After Graeme battling the blocked shower drain on the eighth floor! We were up and had a good breakfast, then out with the local expert at 8 am. Maria is a lovely lady who was quite humorous and made everything really interesting. She took us walking around and explained about Warsaw’s history, pointing out the many monuments all through the city, explaining that 80% of the city was destroyed during World War II. After that she left us to her own devices for a couple of hours and we and the other kiwis sat in the old town square and had a meal and beers - as it was 5 o’clock somewhere- Graeme had a mix of four different Polish sausages from white to black in colour and boy they smelled of garlic and spices. Mine was a Camembert cheese, delicious and very indulgent! We needed rehydrating as it was already 33° before lunchtime!
Gray bought another city badge for his hat – it is a straw hat this time – last trip it was his cheese cutter cap as it was so cold! This year it is to keep cool ha ha.
We met Maria again and we were off to the old town to have a look at the buildings and some churches and then onto a tour around the Warsaw uprising, specifically. Then we jumped back on the bus and went round to the Muzeum Polskiej Wodki- otherwise known as the vodka Museum! The reception area was really cool with bottles of vodka all lit up on shelves with mirrors behind them everywhere and a running waterfall in the glass behind the reception desk.
The tour was okay, it was very long and a lot of standing and I was just so overheated and dry I wasn’t feeling great - should have drunk more water, so I found a couple of corners to sit in quietly until the tour ended. Then rhey took us into a large bar area after and we got to taste three vodkas, told how to drink them and about the different tastes and ingredients. Pity we are going to be travelling on as you could buy the vodkas for between $4 and $18 – so cheap! :-) . Back onto the bus and we headed back to the Westin hotel to cool down and get ready to go out again for dinner, its pretty busy on tour each day.
Quite a few of us didn’t do the Chopin concert, so we went across the road for dinner at a restaurant for dinner. It was still 30° at 7 pm – they said after this been the hottest week of the year, it will cool down in about 3 days time, thank God! So hot walking around in the sun on the tours each day, Gray has a mean neck/t-shirt tan now!
Dinner was a complete disaster, as the service was really slow despite being half empty and the waitress forgot to order my meal she explained, but didn’t tell us until she bought the other three meals over?! Was a real mess and I had to wait half an hour for my meal to come so weren’t really very impressed. Onwards, and back over to the hotel catch up on the blog, showers, pack our suitcases need to be out at 7 am tomorrow and we will be off to Berlin.
We decided to eat much lighter today as we have been really over eating and feeling stodgy! So after a light breakfast we were on the bus to Berlin. It is only 5hrs 19 mins on Google maps, but for some reason it is taking us 8 hours, maybe because the bus is limited to about 80 kms an hour? It was a long days driving but we are getting used to it and I went down the back so we could spread out a bit – realised I had some Netflix movies downloaded on my phone – hooray! Don’t know why I didn’t think of this before as I was able to watch one and a half of the Harry Potter movies :-). I have just read the latest screenplay at home and couldn’t remember a lot of it so was good to watch them again and they passed the time.
With sore backsides! We arrived at the NH collection checkpoint Charlie hotel, another really upmarket hotel. They have all been really good on this insight tour I have to say and we seem to have a lot of included dinners, which you don’t often have. We had a couple of hours and then out for dinner with the group.
The group ‘Berliner dinner’ was fantastic. Alex our tour director asked us to leave any worries that anyone had and just go and let loose as it was all food and drinks unlimited. Apparently the wine did not taste like they came out of the bottles that they were in and they were all delivered to the tables opened! But that didn’t stop everyone having a great night. The entertainment was the right era for the age of people in the room ha ha, and we all had a ball up dancing in the aisles :-)
Back to the hotel at 9 pm – they make sure they get you in early and we weren’t allowed to stop on the way at any bars lmao 😆, so we were all off to bed after a good singalong on the bus, on the way back. What a great night and one of those memories you’ll always have.
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