Blogs from Warsaw, Masovia, Poland, Europe - page 7

There is no direct train from Vilnius, Lithuania to Warsaw, Poland. We had to change train twice and the second time involved a short bus ride to our third train along narrow dirt roads where our only notice that we had entered Poland was a small sign between farmer’s fields, not because we were being smuggled into the country, we were told by two multi-lingual Lithuanian truck drivers who we shared our first class compartment with, but because a section of the train track was being repaired. We arrived in Warsaw at dusk and, as we left the station, we were greeted by the illuminated Palace of Culture and Science, a building similar in design to the seven sisters in Moscow and known as Stalin’s gift to the people of Poland built in 1955. Our hotel ... read more

The weather forecast had been promising but it was clearly going to take a while and a breakthrough of the sun to warm the temperature back above the mid teens again. Today we planned a walk through the old and new towns, both reconstructed since the end of World War 2 and then a look at the Jewish ghetto quarter. We have been very impressed by the Warsaw metro for its cleanliness, efficiency and frequency of the trains. Compared to all the other metros we have ridden over the years Warsaw now ranks number one. The metro has just one line for the present, running north/south on the western side of the Wisla, although another line is being built east/west crossing the original line in the area of Centrum. We can imagine that for a city ... read more

Today was going to be one of the shorter drives we have had for some days and the route was fairly straight forward with most of the distance on the E372, which originates in L’viv in the Ukraine. We have been getting our own breakfast for the last couple of weeks so to have breakfast included with the room rate was a bit of a change and a bonus although we joked between each other as we went downstairs to the breakfast room that there would probably just be sausage, cheese and hard bread on offer. How wrong we were and we tucked into cereal and fruit and ordered up scrambled eggs when they were offered. The only extra we didn’t have was, toast.Even the coffee was a change to the granulated Nescafe we have lived ... read more

Before I arrived in Warsaw, there was one fact that everyone who knows Warsaw (guide books, people I met on the train, and the helpful lady in Tourist Information) was very keen to tell me. This is that Warsaw's Old Town isn't really old at all, but was rebuilt as an identical copy of the Old Town after the original was razed during WWII. I was looking forward to seeing if I could tell, but we could hardly see Warsaw for snow, which was thick everywhere and still coming down unrelentingly. Unable to strughle through it very far with our rucksacks, we instead took one of those red bus tours that every tourist place has. Even that was a struggle - the roads were so bad that the commentary kept getting ahead of the bus, so ... read more

Po prawie roku odpalam ponownie bloga. Nie, żeby podróże podejmowane w międzyczasie nie załugiwały na opis, ale jakoś nie było nastroju. No i będzie trochę inaczej, bo teraz to blog o podróżach z małąEM. MałaEM odmówiła jedzenia z butli i tym sposobem załapała się na wyjazd, w którym jej udział absolutnie nie był planowany, co więcej - był wykluczony, zanim się jeszcze urodziła. Co innego weekend w Kopenhadze - szaleńczo bebisoprzyjaznej i chłodnej. Tu jednak mieliśmy jechać we dwoje z Q., pić winko, imprezować do rana i kontrolnie dzwonić do dziadków z pytaniem, jak miewa się bebis, tygodniowy pobyt kończąc szampańskim weselem znajomych. Okazało się jednak, że na cito trzeba organizować dla niej paszport, żebrać u pani w Locie, żeby udało się ją dopisać do mojego biletu, organizować pomoc M., która leci z nami w roli ... read more