Warsaw, Poland

We arrived in Warsaw via train from Krakow. It was early evening by the time we checked into our hotel so we headed out towards the Old Town to explore a bit but we didn’t get too far because it started to rain quite soon after we’d left. Instead we dashed into the closest restaurant around for dinner. During dinner we saw the most ridiculously huge ice cream sundaes being delivered to customers. We were too full to indulge in any ice cream that night but little did we know that Warsaw is some sort of ice cream capital.

The hotel we stayed at in Warsaw was a bit swankier than our previous hotels and lived up to the Cathy and Cecilia European breakfast trifecta: smoked salmon, nutella and cappuccinos. We were in breakfast heaven.

In the morning we had a half day tour of Warsaw. We had a driver and a guide for this tour since we visited some sights that weren’t within walking distance of our hotel. We visited a former summer palace of one of the Polish kings, a monument to the Jewish ghetto that was destroyed by the Nazis and the Royal Palace. We also had a late morning ice cream while on our tour at what our guide told us was the best ice cream shop in Warsaw. We thought we’d be able to remember this particular shop because it had “Lody” written outside which we assumed was the shop name. It turns out lody means ice cream in Polish so this wasn’t exactly a distinguishing characteristic! There was literally an ice cream on every corner in the Old Town. Below is a picture of the Mermaid statue that sits in the center of the Old Town Market Place. Unlike Krakow, Warsaw was almost entirely destroyed during WWII. Here’s an image what the market place looked like in 1945.

In the afternoon we walked through the Old Town into the New Town and visited the Maria Skłodowska-Curie museum. The museum is housed in the building where she was born. Although the collection wasn’t large it was very interesting. I guess Mom and I must be big Marie Curie’s fans because we visited her tomb in the Pantheon when were Paris two years ago

As a side note the Dalai Lama had lunch in our hotel on this day. We secretly think he might have been staying there too but we have no confirmation other than miscellaneous security looking guys hanging around in the lobby. Also we were unable to visit the ballroom at the Royal Castle because he had received honorary Warsaw citizenship there earlier in the day.

We had a very leisurely second day in Warsaw. It was the last full day of our vacation and were were all about underachieving. First we lingered over a multi course breakfast. Then we walked down Warsaw’s “Royal Way” for an hour until we reached the Park Łazienkowski where there are both peacocks and squirrels. Our guide on the previous day had been very excited about the prospect of seeing squirrels. We spent about an hour in the park (relaxing and working on a cryptic crossword) and then walked back to our hotel for a late lunch of salads and cappuccinos.

In the afternoon we read and napped (well one of us napped, you can guess who). Later we went for our dinner at a traditional Polish restaurant in the New Town and then stopped off to buy ice cream cones which we ate while sauntering back to our hotel savouring our last night in Europe.

The next morning we were up early to have breakfast and then catch our ride to the airport. We flew to Frankfurt and then on to Ottawa. While the airline agent was checking my passport before admitting me to the waiting lounge he actually noticed that today was my birthday and wished me a happy birthday! I was impressed. Dad and Alli had flown in from Vancouver arriving in Ottawa about 30 minutes before us so they were there to great us when we arrived.

Krakow, Poland

We flew from Vilnius to Krakow via Warsaw on LOT airlines. The flights went smoothly and we arrived at our hotel at about 6pm. We took a short orientation walk around the Old Town and then set about finding somewhere to eat dinner. We settled on a small vegetarian restaurant where Mom had kofta curry and I had a mexican stew. Dinner, with water, rang in at about 12 CAD which set a new record for cheap eats!

As at all our previous stops we were excited to check out breakfast on our first morning. This hotel got points for having the largest coffee cups and nutella. After breakfast we set out on a private walking tour of the Old Town of Krakow. Several of the usual stops on the tour were closed because they are churches and don’t allow visitors on Sunday mornings. However, we had an excellent guide and she gave us advice regarding which churches to visit in the afternoon. We were able to visit the Wawel Cathedral which was used for coronations of kings since the 13th century. We also saw where Pope JPII lived when he was a bishop in Krakow and Wawel Hill which is the site of a castle. Interestingly Krakow was not destroyed during WWII so it has maintained much of its character.

