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I am in Poland. I am here in search of Pierogi. This is one of my favorite Polish foods. OK, I am not actually in Poland JUST for Pierogi. I was near the border, had never ridden a motorcycle here, so felt it was a good idea to cross the border. And find Pierogi. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierogi
I was unsuccessful at lunch, since I tried too late and all the restaurants that I looked at were closed for lunch and it was too early for dinner. I settled for Pistacio Ice Cream.
Later I tried to find a place to stay. That was interesting.
There are a ton of ways of finding places to stay. Maybe the best is to stop in at a hotel and bargain them down. This works better if you are either there VERY late, or very early. A few apps on the phones are pretty useful. Booking.com is the one I use the most for hotels. Air BnB is awesome for less traditional (or maybe more traditional) accomodations. Both have their merits.
I was leary of Air BnB until SAN had me try them. The first one we tried was a dissaster, it was nothing like the description and although clean, was even below my standards. SAN cancelled that one. I tried Booking.com, and that was a disaster, giving us a single bed. I cancelled that one. That night we each stayed in different parts of town. After that, Air BnB was awesome. Booking.com is difficult if you want two bedrooms. Or if you want the cheapest available for one person. It is definitely geared towards two people and one bed. Air BnB is geared towards people that want a great place for an incredible price. An Air BnB might be 5 miles outside of the nearest city, but it might be an apartment or even a whole house. Or a Ski Chalet with an awesome view. It will be a fraction of the price of the cheapest clean two bed hotel in town. Value for your dollar goes to Air BnB.
The tricky part with Air BnB is the host. They are all different. As are the places. That makes them interesting too.
However.... Today went poorly.
I was still looking for a plate of Pierogi. I found a bunch of places in all directions for me to stay. I trimmed them down to two places an hour away, in the direction I was headed and two a half hour away a little off the planned path. The first two places were very cheap and looked to be on farms, and just a step above camping. Those sometimes turn out to be palaces in awesome places. But not always. But these two were nowhere near restaurants, and it did not look like any were on my way there. The other two were in a touristy town with lots of restaurants. I queried all of them as to wether there was safe parking for the bike. I really was only worried about the ones in the city, but asked them all just in case.
The first one (only one) that returned my query quick enough about parking was in the tourist town. He assured me that although his driveway was private and might be good enough, there were two places 50 meters away that had 24 hours security.
It took a while to find it due to one way roads. Until I remembered I was on a motorcycle. I was special. If a car was coming, I could use the sidewalk. No one way road rules for me.
When I asked the host about places I could eat that had traditional food (Pierogi) he gave me a list that started with Burgers, included Indian food, chinese, and just about everything except Polish food. Should have been a sign right there.
I moved my stuff into a nice little apartment near pretty much everything. Then, with help from the host, I tried finding this mythical safe parking. This city did not look safe from petty theft, or bike theft. The graffiti was my first sign. The second was that there were NO motorcycles parked anywhere on the streets. There was no place withing walking distance that was what I would consider safe. One of the places the host recommended did not accept motorcycles, the other was not a 24 hour parking lot. I cancelled the reservation, and got my money back. All $35 of it.
The host is not really at fault here, there was no real reason for him to know the secure parking did not take motorcycles. It is even possible that the old man who was manning the lot didn't know the rules and just defaulted to NO.
Before cancelling my Air BnB I tried finding a hotel. There was one for only $25 more around the block, but their "parking" was under construction.
After spending far too much time looking for parking, and a place to stay, I was tired and just wanted to get the heck out of Dodge. I found a place with Booking.com a 4 mile drive from town. Looked at it on Google Earth and saw that it was safe. It was $70 with breakfast and it had a restaurant. Pierogi here I come.
Well, I got there, and the woman did not speak English. I got her to understand I wanted the restaurant. She said there was not a restaurant!!! Some more muddled hand waiving and pantomiming and she made it clear I could get food. I just had to ask. Of course, there were no choices as far as I could tell. Just Polish Soup and Pierogi. I danced with glee. Oh, and Piwo (Beer).
Mana from heaven. I think she gave me extra just for my excitement. There were potato, meat and mushroom ones.
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Overall my experience with both Air BnB has been positive, but nothing is perfect. They are just tools.
