Warsaw in the Rain and Shine

One of the biggest perks of Paul's current job is that it sends him on interesting conferences around Europe. This past week, Paul was on a conference in Warsaw, which left me sadly alone during the workweek. Happily, however, I got to join him for a fun weekend to celebrate my birthday a few days early. I flew in late Friday and was picked up by a taxi then dropped at a gorgeous hotel. We got some rest and were up bright and early to explore. First, we went to Prozna Street, which is the only former Warsaw ghetto tenement building that still remains. It has pictures of people alive in that time in the windows.

Next, as it was pouring rain, we walked many blocks to get to the Warsaw Rising Museum. The line was nearly an hour long, but what else were we going to do? In this museum, you learn about The Rising, when Polish Home Army fought against the Germans who had occupied their country for five years. It was a strong, organized effort starting August 1, 1944 and lasted for 63 days with little outside support. The allies dropped supplies, but it wasn't enough and the effort sadly failed. Warsaw was systematically reduced to ruins after they surrendered (Germany breaking the agreements they had made). If you don't know about The Warsaw Rising, I highly suggest you learn about it! Inside the museum there is so much information, you can't possibly get through it all. I don't have pictures from inside, but I did get one of the sign on the outside, and of Paul waiting in the rain.

Next, we attempted to locate a ghetto memorial, which had a vague location. Failing to do so, we found a beautiful park filled with interested monuments and memorials.

Next we made our way to the Old Town, and it had finally stopped raining. But we were cold and wet so we found a place to eat dinner and warm up. What a beautiful place!

The walk home was as beautiful in the dark as it was in the night. Above is one of the cobbled streets which the native women walk on in heels. Below is the president's residence at night - all lit up and beautiful.

This morning (Sunday) we slept in a bit, and woke up to bright sunshine and blue skies. Hooray! We decided on a low key, amble through the main pedestrian street and back to the Old Town to get a few more pictures. My camera battery was flashing the whole weekend because I forgot to bring my charger, so my pictures are limited.

 Above was a 3D map of Old Town - pretty cool! I was trying out my diorama mode on my camera.

We loved the big, wide pedestrian walks, the brightly colored buildings, the different level roofs, and all the interesting designs. This was a big change from some of the buildings we saw the day before that were more soviet era, big cement blocks. 

A famous mermaid statue... the above picture using my tilted screen to take a picture from the ground, and picture below taken from more of a distance using my larger zoom lens. There were tons of birds sitting on her sword, which I was trying to catch, but as I wasn't sure how long the battery would last I decided to just take a quick shot and not waste time waiting.

Warsaw has quite a few entertainers - music players such as this man below included. It adds to the festivity as you walk around, hearing all different types of songs being played on all types of instruments.

As we were walking back from Old Town to a pub near our hotel, I stopped to get one more picture of the President's Residence in the daytime and to photograph this cool looking lion. Imagine our surprise when...

...a guard ceremony started! There was lots of heel clicking, yelling, gun handling, marching, and more gun handling. It was so interesting even though we had no idea what has happening and we were standing right in the front because we were there when it started.

There are so many beautiful structures in Poland, many of which were built after WW2 because so much was destroyed during the war. The picture below shows the university gates, behind which Paul worked at all work for his conference.

This is our second time in Poland, the first time being Krakow last year. I think that Poland is an underutilized tourist destination. It is inexpensive and easy to enjoy amazing food and 5 star hotels at a budget price. The people are all extremely friendly and helpful and speak fluent English in all the restaurants/bars/museums that we have visited. It is full of history, much of which is ignored, or at least given a back seat, to history in the rest of Europe. If you are planning a trip to Europe and looking at all the regular, tired destinations: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, etc., why not consider Poland as well? With cheap internal flights and a whole world to discover, we are sure to go back to Paul's grandfather's land again and again (also because it's the only place in the world where they can pronounce our last name!).