WARSAW Saturday February 10, 2007

I didn’t write up this diary yesterday because we had a bit of a rest day as it was snowing most of the day. We started off by giving Jen a ring as it was her birthday and the Poms were going into their usual spin about the sky falling in because they had a bit of snow. 2,000 schools closed: 6 or 8 airports non-operative: trains delayed because the flakes were too big. They seem to have these problems every year and one of the talking heads claimed that the problem was that it snowed so rarely – well, apart from every winter that is!

The Polonia Palace Hotel

We caught a cab to the Gestapo HQ expecting, I think, something as well done as the Uprising Museum, but it wasn’t anything like that: just a series of cells and one office preserved as it was. Awful to think that an estimated 100,000 people were ‘processed’ through there. The area around the building was mainly parkland, looking really beautiful after the steady snow.

Comfortable, if cool, cushions on the seats

We caught another cab to the shopping centre Arkadia – we hadn’t realised that it was only officially opened yesterday. Rab enjoyed wandering around again for a bit but most of the shops had designer clothes and so were of very little interest. There were girls dressed in a  variety of gold lame outfits everywhere as part of the opening promotion. Some of the outfits were distinctly unusual! We stopped off at the ice cream shop at the end of the mall again and thought we’d try a milkshake. Big problem to explain but we finally got them and they were delicious.

We walked back to the hotel as it wasn’t far away and had a light lunch in the room after I had gone to the local supermarket to pick up a bit of cheese and bananas and a bottle of genuine Polish Vodka for Matt. (I saw why there were warnings about the beer in the visitors magazines. The cans were 500 ml and the alcohol content was 8.5% - so drinking one can of that would be the equivalent of about three Aussie standard beers.)

In the evening we went to another restaurant - Grandmother’s Cupboard. I had venison and Rab had pork, both of which were delicious. Rab had an awful cough and barked a lot during the night although she says she feels fine.

After another splendid breakfast we checked at the desk for a city tour as I had  not been able to find one yesterday despite phoning all the numbers in the In Your Pocket guide book. One of them had told me that they were not running because of the shortage of visitors in winter. Turned out they were wrong and there were two tours today – one at 10h00 and the other at 14h00. we booked the latter.

It had snowed heavily overnight and was still coming down quite heavily when we woke up but by the time we went out at about 11h00 it had stopped. It was pretty nippy but we didn’t feel cold. We mooched around the supermarket and other shops, buying a couple of drinks and some make-up for Rab and some Fahrenheit Aftershave for me in a spray bottle for me (I have been looking for it for years but it is simply not available anywhere in the world!). we also picked up some magazines and I went along to the Internet café to read my mail. The magazine shop had an enormous range of papers and magazines in dozens of languages – remarkable.

We had to wait for the tour guide to pick us up at the hotel and when she finally appeared I left the rucksack with Rab’s extra warm gear in it behind. We phoned the hotel and they confirmed it was safe  but it left us short of a few items and although it had stopped snowing and the sun even shone briefly it was freezing cold at -11°C.

We hadn’t realised either that the tour involved leaving the relative warmth of the minibus to walk in the Arctic conditions.

Chopin Memorial

The first stop was the Chopin memorial, which wasn’t too bad. We were in ankle deep snow which was beautiful, but the next stop was a longer one at one of the palaces – Lazienski – and everyone was really cold by the time we got back to the bus, so much so that no-one got off with us at the Jewish Memorial. The final stage of the tour was a walk through the Old City. Again a freezing experience which rather spoilt it for us all.