"Aquapark Tatralandia Holiday Resort is the biggest aqua-park in Slovakia and one of the biggest in Central Europe. It is located 4 km south-west from town Liptovský Mikuláš in Ráztoky, on the north bank of dam Liptovská Mara. The source of the thermal water is a mineral spring coming from a 2500m deep bore with temperature of 60.7 °C. There are 9 thermal pools, 6 of them are open all year-round; while 2 of them are covered, with water temperature around 38 °C. Located in the Tatra Mountains"
And a Youtube video if you're super-curious
She asked if I would want to go with them all. If you know me at all you know I don't adjust well, and sudden plan changes make me anxious (stupid, I know), so I was a little nervous, but of course I said yes, I was grateful that they were willing to take me along with them in the first place.
Like I said in the last post, we weren't able to go there Friday because my bags didn't come until later, so Saturday we left at six in the morning. Now, I had woken up at about 4 am - since I hadn't adjusted to the time and in my mind it was time to get up - and I went to go eat breakfast or lunch or whatever meal my body thought it was time to eat, and my throat started to hurt. Great, I was getting sick. So I knew I was going to be suffering later, but I didn't want to waste the opportunity to see everyone, so I ignored it.
It took us about three ish hours to get there. Everyone else was already there, we stayed in this place:
Not too shabby. It was 55 Zl a night (1 zl = about 3 dollars), including a home-cooked dinner and breakfast, I mean like scrambled eggs, hams, cheeses, bread, none of this five-day-old pastry and sour coffee continental breakfast nonsense. We got there, there were hugs, "Hi (insert cousin name here)!," "nice to meet you (insert cousin's boy/girlfriend name here)," everyone was hurriedly packing for Tatralandia, I sort of stood in a corner not sure of what to do among the chaos. But we finally got all our stuff together, threw it in the cars, and drove to Slovakia.
I had taken my passport, expecting at least some sort of boarder control, but there was nothing, I don't even remember seeing a sign. I'm not sure exactly when we crossed, but all of the sudden the people on the radio were speaking what sounded just like Polish, but I couldn't understand it. I imagine it sounded to me just like Polish sounds to my friends when they come over to my house.
The drive through the Tatra Mountains was just gorgeous. I had brought a Sudoku book to keep me occupied during the drive, but I just stared out the window the whole time and took blurry pictures. A couple of them turned out semi-okay, none of them do it justice though:
On the way there there we saw some people on bikes, which I think would be the perfect way to see this place, it all passed too fast in a car. From Zakopane through north Slovakia is just...gah, old dream resurfaced = bike through Europe.
It took us a couple of hours of driving to get to Tatralandia. It was great, it reminded me of Wild Waves. At first I was kind of dead-ish, my nose at this point had started to run a little, and I was going on no more than 10 hours of sleep total in the previous three nights. Being in a crowded place in questionable water probably didn't help much. But once I went down some of the steeper slides and the adrenalin kicked in I felt a little better. Overall though I'm glad I went.
Near the end of the day we finally realized that there was a lot to do on the other side of Tatralandia (on one side were all the slides, on the other there was some volleyball, trampolines, other random stuff). There was this mini-soccer "field," which had roughly and inch of water at the bottom, and was more a slip-and-slide than a real soccer game, people were falling all over the place.
But of course to my cousins this may as well have been the Euro Cup (I don't think I can over-emphasize their love for soccer). We all played a bit, I accidentally kicked my cousin in the face (There's one way to break the ice after not seeing someone in five years) then they had some sort of a tournament where three of them played like their lives depended on it (I'm surprised no one broke anything) and actually won! So that dominated the conversation for the rest of the night.
We drove back "home," tired, and decided to fire up the grill and hang out. At that point my nose was really runny, I was absolutely dead, but instead of sleeping like I probably should have I decided to go with them. There was meat, there was beer. While we were in Tatralandia my cousin actually got engaged, so we had something to celebrate (I say this as if Poles actually need a reason for alcohol, psh).
I think this was my favorite part. I can't really describe it, it was just really nice to be able to talk to everyone I hadn't seen in so long. I guess it was similar to hanging out around a fire while camping: it's cozy, the conversation runs smoother. As a family they're all really close, and I don't get that much since we live so far away. It was also pretty rare for them to all be together: one of my cousins lives in England, one in Krakow two hours away, the others all work, and my youngest cousin goes to school, so I was incredibly lucky to have come when I did.There was lots of good conversation, lots of laughing. We stayed out until one in the morning, then went to talk a little more in one of our rooms.
Great day, but at this point I was going through rolls of toilet paper blowing my nose and my throat hurt pretty bad. The next day we were supposed to go to Zakopane. Oh, okay, cool, I thought, we're just going to sort of walk around the touristy center, chill out, I can handle that.
Lies, oh so many lies. That'll get it's own post though.
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