Warszawa

Finally, and after several months living in Poland, I faced the capital, Warszawa. The city which suffered so much exactly 60 years ago, when after the uprising of the Warsaw's people in 1944 the nazi occupation decided to eliminate absolutely every building in there. So we are now talking about one brand-new city, but keeping the style and architectural line it had in the past thanks to Bottarello.

The first thing I realised is that Warsaw is big, pretty big. So forget about going on foot from one part to another if you don't have so much time to spend, because probably you'll spend it walking and getting tired. Since many important places to visit are really separated it gives to the city...

Thanks to the cousins of Olga, we could leave our backpacks in the dormitory and start sightseeing Warsaw having as first choice the Palace of science and culture, the old communist style building, giving as a present by the soviets. The interest part of the building is its height. 115m which allow you to have a very good view of the whole Warsaw, of course, after paying 15/20PLN for the reduced/normal ticket. We are in the capital, life is not for free...

Detail “The palace of Culture”

Detail “View of Warsaw from the Palace of Culture”

After a nice talk with Adam and Kamila eating in a vegetarian restaurant (which very nice enchilada!), we went to the Uprising museum of Warsaw, where you may see how the Polish population stood up and started to fight against the German occupation. A complete collection of media is placed there, which is really worth it to see if the topic interests you a bit.

Another place, or I maybe should say icon, in Warsaw is "the palm", placed in one central round about where you're always passing by when moving from east-west or north-south parts of the city is needed. I guess you are thinking the same I did, a palm doesn't really fit in an Eastern-Europe country, but it's there. Globalisation... :)

Detail “The palm”

Museum of Katyn (Muzeum Katynskie)
Unfortunately, after going pretty far from city centre, and from the place we were sleeping, the museum was closed and we could only took some pictures from the outside :(

Łazienki park
This was one of the parts that I liked the most. Maybe because in Krakow there is no such a park and I really missed it, but I felt so good walking in this park. Many people, trees, flowers, even animals.

Detail “Hungry Squirrel”

The Lazienki park was a place where the king had his own summer palace, nowadays called palace on the water.

Detail ”Palace on the water”

And it has another building called white house really worth seeing.

During all these moments, we’ve been travelling by bus, tram or metro, seeing all the big streets that Warsaw has all over itself.

Detail “Long streets in Warsaw”

Actually the trip was a bit fast as lightning, going at 6:10 on Saturday in the morning and coming back on Sunday at 17:10…
But I think that I really enjoyed the trip. And one of the main reasons was that I had been reading about Warsaw in my lovely Lonely planet and we had the organized plan as well as very good guides who took care of us in the big city of Warsaw. Thank you guys!

I would also like to thank Olga, without you we hadn’t been in Warsaw and I could write these words as I’m doing.
I have to say that her improvements in Spanish are becoming bigger and bigger… ;)

And last but not least, I’d like to say welcome to the blog world to Alejandro, my roommate here in Krakow. Who is becoming a professional photographer since he bought a DSLR camera.
I have no doubt he will be a good one! Go Alex go! :)

Detail “The professional in Łazienki park”

You can read him here: http://aleromar.blogspot.com

I guess he’ll prepare some surprises for us as well. So, enjoy reading!

More pictures can be seen here:
http://picasaweb.google.es/f.martin.85/Warszawa25th26thApril09#

Thanks everybody who is following me. I really appreciate it!

Warm greetings from Krakow.