Day 17 - Last day in Warsaw

We made the most of our last day in Warsaw!   The Warsaw Uprising Museum has been open since 2004, but it's about 3 kilometers from the Old Town (Stary Miasto), so always from most of the other sites.  We were going to take a bus, but were told that because of the construction for the new subway line, the bus could take up to two hours.  It was a chilly morning, but sunny, so we decided to walk there and then work our way back. 

The Warsaw Uprising Museum tells the story of the 1944 uprising that was the combined effort of Poles and remaining Jews, as well as a handful of people from other countries, to throw off the Nazis just before the Russian Red Army advanced on Warsaw.  The idea was to be in control of Warsaw when the Red Army arrived rather than in enemy hands. 

It took about 45 minutes to walk to the Warsaw Uprising Museum.  It opens at 8 am, so there were already some school groups there. Unlike the Copernicus Museum which was full of grade school aged children, these were high school aged students as this is a much more serious place.  While not as interactive as more recently opened museums, the WUM was still full of video screens and a few interactive displays.  At the beginning is a wall resembling the Jewish Ghetto riddled with bullet holes, and you place your ear up to the bullet holes to listen to the various sounds from the uprising.   

It's hard to follow the specific way one is supposed to see the various displays which are spread out over three floors, but it didn't matter. If you're familiar with the story of the Warsaw Uprising, then the order in which you see the exhibits and films isn't that important.  The exhibits are numbered, there are occasional signs that direct you one way or another, and there are also calendars with dates during the Uprising that can help keep you on track. 

After about two hours in the Warsaw Uprising Museum, we walked  over to a small Fotoplastikon Museum on Jerozlimieskie street near the Central Railway station.  These were popular throughout Europe in the early years of the 20th century, and there are still a handful in Poland.  I don't think I've ever seen one in the US. In the center of the room is a large round barrel with several binoculars around the outside of the barrel and stools under each pair of binoculars to sit in. The barrel goes around automatically and you look through the binoculars to see 3-D pictures of Warsaw in the first decade of the century.  It only takes a few minutes to see all of them, and you'll want to watch the show once or twice. For 4 zloty per person, it's worth a stop. 

It's mid-afternoon, the perfect time to stop at the famous original Wedel chocolate shop on Szpitala street.  A hot chocolate (made with real chocolate and not chocolate milk), a slice of Polish cheesecake with cherry sauce and a slice of warm apple cake with vanilla ice cream should be enough to get us through the rest of the afternoon.  And of course, a couple of dark chocolate bars for souvenirs. 

Next stop is the National Museum, the main art museum in Warsaw.  It closes at 6pm on Friday,  but is open later on other days.  This means we have only a couple of hours to hit the highlights.  Rick Steve's guide is useful for this museum.  For the second time this trip, we've closed a museum!

 Short walk back to Zgoda street, near Wedel, for dinner at a restaurant of the same name, Zgoda.  A short walk takes us back to our favorite place in Warsaw, Blikle, for a paczki dessert.  A last walk down the very trendy Nowy Swiat street, which turns into Krakowskie street, which takes us to our hotel for our last night in Poland. 

Do zobaczenia!