On Wednesday morning, as we were getting ready to leave the hotel room and do some sightseeing, we noticed on Google that today was a national holiday in Poland. It was called Assumption Day, but it also had something to do with the Armed Forces, as later we saw quite a few soldiers marching around town.
Our destination for the morning was into the Old Town area of Warsaw. Although we had seen plenty of Old Towns in previous countries, we had heard that the historic Old Town of Warsaw was worth a closer look. There were plenty of churches and cathedrals in the area – the Holy Cross Church (home of Chopin’s heart), St. Anne’s Church (sponsoring Chopin concerts daily at noon), and St. John’s with beautiful vaulted ceilings and stained glass. In addition to the churches, just regular buildings in the area were also colorfully decorated and eye-catching. We walked from block to block with me snapping pictures like crazy.
The market square is at the center of the Old Town, and it looked much like the ones we had seen before, although a little more compact and with a lot more pigeons and birds. This early all the restaurants were closed, but I made a mental note to come back later at least to have a drink and see it when it is more lively. Quite close to the market square is the Barbican, the red stone outer walls that still stand on the border of Old Town.
As we left the Old Town we passed a church with lots of security and reporters outside, and it turned out that the Polish president was inside for a service on the holiday. Just around the corner were squads of troops marching with flags, and police and plainclothes security were watching each corner. I put the camera away, just in case.
By this time shops were starting to open, and we stopped in at the “Nero Green Café”, one of a chain of fast food cafes around town. This one was right outside an office building next to a TGIFridays, but the key point for us was that they had an outdoor patio with umbrellas to block the sun, so we sat outside with our coffees and relaxed for a while. There was just one other couple sitting outside, speaking English to each other, but when Kuniko and I spoke English they both looked over at us and became a lot more quiet. Mysterious…
After a pit stop back at our hotel we made our way across town to Lazienki Park, a huge park filled with walking paths, streams and a big lake with a palace sitting on it. Lazienki Palace was a beautiful spot, and we arrived before most of the tourists arrived so it wasn’t so crowded. The palace architecture was similar to Versailles and Schonbrunn – but much smaller in scale. The location on the lake in the center of a huge park made it that much more attractive, and they had tourist boats floating along in slow circles around the small lake.
Once we had our fill of relaxing in the park, it was time to eat. I had heard of an interesting Food Hall nearby, so we visited Hala Koszyki for lunch. The interior was urban modern, clean and stylish, with a centrally located bar that looked like it would be fun to visit in the evening. The hall was just opening as we arrived, but the place was full of restaurants of all types. We found a place that looked good that advertised itself as a Polish Grill, so we ate there. Kuniko ordered some Polish sausage, I had a big pastrami sandwich, and we also shared some dumplings topped with caramelized onions that hit the spot. Can’t get enough of those dumplings! The restaurant also featured many local beers in the bottle, and I asked the staff to recommend two beers for us to try – they were both good but Kuniko’s milky IPA was really delicious.
After lunch we spent some time trying to find some major supermarkets to do some souvenir shopping, but everything was closed for the holiday. We ended up postponing our shopping until the next day. After some downtime at our hotel we were back out on the streets walking and looking for a wine bar. We’d had a lot of beer on this trip and we were craving wine – luckily there are a lot of wine bars in a big city like Warsaw. I chose one on the internet that looked good and we made our way to “Bar Superiore”, not far from the food hall where we ate lunch. We sat outside on the street, and had a couple glasses of prosecco to begin. Later I had a glass of Polish red wine – it was a bit expensive compared to the imported wines on their list, but I really wanted to try wine from Poland. It turned out to be quite good – they served it from a Coravin.
We ordered a mixture of five different tapas. The slightly nervous young waitress explained that we could choose any five we liked from the list, and so we picked some out that sounded good. We chose one that we had no idea about, listed in the menu as “Tunisian Brik”. It turned out to be a big fried wonton wrapped with spinach and little cheese inside.
The service at this restaurant wasn’t very professional, however, and we decided to leave after the tapas and try to find some wine somewhere else. The bill was also a little more expensive than we expected, and either they made a mistake adding up our bill or the Polish wine I ordered was a lot more expensive than the menu said. This restaurant turned out to be the only less-than great experience during the entire two-week trip.
Since we were craving wine and our hotel just happened to have a wine bar on the ground floor we decided to give it a shot. The place was called “Winestone”, and they even had outdoor dining which is a bonus on warm summer evenings. We sat outside and ordered a couple of glasses of wine and a plate of Polish cheeses. The highlight of the cheese plate was a semi-hard goat cheese – I wanted to go find it in a supermarket somewhere and sneak it home. There was also a jam on the plate that was orange and more salty than sweet – interesting!
Before returning to our hotel room, we did a little shopping at the local Carrefour Express, and there was a little drama as we walked in. One female customer was busy insulting a male customer, and in English she told him to “take your shit and get the fuck out of here”. He apparently did, because after that all was calm in Carrefour.
There were a lot of steps today – 32,000 – this is a very big city. We went to bed with plans to do our souvenir shopping and to celebrate the end of the trip with some bubbles tomorrow.
