Happy Tuesday! I’m dedicating my second #treatyourselftuesday to my biggest treat of the summer: my trip to Europe. Click here to read Becky’s fabulous blog and learn more about why she believes in the power of treating yourself every week. Happy to be linking up!

We celebrated my last summer of “freedom” (aka no grad school) with a week and a half of vacationing and adventuring. The trip was incredible, and thanks in large part to my exhaustive (anal?) pre-research, I got to treat myself to some of the local cuisine safely and gluten freely.

1) Stop number one: Berlin! The most surprising thing about Berlin, for me, was just how much of an international city it is. People like to compare it to Brooklyn–the city is stuffed to the gills with hipsters from all over the world, cute coffee shops, clubs, hole-in-the-wall bars, and brunch places. But if you’re looking for German food, German culture, or even German people, Berlin isn’t the place. That said, it is a fascinating city and definitely one I hope to come back to.

Due to the influx of trendy ethnic food and English speakers, it was super easy to navigate around the food scene. We had fabulous tacos and margaritas at Santa Berlin, which clearly marks all of their gluten free options right on the menu. A great, affordable choice for a dinner out–just be prepared to wait a bit for a table.

Since we had so many sights to visit, Berlin was a great place to grab groceries and store them in our Airbnb kitchen.

We stopped by LPG Biomarkt (there are a bunch of locations around the city) for groceries and it had a GIANT gluten free section. Their bread and granola lasted me all the way to Prague.

2) From Berlin we hopped on a quick flight over to Krakow. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but Krakow was a truly lovely little city and a pleasure to explore. In addition to a finding a shocking number of gluten free eats, some pretty magical things happened in Krakow: J and I celebrated our second anniversary and I officially accepted a new job. Can’t really complain! Onto the eats…

We got to the city late and were pretty ravenous, so we followed our hostel’s recommendation to a salad bar called Chimera. While it wasn’t a salad bar in the traditional serve-yourself American sense, the food was fresh and plentiful… and they had gluten free cake on display! I knew good things were in store. The next afternoon, we had amazing potato latkes with mushroom sauce at Cafe Mlynek, a vegetarian joint in the Jewish district.

Our anniversary dinner at Pod Baranem, however, absolutely blew me away. I had done some research on this one and it exceeded all expectations. The gluten free menu was extensive, the service was absolutely impeccable, and the traditional Polish food was DELISH (and very reasonably priced)! I didn’t take many photos since we were busy celebrating but these pierogies were probably the best thing I ate in Europe.

Don’t skip Restaurajca Pod Baranem if you’re in Poland!

3) Our last stop in Europe was in Prague.

I was last in Prague 14 years ago, and it was such a treat to be back in such a magical city–especially since we got to visit my wonderful great aunt on her home turf.

Finding food in Prague was a little bit tricky–the city just hasn’t seemed to embrace the gluten free trend the way that Krakow and Berlin have. Regardless, I dragged the crew to Švejk Restaurant U Karla, where I treated myself to a traditional Czech goulash with dumplings and a Celia Lager (my new favorite gluten free beer).

Overall, I had a fabulous time in Europe–the trip was a treat in itself, filled with lots of gluten free treats!