Rzeszow

 

Rzeszow

Our next stop was Rzeszow (pronounced ZHE-shov) in southern Poland.  It’s a medieval town, and much like Krakow has a wonderful mix of old and new.  We settled into another beautiful lodging and then prepared for our next day.

The highlight was an underground tour of Rzeszow featuring the preserved cellars of merchant families from the medieval town.  

Like many of our experiences in Europe, the tour was very kid friendly with activities including designing a coat of arms, and fixing a bell tower, and riding a pretend motorcycle.  

They also told many of the legends of the city, including an origin story involving the Prince and a travelling flutist rescuing the Princess and townspeople from a giant toad who had turned them all into little toads.  They didn’t kill it or anything.  The flutist just played a song and it fell asleep.  I wish putting my kids to sleep was that easy.  There’s a statue of a toad in the town well honoring the legend.  The tour also showcased many of Rzeszow’s merchant goods over the years, including its famous gold.  They are still unsure if the gold was fool’s gold or real gold of exceptionally low purity and quality.  But Rzeszow became famous for crafting its lousy gold products in such a way that they appeared to be high quality and fooled many an unsuspecting buyer.  

The guide was pretty excited about the town’s long history of getting rich by ripping people off.  Which seemed a little weird to me.  But in retrospect modern American companies do pretty much the exact same thing today.

We strolled along Poland’s old street the Ulica 3 Maja and treated the kids to some Polish ice cream (Lody) which is a lot like gelato.  

The town square has the aforementioned well, several restaurants, and a piano that anyone can play.  Milo entertained everyone.

Then we had a brief car ride out to Lancut (pronounced like WINE-suit) which is a palace outside of town that was the home of one of the town’s prominent noble families.  

It’s a beautiful location.  While there we saw two different brides taking pictures in their wedding gowns, and overheard a production crew coordinating to shoot a movie there.  The brides looked very nice.  But they weren't the best looking girl at Lancut that day.  

We walked through the lovely gardens and had a delicious Polish waffle (Goffre).  

And also more ice cream.

That evening after a delicious homecooked meal we want back into Rzeszow’s lively central square and had beer and cocktails outside.  And somehow even more more ice cream.

The best part of our visit to Poland was spending so much time with our hosts who were so gracious and generous.  In addition to spending so much time with us, and driving us everywhere, and planning our days they also invited us into their home and cooked us homemade Polish food.  

One of my favorite memories will be sitting outside with them drinking Takamaka (which is a type of rum) and watching our kids play in their yard on a beautiful evening at the end of summer.  I hope I remember how that night feels forever.  

When I was young my parents would get Christmas cards from people who lived in Europe.  The cards were in a different language and it always seemed so exciting to me.  I would watch television shows where kids would have pen pals, and teenagers would go visit their cousins who lived in Japan.  I always dreamed that my life might be something like that.  That I’d have a pen pal and friends across the world, and I’d get to try authentic foods and see amazing sights.  And you get older and you realize pen pals never really write, and most of your friends move to Tacoma instead of Copenhagen, and that travel is a lot more inaccessible than you had thought when you were a kid.  You adopt different dreams; dreams that are more reasonable; dreams that are closer to home.

And every once and a while the dreams you had when you were a little kid finally come true. 

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