Another year, another trip. This years destination...Kraków! The party city of Poland! I had no idea what to expect of this city but a lot of people told me it's extremely cheap which was great news!

With a 7am flight I decided to spend a very lonely night in a b&b close to the airport. A strange start to the trip really. I was driving for what felt like hours in the middle of nowhere to find the place, it was pitch black and the roads were long country windy roads. I felt like I was driving towards death. Slight over exaggeration but you know what I mean. I finally found the place, hidden down a small lane. There was a couple there to greet me and show me around but unfortunately on arrival I was also greeted by bloody cats', The house was crawling with them! I locked myself away and got some sleep before my early flight.

After an hour or so of waiting to board, the Kraków flight was called! As I showed my boarding pass and passport the man said: 'Uh oh, you seem to have one to many bags Miss!' What? Seriously? It's been a while since I'd flown with easy jet and I didn't realise they had change their hand luggage policy! I swear it used to be one carry on and a handbag or laptop? Luckily the guy let me on with both bags at no extra cost. My only problem was, how on earth was I going to get both bags back?! Nightmare! It was a problem for 3 days time.

I boarded the flight and as I walked down the aisle of the plane I saw one empty seat in the middle of two old fat guys. I looked down at my ticket and of course that was my seat! Great! It was like a Josie sandwich! I had to be careful when falling asleep, I didn't want to dose off on either of their shoulders! That would have been awkward.

The flight seemed to take for ever but I eventually arrived and began my wait for Carys and Elena. They were on a later flight than me from London. The wait wasn't too bad...about an hour refreshing the 15 minute free wifi until they arrived.

Once we had said our hellos, we walked to the train station to get a train to the city centre. It was about a 30 minute journey, so not too bad. It wasn't like Amsterdam this time, we had caught the train going in the correct direction. Phew!

The station was quite big and it took us a little while to find the correct way out, but after about 10 minutes we were on the correct route to the hostel.

We were stood on the street where the hostel should have been and couldn't see any signs for it or any places that looked like a hostel at all. We wandered around for a bit, there was one large building all boarded up with scaffolding. That couldn't be it? Could it? We took a closer look and hidden behind the scaffolding was a door to the hostel. Turns out we were looking at the building the whole time. It was undergoing construction! They could have bloody let us know.

It was cool inside though, all decorated for Halloween. We checked in, paid for the pub crawl (standard!) and then went for a wander to try and find something halloweeny to wear.

We stumbled across a huge shopping centre which was cool to have a walk around. In the middle of browsing we stopped to have a sneaky little tea break. It was nice little coffee shop next to some fountains. It was just a lovely chilled afternoon in preparation for what was going to be a crazy night!

The night began with getting ready, and after not finding anything in any of the shops I decided to improvise. Luckily I'd bought a black and white Victorian style outfit with me so I decided to go as some sort of dead vampiresque character. I 'borrowed' some of, well actually quite a few of the decorations dotted around the place(Mainly cobwebs). They were never going to notice and besides it added effect to my costume.

Once we were ready, we went to meet everyone to start the pre drinking. Turns out we were the only three down there to start. The girl from the hostel asked us if we wanted a cocktail, of course the answer was YES. But when she brought this vomit coloured drink over to us I started regretting my answer. Then I tasted the thing and definitely regretted my answer. Not only did it look like vomit...it tasted like it.

More and more people joined us downstairs, and the games began. I hadn't drunk like that since Uni. Flip cup, beer pong, ring of fire and some games I've never played before. It was chaos with very cheap vodka! I knew the next day was going to be hell. We continued to drink until it was time to head out on the pub crawl. We gathered our things, stepped out of the front door and just like that I blacked out. I have zero memory of leaving the hostel, no idea where we went. A small hazy vision of me being sick came back to me and then a black out again. Apparently we made it to one bar... how embarrassing. I definitely can't drink like I used to. The girls brought me back and I remember everything from coming back through the hostel door. So strange. I was starving when we got back so went back out to find some food...but there was absolutely nothing around or nothing open. I think we walked around for about an hour or so in the freezing cold until we admitted defeat and went to bed.

Morning arrived and I wish it hadn't! My head felt like someone had hit me repeatedly with a hammer. I don't know what the hell that vodka was but I don't think it should be legal!! It has scarred me for life!

The plan for the morning was to go on a walking tour of the city. I managed to drag myself out of bed and get changed but this horrible hangover stayed with me. We postponed the walking tour until the afternoon and went for a wander through Planty Park. It was freezing out but the fresh air was good for me. We had our own little photo shoot in the park with all of the autumn leaves, which was so much fun. A few people stopped and stared and 3 drunk men stopped and started mocking us. We moved on at that point as they just stopped and stared for ages. Seriously! So rude.

