We got up at our regular time and went back to Nero Green Café a few blocks from our hotel. The previous day we had seen a beautifully made quiche in the food case and so we wanted to go back and get some. Once it arrived we realized that we had in fact bought lasagna. It was delicious, but not the breakfast egg that I was hoping for.
Since today was not a holiday, we easily found an open supermarket to do some shopping. After getting some goodies we lined up at the register, and the poor cashier tried to explain the price to me in broken English. I always anticipate these awkward situations by giving them big bills and avoiding counting our change, but cashiers in Europe like to press you for smaller bills or coins, which leads to another level of interaction in the local language that makes things even more difficult. Today’s cashier just kept repeating the same thing, “Two zlotsky, two zlotsky, two zlotsky”. It took me way too long to remember that zlotsky is the name of the Polish currency. At least she didn’t roll her eyes so much.
While shopping in various markets I came to realize that during this trip most of the beer we had seen in stores came in 500 mL glass bottles. It seemed to be the standard size, and we rarely saw cans of beer anywhere (except Helsinki). There are a lot of advantages of standardizing beer size for retail, and the lineup for local craft beers was quite impressive.
Near our hotel we saw some window washers cleaning the windows of 40-floor skyscrapers, hanging only from a rope. I imagined that it would be safer to use a platform or something, but these guys were just rappelling down the side of the building. I guess if you do it every week the scary part of it goes away.
In the center of Warsaw is the Palace of Culture and Science. It is the tallest building in Poland, and makes for a striking skyline with an art deco style. It contains museums, movie theaters, and an observation platform on the 30th floor for visitors. We lined up for the elevators just in time to be one of the first groups to go to the top. There were two elevators, each with an old lady sitting in the corner pushing the buttons – going up and down all day long. The view from the platform was pretty dramatic – it was fun to pick out all the sights that we had seen yesterday.
We made our way back to Old Town to have a drink in the market square. We chose a restaurant at random and found a table adequately shaded by umbrellas, and ordered two proseccos to sip while we people watched. However, it was less people watching and more bird watching. There were a tremendous amount of sparrows and pigeons, and the sparrows in particular were able to fly underneath and around the umbrellas and try to get bits of food from restaurant customers. One old guy a few tables down from us had ordered bread and was tearing it apart and throwing it towards the birds, who were standing on his table enjoying the feast. Restaurant staff had the unfortunate job of walking around the area scrubbing bird poop off the tables, chairs and light fixtures. Our attractive young blonde waitress was really nice to us, however, and she gave us two free shots of cherry liqueur on the house, and wrote a big “Thank You!” on the bill, so I think she was hoping for a big tip from the foreigners.
The previous day we had seen that St. Anne’s Cathedral was sponsoring concerts of Chopin’s music on the church organ and Kuniko wanted to go check it out. Unfortunately when we arrived there was a guy dressed in a historical outfit with a big white wig on his head selling tickets to enter. We had thought that since it was a church it would be free, but not in this touristy part of town. Being uncertain of the duration of the concert (and worried about the cheesy costume of the tout in front of the church) we decided that we could probably skip it and go get some bubbles instead.
And so the next stop was at “Bubbles”, a wine bar dedicated to sparkling wine of all kinds. I had researched the restaurant a long time ago in anticipation that we’d be sick of beer by the end of the two weeks. The atmosphere was a bit pretentious, the staff was entirely without a sense of humor, and the wine and food were really good. We did some comparisons between champagne, prosecco and cava, and for food we had a plate of cured beef on a bed of truffle cream, a salad of avocado and goat cheese, and a cheese plate with some really tasty Polish cheeses. It seemed like the staff expected us to order a salad, two main courses, maybe a dessert, but we instead ordered small plates and shared everything which is more our style.
On the way back towards our hotel we stopped in at a café that served a chocolate cake that Kuniko wanted to try. The cake is called “wuztka” – a layered chocolate cake that went well with a tall glass of milk that I ordered. The café was nicely decorated and had some interesting old pictures, including one of Warren Beatty for some reason. They were also running their air conditioning, and it was nice to cool down after walking. The temperature had slowly inched higher as we traveled south during this trip – Warsaw was as far south as we were going to go this time.
After a short break at our hotel we went out for our last dinner in Warsaw. Our theme the last couple of days has been dumplings, so we went to a place that specialized in pierogis (Polish dumplings). The restaurant was a chain called “Zapiecek”. We found a (slight cramped) table outside on a very busy street. The curtains of the restaurant featured dumplings embroidered into them, so we knew it was the right place. We ordered a combination plate of many kinds of dumplings – it was fun to taste each one and try to identify the filling. There was cheese, mushroom, lentil, cheesy bacon, pork and chicken, and some others we couldn’t identify. We also had a really delicious pan of meaty sauerkraut that went well with all the beer we were drinking. It was a great restaurant to finish the trip with.
Our last stop of the night was a final visit to the big Carrefour Market near our hotel. We weren’t the only ones doing last minute shopping – I had the distinct feeling that everyone was getting ready to go home soon. After a short time shopping we went back to the hotel to repack our suitcase and get everything ready for the long trip home tomorrow.
