Pre-Steemfest Trip: Day 1 in Warsaw

goodwithtravels (57)in #travel • 5 years ago

With not long to go until Steemfest 2018, (my first one!), I've landed in Poland for a few extra days of sightseeing.

Every year over the last few years, I've taken a trip abroad with my father. In 2015 it was Berlin, in 2016 we visited Lisbon, and in 2017 we saw a Borussia Dortmund match against Bayer Leverkusen surrounded by the infamous Ultras at Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund.

Wanting to keep up the tradition (and to kill two birds with one stone), Poland seemed like a natural choice. With Steemfest taking place in Krakow, we've flown into Warsaw for a few days first, before taking the train down to Krakow.

5am wake-ups are never fun.

I am most certainly not a morning person. I doubt I ever will be.

Still, needs must and it is a holiday afterall, so it's worth the pain. Arriving at Heathrow and blazing through security was a breeze, so it made sense to stop for breakfast to get our trip off to a good start, and that's exactly what we decided to do. An hour or so later and with bellies filled with poached eggs, we headed towards the gate

The mad dash I'd like never to have to repeat: looking for a lost rucksack.

Heading to the gate, everything was in check. Time wasn't such an issue, though walking the length of HeathrowTerminal 5 does take time.

Having presented our boarding passes and passports, we were seconds away from boarding the plane when I realised I had left my rucksack, which included my laptop, behind. It really was the stuff of nightmares.

I explained the situation to the check-in staff, who told me to run, and I bolted across the length of the terminal to retrace our steps. No sign of my bag near where we'd last sat. No sign of it anywhere else we'd visited either, so everything lay in our first stop at the cafe we had breakfast.

Typically, this was about as far away as is possible within the terminal from our check-in point, but I just about made it in one go.

Still to this very moment I have no idea how, but my rucksack was exactly where I'd left it. To make things even more astonishing, my laptop and everything else was still inside. As the security lady told me, I was lucky for it still to be there, what with security these days.

Thankfully, a much less stressful flight followed.

After the rush around the airport, I managed to board the flight without issue and the journey itself (just under three hours if I remember correctly), was a smooth ride and 'flew past'.

Given my mad dash and lack of sleep from the night before, I was exhausted and used the flight to get some shut-eye while my father read through our guide books and set a sight-seeing schedule.

The first meal: delicious goats cheese gnocchi.

Arriving a litte too early to check into our accomodation, which I'd found through my go-to site for accomodation site, Booking.com (affiliate link), we found a restaurant nearby to stop by and grab a bite to eat.

The owner of the delightful Cafe ART of HOME recommended a few things, and in the end we both settled for the goats cheese gnocchi. Lightly drizzled in pesto and served in a generous portion, it was incredible served alongside a local Polish beer.

Next, a visit to a haunting but important museum in Warsaw.

With only a few hours of the afternoon to go, we decided to visit the Warsaw Uprising Museum.

I don't want to dwell too much on the horrors discussed in the museum, nor in any way glamorise it, though I feel it was a recollection of history that had huge imporance to the local area.

The museum chronicles the events leading up to, during and after the uprising of Warsaw in 1944. It was a harrowing but impactful museum that was exceptionally well curated, and helps remember an important piece of history that in many ways shaped Poland over the decades that followed.

Last, but not least, was a stop for dinner.

Flicking through my travel guide, a section called 'Meals of a lifetime' caught my attention. Quickly scanning it for options in Warsaw, I was delighted to find there was indeed a recommendation in this category in the city here.

The restaurant in question was called Warsszawa Wschodnia, a restaurant that believe it or not is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The inside had an open-view kitchen, which personally I love. The fact you can see someone's Octopus being grilled right in front of you, or see your own meal being painstakingly prepared, is pretty special sight.