Lampiony

Tonight is our last night in Ustronie Morskie, and it has been a wonderful vacation.  It’s not exactly Ibiza, the Baltic is not exactly the Mediterranean but there’s a playground in front of the apartment where we are staying, the kids

Actually, I don't know what they're called in English

have made friends and it was actually warm enough the last couple of days to get in and swim, at least for a couple of seconds.

We played some air hockey, rode a train (not a real train, it’s just a truck with trailers dressed up  to look like a train, it goes on the road), built sand castles, saw a football game (women and children were free, I had to pay 5 zloty, which is about two bucks), toured a botanical garden, saw a “bread museum” which was really just a bakery dressed up for the tourists, learned a few words of Polish and watched the lampiony.  Isabel, especially, loved the lampiony.

The first one I saw, up in the sky, I thought it was somebody parasailing with a light.  Then we saw somebody trying to set one off from the beach, with great difficulty.  Then we started seeing them everywhere.  It’s like a little hot air balloon without a basket.  Not big enough for passengers, just about the size of a large helium balloon and flies about the same way but, because there’s a flame, it looks like a really brilliant star flying low through the night sky.

Tonight, on our way home from the restaurant (which was really more like a bar on the beach – the food was mediocre, the band was out of place playing 60s hits like Smoke on the Water loudly and with heavy Polish accents but the view was spectacular, the waitress was friendly and the price was actually better than reasonable) we saw dozens of them, all drifting in the same direction like boats floating with the current of a river and it was a good opportunity to explain to Sam about the relative distances of them, a passing airplane and the stars.

Isabel wasn’t listening to me.  She was just entranced.

Anyway, the kids are saying they’d like to come back here again next year, which isn’t actually my plan but it means they had a good vacation.  Which means I had a good vacation.