After our tour we had lunch at a local “Milk Bar.” These were canteens run by the state during the communist era providing cheap filling meals to the poorest citizens. There are still a few remaining. We split one order of cheese/potato pierogies and one order of meat pierogies. Given that we were in Poland it seemed that eating pierogies was a necessity. After lunch we visited the church of St Francis (above) which had very impressive Art Nouveau stained glass work and St Mary’s Church with an impressive high alter. After being on our feet for the day we retired to our hotel room to recharge with a cryptic crossword.

The next morning we went to visit the Wieliczka salt mine. The mine was operational from the 13th century until 1996. You can only enter the mine with a guide but instead of goining a large English group we had arranged to have our own guide for just the two of us. This was nice since we were actually able to hear the guide and we were able to move slightly faster than some of the larger groups.

We visited the upper three (of nine) levels of the mine and reached a maximum depth of 135 metres. There were many chambers in which the miners had carved out statues depicting folk stories and kings etc. There were also several chapels and of course a restaurant and souvenier shop. Below is a statue of Nicholas Copernicus carved out of salt.

In the afternoon we walked out of the Old Town and into the Jewish quarter. Later we went back to our favourite vegetarian restaurant from the first night and went to a church for a one hour classical concert featuring Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

The next morning we visited the Czartoryski Museum which holds a collection of various items from Etruscan to Egyptian to Polish artifacts. The main attraction is the Da Vinci painting Lady with an Ermine which I enjoy because the subject’s name was Cecilia. Then we got some Krakow “bagels” and headed to the train station to catch our train the Warsaw.

Lithuania

The drive from Riga, Latvia to Vilnius, Lithuania took about 3.5 hours. There was no formal passport control at the border. During our three nights in Vilnius we stayed at the Mabre Residence Hotel which is a converted monastery. Once again we were staying in the Old Town which put us within walking distance of most of the sights. On our first afternoon we walked around town and then intended to take a small funicular railway to an old castle tower that overlooks Vilnius.  We missed the turn to the funicular and ended up walking all the way up the hill. We did’t really mind the extra exercise though since it was a long gradual climb. At the top we were treated to a lovely view of Old Town Vilnius and the surrounding city.

We ate dinner outdoors at a restaurant along one of the main streets of the Old Town. It was quite enjoyable watching people walk by.  There was a four piece brass band playing close to the restaurant so we were able to play “name that tune” for a while, at least until they started to repeat pieces.

We started our first full day in Vilnius with the hotel breakfast. Mom gave this breakfast high marks because there was smoked salmon. The local “breakfast dessert” was a small log of sweetened cream cheese with a stripe of  jam and covered with with a thing coating of chocolate. It was wrapped up for portability like a granola bar. After breakfast we set out on a three hour walking tour of Vilnius. Our guide was a Latvian who lives part time in the Netherlands. She was excellent and we really enjoyed the tour despite the fact that it rained for the entire time!

We started in Užupis which is a district of Vilnius with it’s own constitution. It sort of reminded me of Fremont in Seattle. I couldn’t really get a picture of the posted constitution (due to the rain) but I found the picture below here. My personal favourites are: 26. Everyone has the right to celebrate or not celebrate their birthday and 31. Everyone may be independent.

Then we headed into the Old Town and visited several churches, including the chapel at the Dawn Gate. We also walked through the University grounds and ended our tour at the Vilnius Cathedral. Interestingly vehicles are allowed in Vilnius Old Town while they weren’t allowed in Old Town Riga. This made navigation a bit more difficult but we managed. When we got back to our hotel we were soaked through. In fact the guidebook that was inside Mom’s purse during the entire morning was so wet that water ran out when she squeezed it!

I don’t recall what we did that afternoon so I can only imagine it involved a cryptic crossword and me trying to read The Hobbit but ending up taking a nap. During this trip Mom and I decide that we needed to underachieve. We’re used to being overachievers – in life and in travel. On this trip we were much more relaxed. We wanted to learn about the countries we were visiting but we didn’t feel the need to wear ourselves out each day. In fact our goal became “to underachieve a little more today each day!”

For dinner we went out to a mostly vegetarian restaurant which employed recovering alcohol addicts. We had salads and then dessert. We didn’t underachieve on desserts.

