Warsaw: Exploration Round Two
As I was on my own, I wandered into the Old City to explore further, including exiting into the New Town. The New Town features things like the Warsaw Uprising Memorial, the Multimedia Fountain, and more. During my time walking through the Old and New Towns, I saw a couple of guys playing tennis with a ball on elastic attached to the ground so it looked more like raquetball with no walls, a UN Blue March of Peace, more balloons that I think I’ve ever seen in one place, a mid-day concert, and probably a dozen weddings including a Toga Wedding.
Having explored the area in full but still having questions about things like why is a Mermaid a symbol of the city, I chose to join the 3:30pm Free Walking Tour. For the record, Saturday afternoon tours are crowded!! Fortunately the walk did answer my questions and exhaust me after my full morning of walking so I headed back to my hostel for some down time.
Upon arrival, I was greeted by my two awesome roommates, Romania and Canada, and told that the two odd Polish people left, and stole a girl’s iPhone on their way out – it’s on the security video. Just goes to show, those weird feelings you get about people may be right! Also, who leaves their phone unattended at a hostel? Anyway, the Polish people were replaced with two more Canadians, and we all ended up spending the evening hanging out at the hostel with a Spaniard, another American, and a Japanese guy. The Japanese guy is one of those inspiring people you meet on the road. He is traveling around the world over three years with his guitar, playing on the streets to make money everyday. After asking nicely he agreed to play the guitar for us, and he was extremely talented! I could have listened for hours although many songs became singalongs due to Canada’s love of singing. Side note: Ever notice how people who speak broken English can sing English songs well? It was a memorable night for sure and an example of why hostels are awesome.
The next morning I set back out to see the area that I had missed a few days ago when I ran out of time, Park Łazienki Królewskie. Turns out the gardens feature a number of sculptures, temples, a palace, a orangery, and then a separate garden with Chopin’s statue and a live concert of his music going on. The Chinese Garden of course lured me in with its beauty. I have a weakness for Asian architecture. And the Łazienki palace was beautiful with a lake both in front and in back with wild peacocks. I also love peacocks. Is that weird? Of course there were multiple couples taking wedding photos as seems to be common this weekend and the area was perfect for photos. I managed to see everything I wanted to before meeting up with Dana and Mario.
To my surprise, I found only Dana at our meeting point. Afraid I had overlooked Mario (short joke alert, sorry Mario!), I asked and turns out he’s going to meet us later to spend more time with his grandmother – a perfectly logical explanation. I took Dana to some of the highlights of my tour the day before and shared what I had learned and we enjoyed some street performers prior to meeting up with Mario and his cousin’s for dinner. His cousins have a two-year old and a few month old and that is how I found out Js don’t really exist in Polish as the little boy could not say my name. It was too difficult. Oops! On the plus side, the kids were happy and the restaurant had built-in babysitting which I have never heard of before. A restaurant with a play area supervised by babysitters?! Brilliant.
Dinner was good, cousins were funny, and good times were had by all before it was time to part ways. I spent the next few hours in the Old a Town with Dana and Mario trying to nail down their souvenir needs as they were departing early tomorrow. After going in a few circles and spending all of our remaining zloty, it was time for me to catch my overnight bus to Vilnius, Lithuania, and for them to return home. Saying goodbye is always the hardest part, but I am very eloquent in such circumstances and thanked Dana for marrying a Pole and Mario for being Polish to enable our meeting up in Poland – Not weird at all. With that, I was off to the bus and on to a new adventure – 10 hours in a bus!
