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Published: September 18th 2007
Stadium with market around
This site is being considered to be renovated for the euro 2012 football when poland and ukraine host it.We had planned to get up early, but due to the lack of glass recycling at seven, we failed to rise before half ten. We went to MarcPol (marco polo) to buy food for a picnic and then went in search of a bus that could take us to the other side of the water.
We arrived at the stadium market in the Prague district around noon which was evidently too late. We weren't however too late to get a feel for the place. It was the biggest stadium in Poland and held 70,000 but at important games it held 100,000. It is currently only used for this market (supposedly the biggest in Europe) but the Polish government wants to turn it back into a stadium again. The market was big, but had lots of similar stalls. We'd read that it was the biggest seller of black market items which we witnessed ourselves. Weaponry was the most interesting, followed by pirated aftershaves, DVD’s etc.
From the market we headed towards a Lazienki park which has the beautiful palace on the water. This was the summer residence of the last king of Poland. We decided to walk along the river
to the park; however we saw more of the dual carriage way than we did the water. On the way we saw a rather impressive monument that the guidebook didn't comment on, so we're not entirely sure what it was for.
At the park the palace was under a bit of construction but the sun was out so all was not ruined. We sat and ate our picnic at the bank of the lake; however Rob got us both paranoid that we weren't supposed to be eating in the park. When it got too cold too sit any longer, we finished our walk around the lake.
In the grounds of the Polish armed forces museum there were a number of military vehicles. There were light, medium and heavy tanks from the 1920s polish army up to modern 1970+ tanks. There were also a variety of training aircraft and bombers as well as amphibious vehicles. The more interesting items where the massive guns mounted on battleships and the ammunition from a large train mounted artillery gun only used once, this was in a siege in the Crimea, and the shell weighed several tons and around a meter long. In
this mass vehicle yard there were also rocket and missile launching vehicles as well of a large range of artillery made all over the globe.
We got most of the way back to the hostel and then we realised that we had no information about getting to Krakow so turned back to the station. We faced an intimidating ticketed waiting scheme to buy tickets for the journey which we eventually did for twenty pounds for the both of us.
After Rob rang his mum for a bit, we headed out in search of a Mexican that we'd read about. When we got to it we found that it was full of people in suits and it was way too expensive. The Warsaw Tortilla Factory was just a bit further down the road and much nicer. We had a nice meal after a small disagreement about the price of a bottle of wine. Towards the end of the meal a fantastically terrible middle aged band began to play. We have been starved of any type of music, so this was just great. Utter cheese and very cringe worthy.
At the hostel we tried to get spirits at the
bar, but they had none. All wasn't lost though; we bought some coke and had our Lithuanian mead as a nightcap. I fell asleep at this point in the common room whilst Rob wrote some diary additions. I woke up only to move to bed, whilst somewhere between the common room and the dorm room, Rob managed to lose the stylus. Isn't it funny that if I'd have lost it he would have been angry, but because he lost it it's ok because it was inevitable. Men.
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Nina
non-member comment
Yes my dear too true MEN! indeed but some are worse than others be resasured by that at least. Mexicans YUM YUM! remember our mexican? xXx