Warsaw or Krakow? Well, Krakow for sure! But that doesn’t mean that Warsaw is not beautiful or worth seeing but there is a “Je ne sa...

Warsaw

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Warsaw or Krakow?
Well, Krakow for sure! But that doesn’t mean that Warsaw is not beautiful or worth seeing but there is a “Je ne sais quoi" about Krakow that makes it a thousand times better. One of the things that makes Krakow better is the prices of absolutely EVERYTHING! I was super surprised to see the prices of food in Warsaw; in Krakow a plate of pierogi was 9zloty in Warsaw the same costs 21zloty… crazy!


Warsaw was very badly damaged by WWII so it has been all reconstructed.

I got to Warsaw mid day from Krakow and of course the first thing I did was to go on a walking tour. My hostel was a 30-40 min walk from the old town and when I asked how to get there the girl at the front desk said by metro and when I asked how far it was and if I could walk she said "Why would you walk?" so I looked it up in the map and it didn't look that bad. I decided to walk and was so glad I did because I got to see more of the city and walked through a beautiful park.




Then I made it to Warsaw's beautiful old town!


The tour started by explaining who the guy on the column was and why he was so important! Turned out he was the one who made Warsaw the capital.
Then we moved on into the courtyard of the Royal Palace followed by the beautiful reconstructed old town facade with colorful buildings.
View of the Palace and column.

Track of one of the tanks that came into town.


 This courtyard has the narrowest facade with only two windows (the one in the corner) but it expands into a much larger house. Back in the day the owner of the house had to pay taxes based on the front of the house so this tiny facade owner had to pay very small taxes but got a very big house in reality (this tax evasion loop hole reminded me of the houses in Plovdiv that were paying taxes based on the first floor of the house, so people made the second story larger.)


This is the back of the tiny 2 window house! (on the left)

 The plaza in old town was beautiful and very colorful! Warsaw was completely destroyed during WWII so now it has been all reconstructed like it used to be before the war and to Unesco world heritage standards!





From the plaza we walked through the barbican (defense for the city) which was also reconstructed using old bricks from buildings demolished in the cities of Wroclaw and Nysa.





We moved on to the other part of the pedestrian street passing though more churches and nice looking buildings.



As we walked we saw monuments relating to the Ghetto wall to remember all those whose life were taken by the Nazi Germans.

We then stopped by three ladies representing laugh, hope, and faith.

 s. And turned around the corner and ended up in front of the  Warsaw uprising monument depicting soldiers battling Hitler's nazi occupiers in 1944.




Church in front of the uprising monument
From there we made our way back to town and stopped at the other end of the barbican where we stopped in front of a child statue carrying a gun. The statue shows a young kid but the guide said that it was made that way to show that they were young but in reality those helping where kids sixteen and older, and emphasizes that no kids as young as the statue were ever given guns to battle.

The tour ended by listening to one of the many benches in the city that play Chopin's (a Polish composer) tunes.


From there I walk back through old town and went to check out another park with some beautiful fountains and then headed back to the hostel, this time in a bus!

For the rest of my time in Warsaw I walked along the streets on my own and checked out the architecture. Near my hostel it was very interesting to see tall glass building next to old looking ones.

Top of the Palace of culture and science.


old and modern!

Art students sketching

Looks like a fun way to see Warsaw!
Spent a lot of time walking on the pedestrian streets.



Fake palm tree to commemorate Jewish people.
Warsaw University entrance

Presidential Palace



The last thing I did in Warsaw was go on the Jewish tour.
The Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw was completely flat after the uprising and the end of the war so during the tour we only saw memorials as absolutely everything was destroyed.

Well... actually, the only originals are these short tracks and the cobble stones.


Before entering what used to be the ghetto on the floor we could see two lines and words that said "Ghetto wall 1940-1943." The Warsaw ghetto was the biggest in occupied Europe and it was sad to see how it all ended up so flat, completely destroyed!


These two pictures below show how the ghetto looked from above before and after war! Crazy!

These banners showed life in the Ghetto during the Nazi occupation, it was heart breaking to read the stories and to see how a town ended up being just ashes and debris. During this time there were many pictures taken, some people would even go undercover to take photos and show the world what was going on in Poland!



This man was quite important; Jan Karski was a Pole and part of the resistance that was gathering information and proof about the genocide. He even flew to the US and talked to President Roosevelt about what was happening but no help
was given!

We then stopped in front of the Polin museum and saw the uprising monument: Victory. This monument is the same as the one in Nad Vashem in Israel (this is the original one.)

Behind the monument in the Polin museum, the building itself symbolizes Moses going through the red sea.
Polin museum in the back.

 We kept walking and stopped by a hill. Underneath this hill there is a bunker where Jewish people hid and after the uprising started 300 Jews were found by the Nazis, some surrendered and some decided to stay in and died after the Nazis threw gas bomb at them. In the Jewish tradition bodies are not moved unless they absolutely have to be so in this case the bodies are still underneath.


 The tour ended by visiting Umschlagplatz, the place where the Jews from Warsaw were send to the nearest concentration camp, Tremblinka.



I ended my day by visiting the Polin museum, a museum dedicated to show the history of Polish Jews. The museum is pretty nice, I felt like I was at the discovery museum for adults! One could touch a lot of things, a very interactive.
I do believe that it lacked a little bit of organization because there were so many things to do and touch that at the end I had no idea how anything happened.



The nice thing about the museum was that it didn't focus only on the war and genocide, it actually told the story (if you could actually follow it) from how the first jews got to Europe and Poland all the way to how Poland is today.
To be honest my favorite part was the part about the war because it was organized and it followed a sequence that made sense to me.



After the museum I walked back with Lyn, a Malaysian friend I made on the first tour, to old town, grabbed dinner, walked myself back to the hostel and said goodbye to Warsaw.


Now off to Gdansk!





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About Post Author

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!

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Hi! It's me... Andrea!

In this blog you can live vicariously through my journey around the world!

Please feel free to share tips or places to go!
Contact me: andreaheartstraveling@gmail.com