Having never been to Poland before, I decided to leave Sean behind for a weekend and head away with a friend to check out Warsaw! We got cheap flights (€60 with Ryanair) for a weekend in November.
We flew into Modlin airport, after the standard Ryanair dramatics and our lovely AirB&B hosts had a taxi waiting for us. There is a bus from the airport to the Palace of Culture, but it needs to be booked a couple of days in advance (include time for Ryanair delays too!). We got to our apartment about 11pm, which was pretty centrally located in Zgoda and in walking distance to most of the city. We had a cute little 9th floor apartment, with an awesome view of the skyline and the Palace of Culture. We decided to head for a stroll around the area and find somewhere for a quick bite to eat.
The Old Town:
The Old Town is a beautiful area to walk around. There are photos to be taken on every street and we walked around here quite a lot, drinking mulled wine and taking in the atmosphere. We briefly joined a walking tour where we got to hear a little bit about the history of the Old Town. It was quite cold, so we decided to go for a walk ourselves. The castle in the market looked lovely but the queue was too big to get into it as we hadn’t booked online. The city was getting set up for the Christmas markets and they all seemed to run from the Warsaw Barbican to Sigismund’s Column.
The City:
We didn’t get to see much of the city, but we did walk from our apartment to the Old Town quite a bit. There is a main street running between the two, that has a lot of bars and restaurants on it. The streets were decorated for Christmas and when it snowed it made the city look really pretty. We didn’t do any shopping – but did stroll around the new part quite a bit. Krakowskie Przedmieście and Nowy Świat seem to be the one main street connecting the Old Town and the city which we walked quite a bit. The bottom of Nowy Swiat has some cool bars!
Restaurants:
The Mexican – This was the restaurant we went to on our first night in Warsaw. We got chicken fajitas which were nice, the sauces with them were very processed and not fresh, and I got a margarita that was pure sugar. It did the job for food at 1am, but is not somewhere I would return to.
Shabby Chic – We found this little place on our last day and was pleasantly surprised! I got a mulled wine, tomato soup and smoked salmon on brown bread. Everything was lovely and relatively cheap. I would highly recommend stopping in here for lunch after a walk through the Old Town.
Basico – We came here for dinner on the Saturday night and the pizzas looked lovely. The service was shocking and ruined the meal for us. We had to ask a number of times for our drinks order to be taken. Based on the service, I wouldn’t recommend it – but the food was nice!
Klar: We found this little cocktail bar and stopped in for one drink. I got an espresso martini and it was amazing! I could happily drink them all night long. It was in a central location, between the Old Town and the city (more towards the Old Town). Recommend a visit!
To Lubie: We visited this cute little cafe for breakfast. The menu was limited but the food was lovely. We had the continental breakfast and got a big plate of food! The service was a bit slow and we didn’t get our coffees until we got our breakfast, but the place is small and cute with very few staff!
Things to do:
Massage: On our last morning we decided to head for a massage. We checked out trip advisor and booked into the place that looked the best for a 60 minute Balinese Massage. It was a nice way to unwind and chill out, and I would highly recommend stopping in here for an hour or so! The price wasn’t as cheap as expected – 50euro for a 60 minute massage, but it was well worth it!
Pub Crawl: We booked in to do a pub crawl on the Saturday night and joined a group of 60 others to kick off the evening. We went into the first bar and could get two ‘cocktails’ – cheap spirit and a mixer. We took a seat and started to chat away. The guide told us, we would be told when it was time to move on to the next pub. After some time, we got up to go to the smoking area, when we noticed the group had left without us. We gave them a call and after 4 missed calls they finally answered, to tell us that we should text them. We sent them a number of text messages and 40 minutes had passed since we lost the group – so we decided to head to another bar for a drink. The staff said a number of people got lost but managed to find the group – but would refund us 50% for going to the one bar. We had a bad experience of it, and neither of us were really drinking – so a sober pub crawl was probably a bad idea to begin with! 🙂
The Cocktail Tourist 