Hi Friends,

Today marks the day when we finally made it to Poland for our 7 Day trip. The planning has been in the works for about three months and even though it was a very stressful first day I am hoping it will be better one tomorrow.

The whole point of the trip was for my little rascals to meet their great grandmothers, as we cannot go at the moment for a long trip to Belarus in order to make them passports. But I am getting ahead of myself. I have not been to Belarus for about 5 years, the reason ? Well, because I have a dual citizenship, my little rascals are considered to be Belarusian and will not be issued with a Belarusian visa as Irish citizens. Instead they will be given a certificate of return and will not be able to leave Belarus until they get passports there. This used to take up to 3 months, but recently was reduced to 2-3 weeks. So we are planning to go there may be next summer but not yet.

As my grandmothers are getting old, we have decided to go to the nearest EU country and meet them in Poland. Everything was going great, one of my grandmothers got her passport and then applied for a visa as part of a group to increase her cultural scope. Well the visa office refused her visa as she was apparently too old to have a cultural interest and was too old to be part of that group. She is 86 years old. So she is applying for another visa, this time normal one and we will make our way yet again to Poland this summer.

But for now we are in Poland to see my uncle and his family and to enjoy Warsaw.

So today was a very hectic day. We got up early in the morning to find Matthew running a high temperature. The plan was to leave by 8.45 am, but we were worried about Matthew as this was the first time he ever looked so helpless. So we decided to wait till nine o’clock and see if our GP would see him. Our GP could not as he was attending a funeral, so we contacted my hubby’s family doctor who thankfully saw us at half nine. Then we rushed to pharmacy to fill out prescription and it took them 30 minutes to do that. I rushed out of pharmacy and we drove like lunatics to Shannon airport. There, we had a quick meal, fed and changed Matthew and rushed straight on the plane which was already boarding.

On the plane, the flight itself was very smooth and Matthew didn’t seem to mind the lift off the landing, however he did scream the plane down as was too tired and is not used to sleep in our arms.

In the airport we picked up the rental car and it instead of vw Passat we got Nissan

A lovely substitute:) I am the main driver and had to drive it to our first hotel which turned out to be a farmhouse. The drive initially was very stressful… it is a very big car and people drive on the right side of the road here, while I am used to the left side. The gear stick is also awkward to change as I have to do it with my right hand, after a bit of melt down I kept saying to myself right side and we made it safely to farmhouse.

The house is called Willa osa and has a lovely guest area and a mini kitchen and even bathroom with a washing machine ( outside of the room ). Downstairs smells of cigarettes, but upstairs is nice and aired. The room is tidy and spacious and has 3 beds, 2arm chairs, a table with chairs, flat screen tv and a wardrobe. The host is a lovely man, but doesn’t speak English only a bit of Russian, so we managed to get directions for a grocery shop and communicate when we want to have breakfast.

The grocery shop was tiny and barely fit 4 of us in it, but we managed to buy bread, butter, ham, drinks and snacks to have a quick meal before bedtime. Matthew was not feeling well so screamed the house down for about an hour, would not eat his dinner and we barely managed to give him his medicine.

As I am writing this, we are all in our separate beds, with Alexei refusing to sleep, Matthew waking up on and off and screaming and my hubby and I on our phones keeping quiet and doing our own thing. Note to self, never ever book a hotel room with no separation for boys and us… They need their space and we need to be able to chat without waking one of them up.

Hope you all have a lovely day!