Day 6: On to Warsaw

[Thursday, June 13]

[Click on any photo for a bigger view]

We packed up on Thursday morning and went to the dining room of the hotel for our last buffet breakfast in Olsztyn. A couple of final remarks about the hotel: When we first arrived, we noted the soft sounds of jazz piano coming from somewhere. It was a mix of blues and slow tempo boogie. It turned out the sound was coming from the dining room of the hotel, and that it was a recording. A recording that was turned on in the morning and played over and over again through the breakfast time, and sometimes till late in the day, the hotel's unchanging background sound. It wasn't obtrusive, but still a bit odd that it was always the same recording. On our last morning, the music was missing until late in our breakfast when one of the hotel workers realized it was missing and turned it on one more time for us.

The second remark is about the hotel guests. They were mostly people of late middle age and older, and a few young couples, but no young families on holiday. The people were mostly Poles, but also a few Germans and one English couple. We met a couple from Hanover who were on their way to stay for 10 days at a cottage in the Masurian Lakes. They were using trains and busses for transport all the way. I think some guests may have been business people, but there were no high-power types, all involved in their phones, laptop zoom meetings and the like, which you see in big city hotels. Mostly the people were involved in quiet conversation.

We schlepped our bags up the quarter mile to the train station and waited for the 9:42 train to Warsaw. Trains in Poland are very modern, much nicer than the train we took from Spain to France a back in 2010. The cars are quiet, with comfortable seats, plug-ins for phone or laptop charging, and a place to grab a snack or drinks. First-class, not much more expensive than coach, is the way to go. Our train took us back through the farmland and small towns between Olsztyn and Warsaw. Unlike the train to Olsztyn, full to standing room with people returning to the countryside from weekend travels, our return train to Warsaw, mid-week and long after rush hour, was not at all crowded.

Poland has a wetter and more moderate climate than the last place we visited at the same latitude. So unlike central Alberta, where the main crops are canola and wheat, I saw large farms with a huge mix of grains and grasses: flax, oats, wheat, barley, and even corn, which I never saw in Alberta.

View of the Polish countryside from our train

We were back in Warsaw by noon. We again schlepped our stuff just under a half mile up a busy street, Aleja Jana Pawła II, named for one of the most important people in Polish and world history.

Pope John Paul II is commemorated all over Warsaw

Our hotel, the Warsaw Westin

Vicky was feeling a little under the weather. Cold-like symptoms. She blamed it on the linden trees. So we spent the first part of the afternoon resting at our hotel before taking off for a late afternoon walk. We decided to check out the Trakt Królewski or Royal Way, less than a mile from the hotel. Historically, this was a highway leading from the Old Town of Warsaw south all the way to Kraków.

On our way to the Royal Way, we went through a couple of parks. The first was the Park Mirowski, a small, shady park that let do a monument of Tadeusz Kościuszko, a Polish nobleman and patriot who was a hero of the American Revolution. (Kościuszko was a hero of the Battle of Saratoga and designed the original fortifications at West Point.).

Memorial to Tadeusz Kościuszko

We then entered the Ogród Saski or Saxon Garden, a public park dating to the early 18th century. The park features tree-lined paths, flower gardens, baroque statues of personifications of the arts, graces, and virtues, and a huge fountain. At the east end of the park once stood a huge palace that was completely destroyed by the Nazis during the Warsaw Uprising. All that remains is an archway under which lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with an eternal flame and always guarded by Polish soldiers. Part of the front of the park, where the palace once stood, is walled off by portable construction walls. There is archaeology of the foundations of the old palace under way, and eventually the old palace, like all of Old Town, will be restored.

Walkway to the Grand Fountain lined with statues

Medicine

Sculpture of 'Sculpture'

The Grand Fountain

Remnant of the Saxon Palace housing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The Great Fountain is at the far left center. From above, you can see the archaeology of the foundations of the Saxon Palace, which will one day be restored.

We ended up on the Royal Way just south of the Old Town. The street reminds me of a cross between La Rambla in Barcelona and Rodeo Drive in LA. The street is not closed to car traffic, like La Rambla, but the roadway is not a huge boulevard and the street is lined with shops (some quite high end), cafes, restaurants. And palaces. Lots of palaces. And not a few statues. The Royal Way starts in the Old Town and continues southward in the above manner for just over a mile. We picked up the Royal Way not far south of the Old Town. We walked north just a bit to get the flavor, but decided to save the Old Town for the next day.

The Royal Way

Statue of Adam Mickiewicz, National Poet of Poland when there was no nation of Poland.

Along the way, we passed people waiting in line to enter a Hermes store. I don't think anyone in the line could afford the goods in the store. They just wanted to breath the air and look over the goods. Hermes only lets a few people in at a time to deter shoplifting and maintain the store's cachet. The obscene prices of this high end shop seemed all the higher when given in Polish złoty. I asked Vicky if she wanted a nice sweater displayed in the window. The asking price was 18,500 złoty, about $4600.

We stopped for dinner at restaurant serving a variety of Polish food. Vicky had kopytka (a fried Polish version of gnocchi) with chicken in a paprika sauce and sour cream. I had a bread bowl filled with bigos, a stew of cabbage, game meat (whatever is available: wild boar or pork, venison, even game birds), sausage (kiełbasa), fruit (apples, plums, or apricots), herbs, and mushrooms.

I had bigos several times while in Poland. Bigos in Poland is like chili in America in many ways. It's a stew best left to cook for a long time (or, better when reheated). There are many ingredients, some optional. There are regional differences. There are varied ways of serving it. (I never again saw it served in a bread bowl, but this wasn't a bad way of doing it.) And there are "cook-offs", where cooks compete for bragging rights. Vicky and I make some pretty damn good bigos ourselves, and I think we could make a good showing in a Polish bigos cookoff!