we were off to our second conference in Kraków, Poland. it's a city famous for many things...most of them being sad, very somber memorials to a very dark part of the world's history (the Holocaust...).

however, what we found in the historic eastern european city was great food, friendly people, fun bars, fun restaurants, cool shopping, and a surprisingly GREAT time!

we had the chance to actually meet our advisor there (he was the aviation chair of the conference), so it was cool to see him outside of school and get a chance to have some fun too! we were pleasantly surprised to find him pretty much over the conference and as soon as all of our respectively talks were done, we were all done with attending the conference! makes for a good time!

we all even had the chance to attend the museum at Schindler's Factory. it took some maneuvering to get there, and one of my favorite parts of this trip was when we took a wrong turn to get there, and ended up at a train track (the kind where there was a significant platform situation). i suggested we just simply jump down, cross the track, and jump back up...jaywalk the train track. we had earlier had a discussion about my daredevil ways of aggressive jaywalking on the streets (i lived in New York...i mean...i'm a professional jaywalker, i can't help)...which makes both Jao and our advisor nervous. and after my jaywalking suggestion for the track...our advisor looked at me and very firmly said......WE ARE NOT. JAYWALKING. THE. RAILROAD. TRACKS.

needless to say, we went around. but i still think some jaywalking on the train tracks in Poland would have been a good time ;-)

this was the adorable apartment we rented for the week we were there...it was amazing. (please note our super chic, matching Everlane travel bags....partner look!)

the old town city center!

always on a ride :-)

conference talks are over! yay! beer and cider!

in the old Jewish quarter

they even had gluten free piroegies! i was in HEAVEN.

all-in-all...i'd say that obviously other than hanging out at Etienne's parent's french chateau for the week....Kraków was the highlight of our trip. we had the best time and actually we were both extremely surprised at how killer the food was! everything was affordable (around $3-5 per person, per meal), and they had cider for me to drink at almost every bar we went to!

and hey...we even got a bit of history in! it was a GREAT stop...and then we were Prague bound on an overnight train... more to come!