{"id":4060,"date":"2014-04-22T06:52:36","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T10:52:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=4060"},"modified":"2014-04-22T06:52:36","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T10:52:36","slug":"warsaw-poland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2014\/04\/22\/warsaw-poland\/","title":{"rendered":"Warsaw, Poland"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the places that I was most excited to visit was Poland.\u00a0 We visited Warsaw when Honeybun was almost 3 year and Sugarplum was 9 months old.\u00a0 I loved how the experiences we had were so varied and how it wasn\u2019t a huge touristy place.\u00a0 Most of the places we visited were not overly crowded and most things were very affordable.\u00a0 And while many people did not speak English, it was not frustrating or overwhelming, people were still very polite and eager to help.<\/p>\n

One problem we did have though was with the signage.\u00a0 Warsaw was the first place we visited that did not speak a Romantic or Germanic language other than Oslo <\/a>which has most signs in English.\u00a0 We found that we could manage with most languages since English is akin to both Romantic and Germanic languages but Polish is not at all related plus it has a different alphabet with different pronunciations!\u00a0 But we managed and had a great time nonetheless!<\/p>\n

Warsaw has many great little bistros with unique, fusion cuisine.\u00a0 After arriving midday and checking into our hotel (the Novotel again, very large, family friendly rooms!) we stopped by one of these restaurants before heading to the Chopin museum.\u00a0 Hubby isn\u2019t too into classical music, but I think even he enjoyed the museum as it is very interactive and he was familiar with many of Chopin\u2019s most famous songs.<\/p>\n

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That night we headed to one of the large shopping centers and had dinner at the Hard Rock Caf\u00e9 (I know, I know\u2026) We were amazed at the prices of clothing and such in Warsaw.\u00a0 It was much cheaper than what we found in Dublin<\/a>, even at the same stores like H&M, and ended up doing a lot of shopping while there!<\/p>\n

\"DSC06327\"<\/a>The next day we walked to Lazienki Palace, translated as \u201cThe Baths Palace\u201d and also known as \u201cThe Palace on the Water\u201d.\u00a0 It was farther than we thought and it rained (kind of a lot!) but the wetness of the day made for a great story, and I think a great visit to a palace surrounded (and on top of) water.\u00a0 The museum folk were not too happy about us bringing our wet buggy in so we had to leave it on the porch and carry Sugarplum but the palace was gorgeous, and basically deserted.\u00a0 The palace is situated in a large city park that we also took a little time to explore.<\/p>\n

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\"DSC06329\"<\/a>After our wet visit to the palace, we stopped for a snack in a local coffee shop.\u00a0 As we were enjoying our muffins, the window next to us was inundated with photographers and we noticed a young woman ordering at the counter talking on the phone and trying to hide her face.\u00a0 Apparently we were in the company of a Polish starlet and in the path of her paparazzi\u2019s cameras.\u00a0 So naturally, hubby took a picture of them as they photographed her!<\/p>\n

\"DSC06330\"<\/a>That afternoon we visited what remained of the ghetto wall from World War II.\u00a0 It was tricky to find and took us into some really sketchy areas, but I\u2019m glad we took the time to track it down.\u00a0 We got a chance to wander outside the mainstream area of Warsaw and see some of the parts where most visitors don\u2019t go and to see some history along the way.<\/p>\n

After tracking down the wall, we went to the Warsaw Uprising Museum which chronicles the Polish attempt at liberate themselves from the German Nazis which resulted in destruction of much of the city.\u00a0 The Museum is partially interactive and while we liked it, it was very busy and some of the exhibits were hard to navigate.\u00a0 The girls also started getting frustrated with how long it took us to get through reading everything.\u00a0 There were some special things for kids like newspapers they could collect throughout the exhibit but it was aimed at older kids and didn\u2019t do much for Honeybun.<\/p>\n

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\"DSC06365\"That evening we wandered to the Old Town area.\u00a0 The Old Town Market Place is still largely walled and very much like it was hundreds of years ago.\u00a0 On the way there we passed by the Royal Castle and more touristy part of the Old Town.\u00a0 I loved the architecture and history everywhere as we wandered down the streets.\u00a0 This is also where we found many stores with traditional handicrafts, jewelry and other handmade items.\u00a0 We ate a traditional dinner at a restaurant in the Market Place then wandered around the walls and Barbican which was part of the original Warsaw fortification.<\/p>\n

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The next day we took the bus to Wilanow Palace.\u00a0 Like most European cities, Warsaw has a great network of streetcars and buses as well as many underground pedestrian walkways and tunnels to help avoid the traffic at street level though we found many of these hard to navigate with our double buggy as the elevators were older, slow and not very reliable!<\/p>\n

Wilanow Palace is located outside the main city but was easy enough to get to.\u00a0 The palace dates back to the 1600s and remained intact through Poland\u2019s tumultuous history including World War II.\u00a0 The extravagant and vast palace reminded me of the many other palaces we visited around Europe including Versailles outside Paris<\/a>, Schonnbrun in Vienna <\/a>and Catherine\u2019s Palace or Peterhof in St. Petersburg.\u00a0 Wilanow was beautiful though it was much busier than Lazienki Palace and again we were not allowed to take in the buggy so had to carry Sugarplum.\u00a0 We also got scolded at one point for Honeybun\u2019s behavior (I don\u2019t remember if she was being too loud, touching things or possibly running but I know she was not out of control!)<\/p>\n

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\"DSC06448\"That last night we finally visited the Palace of Science and Culture which is the tallest building in Poland and we had kept our eye on it throughout our visit (mostly because it was near our hotel and so always led us home!)\u00a0 Hubby had been fascinated with the building which was built by the Soviets during the 1950s due to his interest in all things Russia.\u00a0 The building now houses conference and exhibition halls as well as offices and there is a viewing terrace where you can visit to overlook the city though it is pretty windy up there and was quite chilly when we visited.\u00a0 In addition to the tower, we also visited the small evolution exhibit which was there at the time.<\/p>\n

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I would love to go back to Poland some day and see more of the country.\u00a0 There is so much history with so many time periods and events represented to interest and entertain most anyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the places that I was most excited to visit was Poland.\u00a0 We visited Warsaw when Honeybun was almost 3 year and Sugarplum was 9 months old.\u00a0 I loved how the experiences we had were so varied and how it wasn\u2019t a huge touristy place.\u00a0 Most of the places we visited were not overly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[164,128,196,195,49,197,63,194],"class_list":["post-4060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tiny-travellers","tag-kids","tag-museum","tag-palace","tag-poland","tag-travel","tag-traveling","tag-traveling-tuesday","tag-warsaw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4060"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4095,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4060\/revisions\/4095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}