We decided to warm up by going for tea, and I was finally hungry at this point so I was looking forward to breakfast. Do you think we could find anywhere that did a good hearty breakfast though? Nope! All there was was pastries or toast or fruit bread. Nothing good enough to cure the hangover from hell. After some unsatisfying toast we popped to KFC where I got myself some very satisfying chicken! It was just what I needed.

It was almost time for the walking tour...which secretly I was dreading as I didn't think I would make it around the city. I was struggling with life! Then Elena made the best suggestion ever. She suggested we get a personal cart tour around the city and Carys agreed. What a great idea. No walking, sitting in the warmth and getting to see the whole city. It was a win win! So that's what we did. We paid our personal chauffeur and off went. We got to see the whole city in style and in the warmth. As we were driving around, we passed the walking tour group and they all looked frozen, so it was definitely the correct decision. We drove everywhere. We saw the ghetto, the Jewish quarter, old town. Such a beautiful city. I didn't realise it was such a religious city though. We were told there were about 100 churches in the city of Kraków alone. You wouldn't know that some of the buildings were churches. They were well hidden.

It was so cosy in our personal little golf buggy but unfortunately our tour came to an end and we were kicked off and we were back out into the cold.

We were dropped back in the town square and we saw a huge Kraków sign in front of the market hall. Of course this was a photo opportunity for us. There were two little brats running riot and the parents were nowhere to be seen. Learn to control your children! Crikey! After some snaps we had a little browse through the market, not that I could buy anything considering my luggage situation.

After some browsing and no buying we headed back to the hostel for a nap before an evening meal in a traditional polish restaurant. The girls really wanted some dumplings. Me on the other hand, wasn't feeling a traditional dish, so I went with some home made mushroom soup which was actually quite delicious. What's not to like about mushroom soup though.

After dinner we went to a nice classy Cocktail bar where they served good alcohol not that horrendous stuff from the hostel. We had one drink (which wasn't vodka) but I still couldn't really face the alcohol so we headed back as we had an early start on the Sunday.

It was an early wake up call for the 3 musketeers. We were up, dressed and fed waiting to be picked up for our trip to Auschwitz. We walked outside and there was a lovely, luxury, minibus waiting for us. The bus was pretty empty so we had a few pick ups on the way. The stop after us had about 10 Belgians waiting. 6 of which were big, fat, men. It was a tight squeeze to say the least.

As we made our way to Auschwitz, they played us a documentary about the history of Auschwitz. It was extremely interesting but so sad. During the film one of the men fell asleep and started snoring. It started quite quiet but got louder and louder until it was actually louder than the film itself. I turned around and just glared at him until one of his friends did something about it. It worked...they woke him up.

The journey took a couple of hours. On arrival we were introduced to our guide. She took us around Auschwitz first. It was actually how I imagined it to be at first. A prison camp, brick buildings with bunk beds in each room and not much room to move around. Then she took us to the basements of the buildings where there were suffocation rooms where she said they used to put people who misbehaved. The rooms were so tiny and she said they used to cram so many people in there, with little time holes in the wall for air, which obviously wasn't enough to for that many people. Some of the rooms had a small tunnel door which the prisoners had to crawl through as an entrance with only enough room to stand up inside. These cells had only one small hole for oxygen. It was jsut awful knowing that people had died in these cells.

Seeing that was bad enough but then we were taken to the gas chamber which was hidden underground. This was initially where Jewish people were brutally murdered. The Germans used a poison called cyanide which was triggered by temperatute rising above a certain level. They used to cram as many people into the chamber to trigger a certain temperature before they released the poison. Walking through there was just heartbreaking, I just couldn't picture how things actually were. How can you imagine the brutality of it?

During the walk around, one of the Belgian men that was on our trip was hanging out of one of the windows yelling at someone. It was extremely disrespectful and rude. I couldn't believe what he was doing. Absolute idiot.

Through the museum there were piles of glasses, shoes, luggage, ornaments. It really put into perspective how many people there actually were at the camp. It was awful, but what really had an effect on me was seeing the tons and tons of hair that had been cut from the women and children. A whole wall of hair. It was eye opening and just so sad.

I couldn't believe the sadness there. I didn't think it could get worse and then we were taken to Birkenau. This was where the train brought prisoners into the camp and where their fate awaited them. They were greeted by German soldiers and one of the soldiers would point to the left or the right. Right would mean they would go to work and left would mean they were sentenced to death. As the gas chambers were built underground the prisoners were completely unaware of what was going to happen to them. They had no idea that they were going to be squished into a room with over 1500 other people to be poisoned. They were then carted out by other prisoners to be burned so that the next group of prisoners could be taken to the chamber. I just can't believe how much thought and detail went into building this camp. The Germans had thought about everything. All over the camp were trenches, I asked the lady why, and she said 'if you notice, the trenches are mostly in front of the electric fences, this was because if there was flooding and prisoners had been digging an escape tunnel if they got to the trench and hit the water they would be electrocuted.'

