The Warsaw sign in Old Market Square
Warsaw: More Than We Expected
Poland’s rail network had already humbled us once our Wrocław-to-Kraków run a few days earlier. The Kraków-to-Warsaw leg offered no redemption. The train left late and arrived later, its carriages packed well beyond capacity — passengers standing between cars, sitting on floors, wedged into any available inch. We never did figure out the occasion. Whatever it was, Warsaw was clearly the place to be.
Our accommodation had its own ideas about timing. The host rang during the train ride to announce that check-in, already pushed to 4 PM, might slip further — a replacement cleaning crew, apparently. We arrived at 4:15 to find the cleaning still underway, dropped our bags, and set out into the city without complaint.
The old town rewarded the detour. It’s charming — energetic in a way that felt a step or two livelier than Kraków or Wrocław, the squares buzzing with what seemed a genuine mix of locals and visitors. Meg noted, with characteristic precision, that most of what you’re admiring was rebuilt after the Second World War: the streets look ancient, but the stones are relatively new. She prefers the organic character that only centuries of patchwork can produce. Fair enough — but the replica was still beautiful, and the energy was entirely real.
We provisioned at a local grocery store, got our bearings, and ended the evening at a milk bar. Polish milk bars deserve their own fan club: inexpensive, unpretentious, and generous to a fault. The cashier raised an eyebrow when we ordered just one side of potatoes for two mains. We held firm. Questioning if we should have doubted him — the plate arrived bearing somewhere between seven and eight good sized potatoes. which we struggled to finish. We ate well.
Day Two: Monuments, Markets, and More Milk
Warsaw wears its history openly, and Day Two was a lesson in just how much history there is to wear. We started at the Monument to the Warsaw Uprising Heroes, commemorating those who fought the German occupation in 1944, then paid our respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier before finding the Monte Cassino monument — a reminder that Polish soldiers, fighting alongside Canadians and others, took part in one of the harder-fought campaigns of the Italian front. Walking these sites in sequence, in the spring sunshine, among the flowers coming into bloom, felt like exactly the right pace for absorbing what they represent.
For lunch, we tried our luck at Koszyki Hall. It was, by consensus, too polished and too pricey — a market that had traded its original function for a food court aesthetic. Meg went looking for something more honest and found it in Hala Mirowska: vendors crammed into every corner, locals arriving with empty shopping trolleys and leaving with them full, proper butchers and bakers and cheese sellers doing proper business. No prepared food whatsoever, but a fascinating contrast with the gentrified version across town. Milk bar it was, again, and we had no complaints.
The afternoon took us across the Vistula river to the Praga neighbourhood — rougher around the edges, mid-renovation, not yet polished — and back again with enough energy left for kebabs from a local spot, eaten at the apartment. Cam logged over 30,000 steps on the day. A yoga class had somehow also materialized in there. He felt, improbably, pretty good.
Day Three: Parks, Chopin, and Stained Glass
Sunday in Warsaw is a quiet affair — shops closed, streets unhurried — and we leaned into it. An early trip out to Łazienki Park set exactly the right tone. Seventy-six acres of forest, ponds, and palaces sitting in the middle of the city; within minutes of entering, the crowds thinned to nothing and we were walking among ducks and squirrels with birdsong for company. We’d hoped to catch one of the famous Chopin concerts held there on Sunday mornings, but renovations have pushed the season back to July this year. No matter: our apartment had been providing its own nightly recital, the building’s concert hall below sending every note of a Chopin programme up through the floors from 5PM to 6PM and again from 7PM to 8PM. Front-row seats, no ticket required.
The afternoon brought us to the Holy Trinity Church, one of only two evangelical churches in Warsaw. The rotunda alone is worth the visit, but it was the stained glass that stopped us. Most church windows require some interpretive effort — familiar symbols rendered in colour and light, their stories legible mainly to those who already know them. These were different. One window depicted Moses carrying the tablets of the Ten Commandments; another, figures bearing the Ark of the Covenant. The images were clear enough that even we, wandering in off the street, understood immediately what we were seeing. Cam photographed them in detail.
Warsaw – A Capital City
Warsaw surprised us. We arrived with modest expectations — it was the third city in a Polish sequence that had already given us a lot — and left genuinely fond of the place. It’s harder to pin down than Kraków, less immediately picturesque than Wrocław, but it has a depth and an energy that reward patience. Given more time, we’d have spent at least another day in Praga alone.
On to Berlin.
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Travel quote – Live life by the needle of a compass, not by the hands of a clock
Cam and Meg.