View of Castle Square and Old Town from lookout tower

After flying nonstop to every destination on our trip so far, having three flights from Kirkenes to Warsaw seemed to take an eternity! Eventually, we landed in Warsaw, picked up our bags, hopped on a bus, and made our way into the city. While on the Hurtigruten cruise, Sara setup an Airbnb account and found a nice place for us in Warsaw. To confirm the booking, Airbnb required a phone number (which we don’t have), but we used my dad’s phone to complete the account. Turns out, it wouldn’t work in the long run because they sent my dad several texts just for the single booking.

We arrived at the apartment and followed the directions to get in, but there was no key in the lockbox! We were stuck on the street with no way to get in and no phone to get ahold of our host. I tried ringing the bell hoping that someone would answer to no avail. Sara noticed a restaurant nearby and went to borrow their phone. As she was walking back, a nice gentleman going into the building held the door for us. The actual apartment had a combination keypad so we were able to get in once upstairs. A few minutes later, the landlord arrived. Apparently, he accidentally had the keys in the back of his car! He apologized for the mistake and showed us the available amenities. After he left, we both fell right asleep, exhausted from the long day.

Milk Bars

Brunch at Bar Bambino milk bar

It felt wonderful to sleep-in with nothing to do in the morning (every day on the Hurtigruten cruise, we stayed up late watching the scenery and then had to be up early for breakfast which was exhausting). Once we were finally awake, we wandered down the street to a relic of the communist era: Bar Bambino. It’s one of the many milk bars that sprung up when Poland was under Russian communist rule. Milk bars were an affordable place to eat a filling meal. Almost all of the menu consists of some kind of milk product, leading to the descriptive name.

Stepping inside felt like going back into time. The interior was very basic and devoid of much feeling. A large menu dominated the wall, underneath was the cashier where you placed orders. The menu was entirely in polish but they had a printout of the English translations at the counter. Once we ordered and paid, the next step was to provide your order ticket to the food counter. They would have several tickets at a time and would hand out dishes as they were plated. I couldn’t understand anything the cooks said, so I guessed at what plates were ours when they were served. There were no angry Poles yelling at me so I think I was correct!

The food was quite good, and amazingly cheap. We ordered cauliflower soup, an omelette and pancakes with cheese for only $6.00! The omelette was different than expected; it consisted of egg, flour and milk making it very fluffy and tasting almost like a pastry. It reminded me of the omelets we had back in Thailand.

Free Walking Tour

Joined the free walking tour after brunch

As we finished eating, we saw a big group across the street with a “free walking tour” sign. We decided to join the tour and rushed to put our dirty dishes on the dishwashing counter. We then realized we didn’t have to hurry because their next stop was the milk bar! It was neat that we inadvertently ate at a place that most of the tourists just see from the outside!

Soviet mosaic

We stayed on the free tour for several stops seeing some interesting pre-WWII architecture as well as the post-war communist architecture. I was learning quite a bit about building that we would normally just glance at, but as the tour started to venture away from our apartment we decided to leave. The rest of the afternoon was devoted to laundry and working on this website. Our apartment had a washer but no drier, so I strung my kiteboarding line across our room as a makeshift clothesline. It wasn’t pretty but it worked.

Warsaw Old Town

That evening, we wandered up to Old town in search of the Polish specialty: pierogi. There were many people out and about enjoying the cool summer weather. As we walked, it felt like there was more going on then just a normal Saturday evening. We spotted some people in 1940’s era military uniforms clomplete with period guns. There were also many people carrying the polish flag with a large PW in the center and we even came across several live concerts packed with people. We eventually learned that they were celebrating the Warsaw Uprising in 1944

Near Castle Square, I saw several people at the top of a small tower. We walked over to see the price and I thought to myself that $2.00 would be our limit. We learned it only cost $1.00 for both of us, so we made the climb. After many more stairs then I expected, we popped out of the roof and saw the entire old town laid out before us. Everywhere we looked, there was something or someone neat to see. After taking a few pictures, we stayed to people watch for a few minutes. I was enthralled watching an acrobatic couple performing amongst a crowd of people on the street below.

Warsaw Old Town

Finding Pierogis

Zapiecek restaurant chain was rated highly online for having excellent pierogis. We got a table and started looking through the huge menu. There were so many different kinds of pierogi to choose from and with the option of selecting each piece a different flavor, where does one start? The server came by a couple times to take our order but each time, we still didn’t know what to get. By the time we had picked a sampling of the pierogi, we must have angered our server because she completely ignored us! After waiting for almost 20 minutes, we decided to leave and went up to the manager’s station to pay for our beer. That finally encouraged our waitress to move a little faster to bill us out.

Since we couldn’t try pierogi at Zapiecek, we walked to BrowArmia Krolewska which was a small brewpub I found online. We got two of their beers and even ordered some food without annoying our server. Their beer was made well and tasted good but nothing too exciting. For dinner, I had a potato pancake and Sara tried pierogis. Finally satisfied, we moseyed back to the apartment for a good night’s rest.

Selfie at Bar Bambino (second visit)

In the morning, we went back to Bar Bambino to try some more of the menu. This time, I didn’t do so well picking up our food from the counter. While we were eating, I noticed that an older gentleman had dumplings that looked much more like the ones we were ordered. I took our plate of dumplings and tried to communicate switching, but he didn’t seem to be understanding. I eventually gave him our plate of untouched dumplings and took our blueberry dumplings from him. Then he seemed to understand!

Tasty burger from Barn Burger

After another day of laundry and working on the website, we found a burger place,Barn Burger, for a change of pace. Unable to understand the menu, we just picked two that had some words I could pick out. The weird part about the restaurant was they didn’t close till 10 but started turning people away a few minutes after we arrived at 8:00. Maybe they ran out of food? Either way, our burgers were very tasty and they even had a good selection of beer!

We headed back to the apartment for our last night. Even with all the confusion setting up and arriving to our first Airbnb place, we were happy with the experience. The host was easy to get ahold of and fixed our issues immediately. From searching the website, it appears that Airbnb has very competitive listings in Europe and we were excited to book more. Unfortunately, Airbnb will not let us book a listing without putting a phone number on the account and confirming the number which is not possible for us while traveling. Guess we’ll have to stick to hostels or guesthouses.

Finally had a feast of pierogis at Zapiecek

The next day, we had to get pierogis before taking the train to Auschwitz in Oshheim, Poland. We visited another branch of Zapiecek and made sure to order right away. We had a sampler of ten different kinds of pierogis mostly with savory meat or mushrooms. They were worth the wait!

Warsaw, Poland Travel Gallery

One of the few Pre-WWII architecture

Constitution Square - architecture from the communist era

Soviet mosaic in ceiling - one for each season

Many people out and about in Warsaw

Warsaw Old Town

Free concert

Warsaw art commemorating the Warsaw uprising in WWII

View from lookout tower

Church near our Airbnb apartment

Sunset behind the Palace of Culture and Science

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