The prisoner buildings on this camp were all made of wood and in each one were 3 layers of small beds (a slab of wood). Each bed would house 6-8 people. The guide said that when the prisoners came back to bed they would race there to make sure they would get the top bunk so that they didn't have to sleep on the freezing ground. I couldn't imagine how those prisoners lived and what they were going through.

Walking around Auschwitz and Birkenau was an experience but I can't put into words how I felt when I left there. A mixture of emotions. But most of all I couldn't believe the extent of what had happened there and how many people were actually murdered there. Over 1 million people. It's hard to believe.

It was quite silent on the bus journey to our next stop, apart from snory mcsnoroson. He was off again, I was less than impressed.

The next stop was the Salt mines. I was quite excited about seeing the mines, although I was slightly worried about how cramped it was going to be down there.

We arrived slightly early so we warmed ourselves up with a cup of tea and waited for our tour to start.

Dorota our little tour guide arrived. She reminded me of the Dorota the maid from Gossip Girl. She was hilarious. She took us down a few stairs. And by a few I mean 64 floors below ground. The stairs went round and round for what felt like ages. It was definitely a fitness test.

When we got to the first level (yes the first level was 64 floors below ground) we entered the first room. I'm not sure why I thought it'd be small and cramped. It was huge down there and everything was salt, the floor, the walls. there were even sculptures carved of salt rock. It was incredible. She even said we could taste the salt by licking the wall...but just imagine how many visitors they get a day and how many of those visitors taste the walls...that is a lot of germs. I passed on the whole wall licking thing. I believed it was salt.

Here's just an idea for you of how big it was down there, to get around the entire mine it would take 3 months. Yes 3 months to see everything. It was crazy down there. There were over 40 churches in the mine. One of them is huge and people actually get married down there. There was also a lake, a restaurant, shops, a spa, an event hall even a place to stay the night. It was like District 12 in the hunger games. If there was another world war, I know where I'd go. We only went 135 meters below ground and there were still 6 floors below us. By the end of our tour we had walked about 3km and Dorota said that we had walked about 1 percent of the mines. I couldn't get over the size of the place. I'm so glad we had a guide with us, I would not have liked to get lost down there. I'm not quite sure how you'd get found. I would definitely recommend anyone to visit there though.

After the long walk back along the tracks to the lift, and yes I was so grateful it was a lift and not back up all of those stairs, we were taken back to above ground and back to the bus.

It had been a long day so on our return to the hostel we had a little chill before heading out for our last evening meal. We were recommended a lovely Italian restaurant and I'm so glad we went there. The food was just perfect and the wine was even better.

The cocktails were so good at the bar we had gone to the previous evening we went again. I wanted to have a gin cocktail I'd tried previously but it wasn't on the menu. I asked the waiter if it could be made and the bar man knew the cocktail I was talking about. I was so happy...until it came. I've never had such a strong drink in my life. It definitely had a kick and wasn't quite the same as the one I was talking about. It took me some time to drink it but I did. It was the perfect place to end our trip.

We walked back to the hostel in the cold and I packed ready for our departure on the Monday. I must have unpacked and repacked my case a few times until I somehow miraculously got everything into one piece of hand luggage! YES! It did mean though that I was wearing about 6 layers on the flight! For once I could say with certainty that I was not going to be cold.

Monday arrived, we checked out and made our way to enjoy a nice breakfast before heading to the airport. The girls flight was later in the afternoon than mine but we all went there together, and thank god we did! We had gone through to departures and spent the rest of our money in duty free on gifts and some chocolate. I was ready to return home, but as I left duty free Elena said 'Jos, I don't want to scare you but your flight says cancelled!' My face dropped. I couldn't believe it. Flights cancelled to Bristol due to severe weather conditions. We googled it and the weather seemed fine at home. I had no idea what was going on. All easyJet had offered me was a refund or a change of flight and the next one wasn't until Wednesday. It was just a nightmare!

I called home and tried everything to get another flight that day. Unfortunately the only ones to the UK were to Manchester or Heathrow. Luckily my dad was in Manchester for a meeting! So if I flew there as it meant I would be able to get home that night...but the other downside was that the flight was £245!

My bank balance took a pretty big hit and the whole Kraków trip became a very expensive holiday. I booked the flight with a bloody rude Ryan Air employee, went back through customs and waited for my flight to be called. The only upside was my seat number was 1C so I knew I was right at the front of the plane with lots of leg room. Oh and the other upside, I didn't need to worry about my bloody luggage situation anymore.

It was just an awful day but I did eventually get home. My car was still in Bristol... but I was home.

Even though the trip ended with a nightmare, I still had a great time. It's a great place to visit and it is very cheap there...even though it didn't turn out to be for me! My main lesson from this trip: Don't trust Vodka! I think I've been put off for life!

Anyway, I'm looking forwar to my next adventure, (wherever that may be) and I'm praying it doesn't end like this one has.

Until next time you lovely lot.

J.L

XOXO