From Warsaw to Krakow

Sunday dinner was at a casual Polish restaurant near our hotel, accompanied by accordion music.  The unexpected repertoire ranged from Carmen to Moon River to Polish folk songs.

Monday we continued our tour of Warsaw.  We started with a drive to the other side of the Vistula River where there are many pre-war buildings that survived.  We then walked through the Jewish cemetery, which was enormous.  It had been in use for hundreds of years and is still in use today for the very small Jewish population remaining in Warsaw.  There were tombstones in Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian.  Although outside of the ghetto walls, the cemetery was used by a special corps of Jews who were allowed to bury Jews who died in the ghetto.  There are two open fields with a single marker that were mass graves of the ghetto Jews who died in great number from disease, starvation and murder.

We had requested an opportunity to visit the contemporary art scene in Warsaw, but that didn't really work out.  Either there really isn't a contemporary art scene -- which seems unlikely to me -- or our tour company was just not often requested to do this so had no idea what to do.  We went to a poster/framing shop, which wasn't much of anything, and then to a gallery whose display was about the history of the gallery, with no art whatsoever.

We thought we'd check out the technology museum, much to our guide's chagrin, since he wanted to stick to his standard itinerary. Happily for him, but unfortunately for us, it was closed on Monday.  So instead we checked out the lovely summer palace of the former king.  There was some excitement going on there because  the Portuguese foreign minister was meeting with the Polish foreign minister.  There was a very cool outdoor amphitheater, and a bunch of peacocks wandering around.

We then took the high speed train to Krakow.  This worked out well - very comfortable, with table service and everything.  It was just a bit over 2 hours.

Our hotel is in the old town part of Krakow.  It's an old building remade into a boutique hotel, and is quite lovely.  However, one aspect of the quaintness didn't appeal to me: a bathtub only, with no shower. I managed to change rooms today, because I felt like a beached whale trying to get out of that tub!

We figured we would have a simple casual dinner at the hotel, since we were tired from a day of travel.  Well, we arrived in the hotel restaurant to find that only a deluxe fixed-course menu was offered, with a choice of 5, 7 or 12 courses!  Since we were the only people in the restaurant and felt some compassion for the restaurateur, we decided to go for it; our "simple meal" turned into a 5 course gourmet dinner.  It actually was more like 8 or 9 courses since they kept bringing us extra things in between.  But the presentation was spectacular,  and everything was delicious.  Karl asked to meet the chef, and when he came out we gave him a hearty round of applause

-- Donna