I’m a little late in blogging about it, but Valerie & I had a great time on our pilgrimage to Poland to buy pottery. We had beautiful weather and enjoyed the time driving across the Czech Republic. I’m not sure we enjoyed the pottery shopping as much as we expected, but we do enjoy having the pottery at our house. Valerie hosted a “Book Club” last night and was able to use her new stuff for the party. She loved it!!

It was not a leisurely shopping experience at all. Our friends in Prague that we stayed with the night before gave us a briefing on how to plan our day buying pottery. The fact that we needed a plan was my first clue that this wasn’t going to be easy.
Here’s a timeline of our day:

0530 REVILLE SOUNDS and we awake and prepare for the mission

0600 TRANSPORT TO BATTLEGROUNDS – Make the 3 hour drive from Prague to Boleslawiec, Poland (It was a beautiful drive through rolling hills and winding roads. It is amazing to notice the contrasts between Hungary, Czech & Poland. The houses and villages look very different)

0900 – RECONAISSANCE – After arriving, we had a plan of the key targets in the town. It was important to visit each of them to gather intelligence about what types of treasures that the held. There were 20 or so small to medium size shops in about 3 or 4 locations throughout the town. Each shop has some of the same patterns and collections and some different. We needed to find the patterns that we needed, in the right quantity and for the cheapest price. This was not a casual window shopping experience. In each store, Valerie’s job was to look for the patterns that we need for us while I looked for the patterns that our friends and family asked us to pick up. We would blaze through the store and then I would write down what we found as far as patterns, quantity and prices. It was a grueling 3 ½ hours.

1230 – LUNCH and BATTLE PLANNING – We went to local restaurant where we ate traditional Polish soup and Polish perogis (potatoes & meat stuffed in a pasta type of shell). During the meal, we reviewed our notes and planned which shops had what we needed for the best prices. We then had a strategy for the afternoon

1330 – ATTACK!!! – We were off to make the purchases. We first had to revisit a few of the stores that we visited first thing in the morning because we had learned some things along the way and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t miss something. Thankfully, one of the stores had much cheaper prices than all the others and a pretty good selection. We went there next and bought as much as we could. After that, we went to a few other places and filled in the gaps. The funny thing is that we went back to the cheapest place 4 times during the afternoon to get things that we forgot or that we decided to buy later. I was seeing spots (most of the pottery is a collection of circles) by mid-afternoon and we weren’t sure we were going to make it.

1630 – TARGET ACQUIRED – MISSION ACCOMPLISHED – After 3 hours of attacking, we finally had made most of the purchases and reached the end of our budget. We were exhausted and yet Valerie was very happy with what we were able to get.

1700 – TRANSPORT BACK TO BASE – we drove back to Prague (assisted by much caffeine) and debriefed about our day. Valerie said, “I’m never going back there again!” While she is glad to have the pottery, she didn’t enjoy the experience because it was so intense and stressful.

2000 – ARRIVAL BACK AT BASE

2100 – LIGHTS OUT – We were exhausted and couldn’t get to sleep fast enough!!!

Overall, it was a great weekend. We enjoyed spending time together more than shopping for pottery, though!!!