Written by Kim
We arrived in Warsaw after a bit of a delayed flight around 1 pm. I slept a few hours on the plane but Alex didn’t sleep too much. Adam picked us up and brought us to his house about 30 minutes from the airport. Adam and his wife, Dominika, moved into their newly built house about 3 months ago. Dominika is a vet and has a clinic attached to their previous home next door. Adam has veterinary training too so they love animals. We were greeted by their 5 Portuguese Podengo dogs and 2 cats. After a short rest we went to a beautiful park to take the dogs for a walk
After our walk Dominika had some pets to see at the clinic so Adam took us to a local Italian restaurant for dinner. Food was excellent (sorry no pics I was tired and hungry). Then we saw the gardens and greenhouse and played with the pups a little before crashing
Day 2 in Warsaw we had some breakfast before heading out to see Warsaw.
We decided to tour Old Town first using Voice Map app. Voice map is great we discovered it in Madrid. It’s a self guided narrated tour that uses your phone’s GPS to track where you are and conduct the tour. It’s excellent tells you which direction to walk, corrects you if you go in the wrong direction and allows you to pause and resume if you want to stop. Creators of tours post content on the app that you buy for a nominal fee. Our tour of Old Town was $6 and it was about 2 hours long
Warsaw is very rich in history (much very sad and terrible). I’m sure I won’t get it all right but will share some highlights we learned. Warsaw was the capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795 when it was split between Russia, Austria/Germany and Prussia.
In September 1939, the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union marked the beginning of World War II, which resulted in the Holocaust and millions of Polish casualties. The entire city was destroyed
In 5 years Warsaw was rebuilt by citizens. Using authentic materials and replicated original city but added modern plumbing,etc. By 1953 the city was rebuilt including the original walls and gate, called Barbacan, which couldn’t protect the city from cannon fire.
The marketplace is in the center of town (similar to most European cities). The facades of the buildings are amazing. Many are covered in Sgraffito which is a technique produced by applying layers of plaster tinted in contrasting colors to a moistened surface and scratching so as to reveal parts of the underlying wall.
The Polish people tried to rise up and fight to drive the Nazis out in 1944 but as we all know were not successful. The Polish spirit is never to yield without a fight.
We saw lots of other interesting things on our tour but my post is getting too long so just a few pictures.
After our tour, we went back to Adam’s for a traditional Polish fish dinner and napoleon for dessert. Yum!
After dinner we took a bike ride along the river. One side of the Vistula river is completely undeveloped so there’s a path through the woods where lots of wildlife can be found. That path was pretty bumpy and we only rode part of it. I think Adam was trying to kill me (or punish me from the stress i caused when he worked with me at J&J) as we rode about 15 miles but the old fat American lady survived but I was exhausted – hence the post in the am.
We have one more day in Poland until we travel to Prague – until then…..
