We're in Warsaw!

We arrived in Warsaw this morning.  We took a direct Lot Airlines flight from Chicago to Warsaw because it's a long enough trip (9 hours flight time) that to take a flight that required a transfer would just do me in!  Contrary to recent comments I've heard from Polish friends, the flight left and arrived on time.

I picked a hotel near Old Town (Stary Miasto) so that we would be within walking distance of lots of historic churches, museums and restaurants.  After we checked in, we headed for a walk through Old Town just to orient ourselves to what was available.  Warsaw reminds me of Washington DC - you could spend two weeks here and still not see everything worth seeing.  However, between the long flight and the walk, we were about to drop, so headed back to the hotel for a 2 hour nap.  We're getting old!

Refreshed from the nap, we headed to the National Museum of Ethnography (ethnomuseum.website.pl).  The guide book describes this as an overlooked gem of a museum, and that seemed to be the case.  Although the ticket price is only 12 zloty per adult (about $4), there were very few people there - but the museum's cafe was buzzing with young people!   The National Museum of Ethnography  has a wonderful permanent display of historic Polish costumes from several regions, wood tools, wooden kitchen implements, baskets, pottery and artwork.  If you want to see how your Polish ancestors lived and worked and dressed, this is a must see museum.  The museum also has permanent exhibits of Australian/Oceanic, African and Asian ethnography, as well as temporary exhibits that are changed frequently.

At this point (which I guess was 1 am Chicago time), we were hungry.  There are so many different types of restaurants, it's almost hard to choose.  We picked a lovely place near the hotel called Restauracja Polska Przy Trakcja (Polish Restaurant along the Route, referring the the Royal Route).  The weather in Warsaw has been cold and rainy, but today was lovely and the restaurant was open to the street, as well as having cafe seating.  The fare includes traditional Polish dishes (goose, duck, pork, borscht, zur, etc.), with very high quality and reasonable prices.  Robert couldn't resist trying the cheesecake made from someone's babcia's recipe (the grandmother was unnamed). This isn't a New York style cheesecake, but a traditional Polish cheesecake made with farmer's cheese, except this one had cherry sauce and a generous drizzle of chocolate syrup.  Dinner was accompanied by beautiful piano music.

It's really wonderful to be back in Poland!