August 9

August 9th (sunny, warm and a downpour)
After a good sleep and breakfast, we walked over to the bus stop across a large field and with help from the locals, figured out the bus schedule to the centre of Warsaw. There are no tour buses like we were able to find in the other major cities except for a car tour amounting to approx. $70 Cdn each and we were not about to do that. My knee bothers me especially walking on cobblestones so I needed to pop a few pills today. After locating the tourist information office, we spent the next seven hours walking through and around the ‘old’ city of Warsaw. Interesting to note that everything we were looking at was post-1945 because the whole city was devastated during the War. Unfortunately for Poland most of the initial reconstruction was never improved upon as they were under the Communist umbrella. Speaking of “umbrella”, we were so lucky to be near cover when we were hit with a thirty-minute downpour of rain like we have never seen before (except on this trip).
I asked the young lady in the tourist office for a place to have perogies and traditional Polish food and she told us of a wonderful little restaurant where we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch. Walking back to the bus stop, we walked through a huge outlet selling everything in the way of clothing and other miscellaneous goods, but it was too warm to stay and shop for anything other than food. It became apparent that in Warsaw that the affluent shop on one side of the street and the ‘average Joe’ shops on the other. We returned the four kms back to our Camp 123 site and after a shower, it was so nice to just sit and relax and read and have a beer.
Talked to a gentleman from Grenoble, France who was originally from Montreal. Nice to speak English with someone else. Also, I have been on a bit of a winning streak with crib.