Poland: Warsaw

This past weekend we decided to do a whirlwind trip to Poland. We flew out after work on Friday night and came home early Monday morning. We spent Saturday exploring Warsaw and then got up at 4am on Sunday to catch a train to Krakow followed by a tour van to Auschwitz for the day. Then we explored Krakow for a few hours in the evening before returning to Warsaw. We barely got any sleep but it was worth it - Poland was much better than I had expected it to be.

Okay so it was foggy and cold - welcome to Europe in the fall and winter. The sun also set at 3:25 in Warsaw. This is partly because it's so far north and partly because it's so far east in the central European time zone. Those two facts combine to make it quite dark in the afternoons and evenings (however being far east in the time zone also means the sun rises earlier, which isn't so bad in the winter).

We started off the day around 11am by walking to the old town area. We would have started the day earlier but our beds in our hotel were way too comfortable for us to wake up early. One of the really nice things about Warsaw was that you could stay in a 5-star hotel for about $80/night. Hotels were so cheap we could hardly believe the prices were real.

Here are some pictures of the Old Town. The word "Old" is somewhat misleading because of course it was all destroyed in WWII and was rebuilt afterwards. But it *looks* like it's hundreds of years old in parts. In fact, the reconstruction was so good that the Warsaw old town was named a UNESCO world heritage site as "an outstanding example of a near-total reconstruction of a span of history covering the 13th to the 20th century."



Just some guy dressed like a bunny in a field! Definitely some characters in Warsaw. We also saw a guy dressed like a panda on rollerblades.



A neat restuarant sign in the main square, followed by some pictures of the main square. It had an ice skating rink in the middle of it and was completely surrounded by tall, narrow buildings of different colors which I really liked.



Just some more pictures we took while wandering around the old and new towns (New Town was, as its name implies, originally built shortly after old town, but both had to be rebuilt after WWII).



Some of Warsaw's old defensive walls.



I would like to take a moment here to say that there are a TON of things to see and do in Warsaw. We didn't have time to do any of them, unfortunately. We merely walked around the city for one day and did some shopping. This picture below shows some of the engravings on the street that depict the border of the Jewish ghetto. The Warsaw Jewish ghetto was the largest of all the Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. Feel free to read more about it at this wiki site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto. I'd love to go back and see the ghetto memorial and visit the Museum of the History of the Polish Jews. Not to mention some more of the many museums in Warsaw like the Warsaw Uprising Museum and the Frederic Chopin Museum. So much history, so little time. This weekend gave us just a taste of what Poland has to offer.



After we wandered around the old and new towns, we visited the little Christmas market. It had a lot of different things from what we usually see at German Christmas markets, which was nice. Below are some pictures of the fruit stand where I bought the best dried mango ever.



Jan Kiliński Monument, in the middle of the Christmas market. He was a heroic cobbler and leader of the people during the Kościuszko Uprising in the 18th century.



The blacksmith's stall. We got to watch him work, which was neat.



Some more stalls at the market:



We found some hot mead to warm ourselves up with. It was nice to have mead instead of Glühwein.



Some creation of kielbasa, onions, pickles, and bacon on bread that we had for lunch. It was good, but not amazing. Definitely worth a try.



Some more pictures from wandering around Warsaw (no longer in the old or new town). The Christmas decorations were really beautiful but I think they have to be when you live in such a dark and foggy place. It helps keep your spirits up.



The Palace of Science and Culture. Just a neat building. This was a gift from the Soviet Union to the people of Poland in the 1950's. Almost-identical buildings can be seen in Moscow today.



Some pictures of the lights on the streets. Every street had different holiday decorations. We didn't get any good pictures, unfortunately.



We saw the Warsaw Philharmonic on Saturday evening. You're not allowed to take pictures while the orchestra is on stage so this is as good as it gets. The conductor was 91 years old and had composed the first piece they played. It was a very enjoyable evening.



The restaurant we ate dinner at after the Philharmonic. It's not far from the Philharmonic, maybe a 5-minute walk, and was right around the corner from our hotel. The food here was excellent so I'm posting the restaurant's name here so I can remember what it was called if we ever go back!