The next day was excursion day. Once again it was raining. We started with a trip to Grutas Park – an outdoor collection of Soviet era statues. When the Soviets finally left Lithuania they left behind thousand of statues and other pieces of propaganda. These statues were torn down and many of them eventually found their way to this private park. It was very interesting seeing statues that once sat in town squares now on display along a boardwalk in the forest. I think it shows both a good sense of humour in the Lithuanian people and a strong commitment not to forget their history. There was also a petting zoo but we didn’t visit that.

In the afternoon we drove to Trakai Island Castle. It was a quite a picturesque setting – a castle on an island in a lake. Of course it was grey and rainy but we soldiered on. The castle dates back to the 14th century and we quite enjoyed visiting the history museum housed within the castle. Especially impressive was the collection of coins that had been excavated from the castle grounds. We returned Vilnius, had a pleasant Italian dinner and then packed our bags for the next day’s flight to Poland.

Up next: Poland

Latvia

In August my mother and I travelled to the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland for a two week vacation. This is the first in a series of posts chronicling the trip.

We took a direct flight from Ottawa to Frankfurt and thoroughly enjoyed the fact that we didn’t have to go through Pearson. Unfortunately the flight left fairly early in the evening and since it was just over 6.5 hours long we only managed to get 2-2.5 hours of sleep. We arrived in Frankfurt about about 6:30am local time and had a couple of hours to kill before our connecting flight. We both dozed for most of the 2 hour flight to Riga. Someone on our Riga flight had a can of shaving cream explode in their bag and several bags coming off the belt were covered in shaving cream. It was quite the sight. Mom’s bad had a bit on it but we were able to clean it up quickly in the bathroom.

Once we arrived at our hotel and immediately crashed for a 2 hour nap. We stayed at the Hotel Gutenburgs which was very conveniently located right in the Old Town. After our nap we wandered around the Old Town getting our bearings. Eventually we found a tourist information center and exchanged some euros into Latvian currency. We had a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant and then went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Our hotel breakfast included the usual European fare of meat, cheese, bread and eggs with some surprising additions: gum drops and chocolate coated marshmallow cookies. It’s always nice to have a breakfast dessert when you’re on vacation! We started our first full day in Latvia with a a three hour walking tour of Riga. We covered both the New Town with its Art Nouveau buildings and the Old Town with its many churches. We also saw the Latvian Freedom Monument. Our guide was a Russian who has lived in Latvia her whole life but does not have citizenship because she refuses to go through the naturalization process. It was a little difficult to follow her English but we were certainly starting to learn a lot about the interesting national relationships in this part of the world. In the afternoon we visited the Blackheads House museum and then headed back to our air conditioned hotel room to seek retreat from the 30C heat.

On our second day in Latvia we had an excursion out of the city. We first visited Cesis Castle and took a cable car across a river valley on our way to Turaidas Castle. The castles were quite well restored and seemed to have changed hands many times (Russians, Germans, Poles, Swedish) since the 12th century. It was quite windy and rainy in the morning but luckily the weather cleared in the afternoon.

We started our third day in Latvia with a leisurely breakfast and then headed out to the Architecture Museum. This ended up being a one room display on the different paths to industrialization of the Scandinavian and Baltic States. After the museum we walked very quickly (it was pouring rain this morning) to the Riga Cathedral. We attended a 20 minute organ music concert which included pieces by Bach and several Latvian composers. While we were waiting for the concert to start we spent some time working out the topology of a lined sheath dress and which seams had to be left unfinished to turn it inside out. It was the intersection of two of our favourite things: math and sewing!

Next we went to the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. We spent quite a while here learning about the Soviet and then German and then Soviet again occupation of Latvia in the 20th century. This wasn’t exactly a fun museum (let’s face it the Soviets treated the residents of the Baltic countries pretty inhumanely) but it was very moving and was really a highlight of our trip.

We had a late lunch of salads at “Double Coffee” our favourite local coffee shop chain. We were chilled from the rain so I also had a Mocha and mom had a coffee with a shot of a local balsam liqueur that we had read about. It’s always good to do some liquid sightseeing! That evening we went up to our hotel’s rooftop restaurant for a very nice farewell to Riga dinner. It had rained on and off all day and the weather was so cool and blustery that they had thick wool shawls available to keep the diners warm.  It seemed only fitting to have cheesecake with lingonberries for dessert.

The rest of our Latvia pictures are available here.

Up Next: Lithuania