We came. Warsaw, We Conquered.

The third weekend in my dangerously busy February was spent with a staggeringly large group of other Canadians in Warsaw. We arrived on the Friday afternoon (in doing so, by the way, we made the weekend seem much, much longer) and proceeded directly to our hostel. After having checked in, we set out in search of food and some preliminary sight seeing around the hostel. We ended up heading for a big famous park but it happened to have just closed when we arrived. At this point the boys and girls split up so the girls could shop and the guys could throw away money on beer. After a couple of those (after a couple too many for, well, everyone except me) we met up with the others for a glorious dinner of perogies, pancakes and cabbage rolls. After dinner we went to some local bars. I headed in early because I was suffering from a bit of a stomach ache.

The next day we all got up when we got up, and headed out in search of breakfast.We then ended up walking around Warsaw's old town, visiting a gallery of portraits, eating a delicious lunch of borscht, dumplings and schnitzel in a old-school milk bar, and each taking lots of pictures of the same thing. We also made it to the park we'd intended to go to the day before and strolled around there for a bit. That night we went to a vietnamese restaurant for dinner and headed back to the hostel where we sampled some local wodka courtesy of Bianca and Arthur. This led to us deciding to go out to the club that was literally 20 paces from the front door of the hostel. (I'd neglected to mention thus far that the hostel was a mere SIX flights of stairs from the ground floor with NO elevator...). It was a pretty cool club (allegedly one of the most popular in Warsaw) but my stomach still wasn't right so I remained relatively sober. Interestingly enough, it wasn't this that led me home early but rather the unbridled consumption of alcohol of a peer who shall remain nameless...

Next day we got up and ate breakfast at the hostel. Groups sort of left as and when they came together and headed to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Museum. It was very interesting and quite well done though, at times, was hard to follow due to a lack of linearity that I find often helps in a history museum. After this we went in search of lunch and ended up in a shopping mall of all places. I wasn't too happy about it at the time, nor afterwards actually cause my food was attrocious. After spending some time in a cafe drinking too much coffee and eating too much cake, we eventually packed up and headed to the airport.