The ride into Warsaw was our first overnight train. The girls were really excited, as were we. Most of the train rides have been 3-6 hours during the day. The lead up to Warsaw was almost entirely about the train ride and nothing about Warsaw. Elizabeth and I were having a separate quiet debate about visiting Auschwitz, but we will do a separate post on our Auschwitz decision later. The train ride finally arrived, we all had a good time. Yes, a good time squeezing in a small berth with all our language and trying to sleep, it was something new! We did get a bit of sleep, but awoke early to arriving in Warsaw.
When we got off the train we first mapped out the nearly mile and half travel to our accommodations. I initially voted to walk, but was immediately overruled to ride the metro. We have been getting pretty good at metros and it did not take long to figure out.
We made it to our accommodation, a bit earlier than planned and worked with our AirBnB contact to get into the apartment. She was still having someone clean it, so we waited down stairs in the hallway of the apartment building while she finished it. It was a bit odd as people walked by trying to figure out why this family of four was standing in the hallway with these huge backpacks! Finally, we got in the apartment settled in and headed to the grocery store.
It was still fairly early, but we did not sleep the best on the train, so we decided to have a rest day. We not only bought stuff for dinner at the grocery store, I also bought a bit of polish beer. So, our first day of five in Warsaw was nothing more than laying around, eating, and starting some laundry (we had a washer). The next morning, we still had more laundry and the girls need to catch up on some journal writing, so again we stayed in. Additionally, we planned for the next two days.
The next day we headed to the train station early. We just took an overnight bag, because we were doing once night in Krakow. We will write a separate posting for our Krakow visit.
When we returned from Krakow, the following day would be our last fully day in Warsaw. We had started to feel a bit guilty, since we had not visited the city at all. We know on that last day we need to get out and walk around. So, we did!
We started early in the morning and headed straight to old town, which our AirBnB contact recommended. We really did not have a destination, we were just wandering around the area to sight see. We did stumble across several pretty neat sites. We found great view of the Poland Nation Stadium, monuments, statutes, an old castle wall, which we followed for a little while, before sitting down to have lunch. The lunch ended up being a several hours sit down as we chatted with a couple from Florida and the bar tender. The day did get away from us.
We started our stroll back to our AirBnB to get packed and ready for our early departure. On the way, back we walked through Saxon Garden, which was really nice. It also includes Poland’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was a pleasant walk back. The next morning, we were off again to the train station. This time it was a metro ride, I was immediately overruled when I mentioned walking to the train station. Next, stop Berlin, Germany.
