I arrived in Warsaw in the early morning and headed to the Hostel where I had a nap on the common room couch.  They were really nice about letting me sleep on the couch as I had taken the red eye and had not had much sleep.  When I woke up i decided not to do much that day except for wander around a bit.  I also needed some cold weather running gear as I was now further North and it was a bit chilly.  It was rainy so i decided to take the bus out of town a little bit to the Decathlon.  I LOVE this store and wish it was more prolific in North America (They just opened one in Berkeley California).  It had decent quality stuff for really cheap.  So a lot of the stuff that really dosen’t matter too much because you either don’t use it much or it is very simple and would be about the same quality as the good ones.  Anyways I got some arm sleeves and a running hat as well as a pair of gloves.

After the exciting bus trip, I decided to try and find some authentic homey Polish food, so i asked around and came upon this really cheap, homey no frills place that was exactly what I was looking for.  I didn’t really know what to get, so i tried to just ask them for their special.  This is what i got…

I was pretty tired that day, so I really didn’t feel like doing much.  So I went to the mall, checked out the stores and then headed back to the hostel where I chilled for the night.  The skyline was dominated by a soviet looking structure.  It’s called the palace of science and culture and is the tallest building in Poland.  It was a gift from the soviet union to the polish people in 1955 and houses a whole bunch of different things including a few museums and an observation deck which i did end up checking out a bit later.

The next morning, I headed to the older section of town for a free walking tour of the historic section of the city.  My wanderings the day before had focused more on the modern side of the city.

If you have been following a long I always try and catch a free walking tour in the city I am in as it gives you a lot of information about the history, politics and architecture of a place in an efficient and cheap format.  This one was pretty good as Poland has a LOT of history.

The architecture was pretty amazing as well.  I will leave a few photos below.

The tour concluded at the base of the royal palace and so I figured it was a good idea to check out the inside.  The Palace had been almost completely destroyed during the war and was completelty rebuilt from 1965 onwards to where it is as close to an exact replica of the old version as possible.

It was massive and very ornate!

After the palace, I headed into the adjacent church…

Which was equally ornate!

I had been on my feet for a long time at this point, so I headed back to the hostel for a break.  After a short rest, I strapped on the running shoes and went on an adventure run through the park.  I first headed out of town to the Garmin store because I left my cable in Iceland and needed a new one for my watch.  Buying one online would be hard and they didn’t have one at the local electronics store.  Luckily there was a Garmin store, unluckily the cable was $29!!!  OH well, it happens.

I missed the initial fall color change, but was still able to get the full fall experience.  It was a large park and provided for a very scenic run!

I got to check out Palac na Wyspie (Palace on the Isle) which was a summer palace of the Polish royalty.

During this run, I had a bit of gastro problems and was getting a bit worried as I was decently far from the Hostel and public bathrooms in Europe are all pay per use and I had no cash.  Luckily, the bathroom in this park accepted credit card and had TAP.  This is the first time I had seen this in a bathroom and it happened to be exactly when i needed it most.  A quick tap with Apple Pay on my phone and I was IN.  Problem solved and I was on my way!

 

It ended up being a solid 21km run!

I headed back to the Hostel and chilled for a bit reading my book.  The hostel had a pretty good craft beer selection, so I tried one!

After a short chill sesh, I headed back out to meet up with Andreiz who you might remember from Laos and Cambodia!  He had returned from his travels and was now working in Warsaw.  We met up for a beer at a local craft place!

I really loved that aspect of the long term travel, was meeting people travelling and then being able to meet up in their home town! Andreiz didn’t have much time to show me around, but I was glad he did make time to have a beer and catch up.  Bonus was that the bar he suggested had pinball!!!

We changed locations for one more beer and then said our goodbyes!  It was great talking about Poland and some more interesting things about Warsaw!

The next morning I woke up decently early and headed to the same cheap “Milk Bar” as before.  I learned about Milk Bars on the walking tour and they are essentially what I had described before.  Local, no frills places serving cheap homey food.   The history was from the 1800s where the first places served mostly dairy based meals but did serve other things as well.  I had some Perogies and then was on my way!

The plan for the day was to check out the Polish Jewish History museum.  It was beautiful and massive and told the story of Polish jews throughout time, not jsut during the war.  It really showed how much of a rough go Polish jews have had throughout history not just in our recent history.  It was very elaborate and told a pretty good story.  It was huge and long though and there is only so much suffering one person can handle in one day.  I did spend several hours there and learned a lot.

After the museum, I went to a local market to get some Kielbasa.  There was an amazing Polish Kielbasa vendor at the market in Welland and my dad would always get it on Saturday mornings.  It was far superior to any other Kielbasa I had tried form other places and I have always struggled when it came to eating it from sub standard sources.  Let me just tell you that this Kielbasa I bought in the market hit the spot exactly and was exactly the taste I remember growing up!

It wasn’t even really a specialty shop, I think it is just the taste of normal Polish Kielbasa!

After enjoying some delicious hunks of meat, I continued to downtown and decided to check out the observation deck in the Palace of Science I had mentioned earlier.  It was very prominent and would probably give great views of the Warsaw area.

The second photo shows Old Town and the Palace!

After the observation deck, I headed out for a dusk run along the river!

P.S – I have no idea why I didn’t include my run data in previous posts.  Strava makes it very easy to post it to your blog with iframes and it gives you an idea of what kind of millage i am able to get while travelling as the Athens Marathon approaches.  Anyways, I will continue to do this in subsequent posts.  Never too late to start something new I guess.

There were some nice trails along the river and it looks like they were doing some work to make it into a nice summer river walk.

I returned to the Hostel where I met a two people from Macedonia in town for a tech conference.  We got to talking and decided to go out for a beer at a craft beer place I had hoped to check out nearby.

The place was pretty cool because it was almost entirely covered floor to ceiling with bottle caps.  The tables and walls and ceilings were all covered.  It was really cool.  They also had a really good selection of beer!

We had a great time talking about the company that they were starting as well as the tech scene in general.  They were intrigued that I had worked in Silicon Valley.

The next morning I woke up and took the subway out to the bus station on my way to Krakow!