A week in Warsaw

Mid July I went on a holiday to Warsaw with some friends from uni and stayed at an apartment in Warsaw for a week. To be honest, I didn't think there would be much to do in Warsaw (considering we were going to stay for a whole week!) but  for us, skint students, cheap food and cheap alcohol sounded like a very good option. To my surprise, Warsaw had so much to offer and was an absolutely amazing place!!My First impression of Warsaw wasn't exactly that great. The city looked very grey, sparse and had too many dingy areas for my liking. (Maybe this would have been slightly better had the weather been better on the first day.)  However, the more I saw of Warsaw and learnt of their history, the more I was attracted to the place and found it fascinating!
Here are my recommendations on the places to visit / things to do.

Free Tours of the City
Orange Umbrella Free Tour (http://orangeumbrella.pl/) run many types of tours focusing on a particular area of the city or on a particular historical event. I went on the tour of the Old town, Communist tour and the Jewish tour. They were brilliant for someone like myself who had absolutely no knowledge of Warsaw and its history and would highly recommend anyone to go! Apparently there are these free tours running in quite a few European cities too!

Old Town 

Castle Square

Old town market place

This is a 'must visit' place. Can you believe that most of the buildings in these photos were reconstructed after WW2!  Because of this the Old town is listed on the UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. Warsaw suffered huge amounts of damage during WW2 and I was informed that 80% of the city was destroyed. The combination of the scale of destruction during the war  and the communist times post war, a large proportion of the city was still going through construction works. It would be quite interesting to see how Warsaw will shape its self during the course of the next few years.

Lazienki Park and Palace

 Unfortunately when I visited, Lazienki Palace, it was under construction work but there were still many thinks to see within the park complex. Firstly there was a very pretty botanical garden on the north side of the park. It was just the right size to have a nice stroll admiring the beautiful flowers.

For those who are into classical music may well know this but Frederic Chopin was born in Warsaw and have spent his younger years in Warsaw. For those who are a great admire of Chopin it will definitely be worth visiting the Fryderyk Chopin Museum too!!

Day trip to Auschwitz

If you are to visit Auschwitz, Warsaw isn't the easiest of places to go from but it is definitely possible! If I had planned this trip better, I would strongly advise staying in Warsaw for a few nights and in Krakow for a few nights because there are also so much to see in the southern part of Poland!

By all means, Auschwitz is not a place you would like to visit if you just want a relaxing happy holiday and personally it was a very emotionally tiring visit and would not like to go back. Having said that, I personally feel that for those who haven't been there yet, it is very much worth visiting. I'm sure everyone would have leaned about the horrific things that had happened during the Holocaust but there is literally no way of being emotionally prepared. Although I was going to  take many more photos, (because I felt it was such an important visit) I literally couldn't bring myself to take them. I'm not the type of person to get easily emotional but even I found it difficult to listen to the horrifying things that the tour guide was telling us at times. During the summer seasons you can only go round on a tour which  lasted a good 4-5 hours (comfortable shoes are definitely in need!). 

Vodka Bar crawl

Now, onto a more light hearted thing to do! When we were there, we couldn't find any organised bar crawls so we just got the map from  http://www.warsawinsider.pl/feature/warsaw-pub-crawl-1 and went on our own bar crawl. I didn't think there would come day for me to say this but Polish vodkas were amazing! Forget the ones that you would normally drink in the UK like Smirnoff! Flavoured vodkas are the way to go! They had so many flavours such as apple, cherry, black cherry, pineapple,  pear but my favourite one out of all was LEMON. 

Brunch at E. Wedel

Oh the hot chocolate at this chocolate shop was just gorgeous!! So rich and divine! The set menu which came with hot chocolate, fresh juice (which was amazing as well!), 2 croissant, 2 slices of baguette and the three sauces came to a grand total of £5!! What!? If you tried to get the same quality and quantity of food, it will definitely cost you more than double the amount.

I have definitely missed out quite a few places that I visited in Warsaw such as the Uprising Museum and the Palace of Culture and Science (also known as Stalin's Penis) as well as all the lovely (and relatively cheap!) cuisine that Warsaw had to offer but here were the main bulk from my Poland trip. I hope this post will inspire some of you to consider stopping by at the weird but fascinating city of Warsaw.