Winter Break pt I

Billie and I met up in Barcelona on the 23rd of December to begin our 3 week winter vacation. After much debate and research, we decided to brave the wintery weather and head to a place neither of us had been, Poland. After a few nights in Barça that were pretty dull (everything was closed due to Christmas) we made it to the airport and onto our flight to Warsaw, without even having to try and jam our carry-on bags into the little box. To explain, I should note that generally when we travel, we do so on airlines that charge arms and legs for checked bags, so we've become experts on jamming what we need into small bags, as well as knowing the exact dimensions of what each airline will accept.
We flew for a few hours, and emerged onto a snarling, blustery tarmac, all grey and white. A bus took us to baggage claim, and we wandered into what I can now say is one of the most confusing airports Ive been to. Nobody was at the info booth, no one had a map of the city, nobody could sell us bus tickets into town. We finally found the bus stop, bought our own tix, and were soon on our way. We somehow navigated ourselves to our apartment, where we were let in by a very nice guy who spoke no English. The apartment was very nice, though, and we quickly made ourselves at home.

 

Warsaw's center by night (dusk I guess)

Warsaw was almost completely destroyed during WWII, so the towns historical center was completely rebuilt in the following decades. It's therefore, unfortunately, a bit phony feeling -- they used old paintings and photos as a guide, so the buildings have old designs and layouts, but look very new, in terms of the materials and paint. It felt sort of silly to take pictures, like taking pictures at epcot or something. But they had decorated the old town very nicely for the holidays, and despite the cold (one random reading said with windchill, -2F), we had a good time wandering. We took a tour of the palace (boring) went to a monument for the Jewish community that had resisted the Nazis, and found an overrated, out of the way Indian restaurant.

  The memorial to the Jewish resistance in Warsaw

It honestly isn't the greatest tourist city (especially when the cold punishes any exploration or indecision) and we were eager to take the train to Krakow, 3 hours to the south. Unfortunately we weren't the only ones with this idea, and so it was standing room in the corridor he whole way. Luckily the corridor was where the heaters were, so it wasn't as uncomfortable as it might have been, and we could even sort of sit down, on the heater. Soon enough, we were there.