April 28th 9:40pm

Palace of culture

Well we've been in Warsaw for 24 hours and we have had no problems yet, all of the guidebooks warned up about the possible problems one might face when in Warsaw.

We checked into the Ibis Hotel that is about 15 minutes away from the old town. It's a bit of a fancy hotel (**) but when you convert the 259 Zl between three people to Canadian it's not to bad.


Ibis hotel Warsaw

Got into Warsaw yesterday, walked to the Old Town, had a beer and some pierogies, and then watched the people tossing fire around the square.


Fire jugglers in the Old Town

Then today it was up at 8:00am and then of to the Canadian embassy, which has basically been re-done and I did not remember any of it. Then off to the house I lived in for two years back in 1984. Didn't really recognize it, so it didn't really do that much for me. I do think that my brother really enjoyed it.


The old house, and my brothers head

The Iraq embassy is across the street from the house (the Iraqi diplomats used to park in our driveway without permission) and there was one guard out front. So we stood around and took pictures and then left. A while later we came back and there were three guards out front, coincidence or did they come out because we were taking pictures next door?

Ate breakfast in a fancy-schmancy place, darn zloty conversion working in our favour. After we ate we walked around a bit more (back past the house where the above happened) and then into the car and off to the Warsaw Uprising museum, which was very cool.


Warsaw rising museum

If you get to Warsaw one thing you'll notice (unless they've changed things) is that you will find little adds for brothels all over the street and tucked into your car door after you leave it for a while. Prostitution is illegal in Poland but apparently they do not do that much about it.

Also streets in Warsaw, and seemingly all of Europe for that matter, seem to change names randomly as you go down them. Well not really randomly, they do it at intersections but it still makes it very confusing when you are the navigator and everyone is getting annoyed with you, even though you are doing your best.

After the museum we went to Wilanow palace, which was closed but we could walk around outside so that was cool. Took a lot of photos since it was the first castle/palace for me in Europe. They were also restoring the palace, which meant that much of it was covered in netting and stuff, but it was still very neat to look at.


Wilanow palace

Did I mention that my brother wanted to go to a supermarket after the Warsaw Rising (not uprising, I have to remember that) museum? Yeah he did.

After the palace back to the hotel and then to a pierogi place that has over 40 types of pierogies. We got the potato pancakes to start and then Danielle and I each got the cheese pierogi sampler, which is 5X2 different cheese pierogies. Turns out that one of the cheese pierogies still contained meat, but we caught those before eating them. So a note to vegetarians, in Eastern Europe, cheese does not equal (<>, !=, ~=) vegetarian as it does in North America. Otherwise a great meal, if a bit out of the way.

Which brings me to my next point about street numbers. Street numbers here are not a linear as street numbers are in Canada (or maybe they are more linear?). Which means that it may say 12 on one side of the street and 27 on the other, then 14 and 35. I think that this occurs because different sides of the street are even and odd (just like in Canada) but they never miss a number. So say you have a park on one odd side of the street and houses on the other. The even numbers will continue to climb as you pass the park, but the odd numbers will not change until a building starts at the end of the park.

Then after dinner we had some chocolate pierogies for dessert (tasty) and headed to the Old Town for a walk. We didn't go inside the Old Town instead we just headed back to the hotel, picking up some beer and green onion flavored chips. The beer is pretty cheap 4zl for 500ml or about 1.5 (divide by about 2.6) Cdn, not bad.


Chocolate pierogies

Tomorrow the Old Town during the day, maybe a milk bar to eat, to the big fancy shopping mall for some shopping, and after that Krakow and Bamberg. No more Prague, Prague has been cut from the team due to time constraints.


A little something for the librarians