Deb Travels the World

Thursday : Morning train to Warsaw, arriving before noon. We chose first class on a Pendolino - express train 2.5 hrs. Very comfortable and included a light snack.

As expected our room wasn’t ready yet, so we parked our suitcases in the Merecure’s secured baggage room and set off to explore, in what Steve later referred to as a “marathon” tour of Warsaw (but which was only really about 15km).

This is the skinniest house (possibly in the world) and violated all building laws, but was successfully built as an “art project” and is occupied.

Dinner at Stara Kamienica. Fine dining for reasonable prices compared to Canada. Lots of interesting meal choices, including deer and wild boar. I had deer ragout and Steve tagliatelle with beef. Upon paying the bill, we were presented with a rose and a small glass of sweet vodka.

This morning I walked to Lazienki (Royal Baths) Park, at 76 hectares, the largest park in Warsaw. The Chopin sculpture was the first monument destroyed by the occupying Germans in WWII. On Sundays there are free concerts, which we will, unfortunately, miss. The park also has a botanical garden, which was not open early this morning and a lovely small Chinese garden.

Catching the 2:49 to Krakow this afternoon. In the meantime we are hanging out in the lobby bar having a bit of chocolate dessert and some sparkling water with lemon. Yum. Hoping we can find the elevator down to the train platform instead of the stairs we navigated up yesterday with our heavy suitcases. Rick Steves would be horrified with our luggage weight.

My morning 9.5km walk took me to a lovely scenic wetlands park.

And then back through town, following, in part, the Camino route. Early morning views, before festival booths are set up and the crowds throng through the old town areas.

In the afternoon, we sailed to Westerplatte on the Black Pearl “pirataky” ship.

There was commentary in multiple languages describing the shipyards and docks we passed on the was to the place where the first shots of WWII were fired in late 1939. Westerplatte, a former health spa, was a key military stronghold in a Polish city still considered to rightfully belong to Germany (Gdańsk is known as Danzig in Germany). The ship also had a full kitchen serving meals and snacks and a full bar. The prices were reasonable given the tourist location.

It was a beautiful warm summer day and we spent about two hours wandering around Westerplatte, seeing the bombed remnants of the guardhouses and ammunition storage as well as the memorial and dedication by the Polish Pope.

Dinner at Swojski Smak included traditional Polish fare and more than 150 flavours of Vodka. While I stuck with beer, Steve ordered the “sweet flight”, which included 6 very sweet choices - purple plum, strawberry, cherry, mirabelle plum, hazelnut, and apricot. I tried a little sip of each, but otherwise left the sugary liqueur-like vodka to Steve.

A very good day and perfect weather. On to Warsaw tomorrow.

As we’ve all been hearing, travel through Canadian airports is painful, but ours worked out fine despite hiccups with my passport (finally picked it up on Friday afternoon for travel Sunday- phew that was close) and delays in both Ottawa (1hr) and Montreal (2 hrs). Our 5-hour layover in Frankfurt only ends up being 2 hours, which we happily spent in a nice lounge with lovely food and wine. We arrived in Gdańsk on time and easily navigated the purchase of SIM cards and an Uber to our apartment (Maya’s Flats).

The one-bedroom apartment is nice and clean with a kitchen and decent living areas including a very nice balcony and a good sized tv, on which Steve is currently playing an Xbox game

Here are some pics from our walks in Gdańsk. A very pretty city.

There’s a festival on, so lots of little market stalls and chickens.


And this stall where we bought traditional fried bread(I think, Ukrainian).

Also learned that we are on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage trail!

We enjoyed a nice lunch of polish stew and dumplings, accompanied by very good beer - dark for me and red for Steve. Both this brand:

The Amber museum was interesting, as was the monument to the fallen from the shipyards uprising in 1970.

Price is Right fans, we enjoyed seeing this collection of grandfather clocks (that must be why they aren’t prizes on TPIR any more - they’re all here!)

Looking forward to more exploration of the city and its history tomorrow.

Great trip, from the Confederate capital (Richmond) to DC, from steel town (Pittsburgh) to nickel town (Buffalo); three hockey and two baseball games; Long Island Sound, Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie and the Erie Canal, the Ohio, Allegheny, Monongahela, and Buffalo Rivers; and battlefields and museums of the civil war, as well as air & space and PEZ!

My last morning walk was canal-side in Buffalo and I found the infamous shark girl, just by chance.

The sculpture of the “French Connection” was inspired by a game photo. 1970’s Buffalo Sabres from Quebec.

Followed two self-guided walking tours found on-line from Explore Buffalo. A wide variety of architectural styles and lots of interesting buildings and art.
Easy to tell where we are:

From our walks. The first pic is a building by Yamasaki, built while he was working on plans for the World Trade Center. Easy to see the resemblance.

I liked this sculpture

The glass wall on the courthouse contains the full constitution written out

And I liked the stone structure of this gas station

We ended the day out with a great meal at Giacobbi’s Italian restaurant. We shared the lasagna and a really yummy pasta dish called Penne pPnk Vodka “Al’s way” - best meal and best service of the trip.

Heading home tomorrow.