This past weekend was Tom and Anna's Polish wedding, so on Friday after work the nine of us all met up at Stansted airport ready for our flight over to Krakow. After a bite to eat and a beer at The Windmill in the departure's lounge, we were then delayed for over an hour on an already fairly late flight due to some airport strike in Italy apparently. Eventually we boarded the plane and arrived into Krakow just before 1am where we picked up our rental cars for the weekend. We had booked into Burowianka for the Friday night which was fairly close to the airport and handy for the morning to get going.

The accommodation was great - a really nice B&B villa which resembled some sort of alpine loge, it's just a pity we were in and out so quickly and didn't really get to appreciate it fully. After a fairly early breakfast on Saturday morning, we packed up and headed out towards Baranow Sandomierski, a small town in southern Poland with about 1,440 inhabitants only. The drive there was rather easy, except around the Tarnow interchange where we landed up the freeway that didn't exist and is still being built. Great! So after a ridiculous chat with a truck driver who spoke zero English, we managed to turn around and get ourselves back on the freeway and continue onto Baranow Sandomierski.

Once at the Baranow Sandomierski Castle we met up with the other car which had already arrived ahead of us, as well as Tom and some of the wedding guests. Unfortunately for Tom he'd landed up with an awful cold, so certainly wasn't feeling fantastic. After chilling out and have a coffee or two, Uns and myself decided to head for a walk around the castle and the ground while some of the offers opted for a nap instead.

Once back from the walk and showered we all met downstairs and hopped in the bus which took us into the village to the Church of St. John the Baptist for the ceremony. Since they were officially married, it was just a blessing rather than a wedding - to get technical with details. However, with it all being in Polish, I'm not exactly certain, just a bit of a guess. Then after the ceremony and a couple of photos outside, we all hopped back on the bus and made our way back to the castle.

After a welcoming song by the band in the castle's courtyard, we all headed upstairs and sat down for our first couple of courses and some wine, and then followed that up with coffee and cake next door - which would've been enough food at any other wedding, but we were only just getting started. Once we were done with the desserts, we all headed downstairs into the underground castle vaults where we stayed the rest of the night. After a few shots of vodka ("Na zdrowie!"), our second meal arrived, which was basically another three course meal.

In between servings, the band would play and everyone would head onto the dance floor until they stopped, at which point we'd eat and drink until they started up again. This crazy cycle of eating, drinking then dancing pretty much carried on until early hours of the morning when we all called it a night. The advantage of managing to get through all 14 courses meant I didn't actually feel all that rough on Sunday morning, despite drinking neat vodka with a red wine chaser :)

On Sunday morning we had a bit of a sleep in and then Uns and I decided to take a walk into the village, close to where we were on the Saturday afternoon. It was terribly quiet around the main square, guessing absolutely nothing opens on a Sunday there. After a bit of a walk around and sit in the sun, we headed back to the castle in time for lunch down in the vaults again.

Sunday landed up almost a repeat of Saturday afternoon but without the band. Once again there was food, vodka and plenty of shouts of 'na zdrowie'. We landed up staying down there most of the afternoon and into the evening, even after everyone else had left and gone to bed. By the end it was just me, Uns, Will, Claire and Jamie so we figured we'd head back to the hotel, play a couple of games of pool then call it a night.

Yesterday morning we were all up fairly early, and after a quick breakfast we were on the road heading in the direction of Krakow and towards Auschwitz which we'd decided to visit before our evening flight home.