Warsaw

One question, who in their right mind, goes to Poland in winter for a holiday? The answer, apparently, is three girls from California, who have no concept of the meaning of bone-chilling cold. In our defense, Joanna is Polish, she wanted to check out Poland while she was in Europe, and I figured it would be more fun to see the country with a “relative local” (a native born who speaks the language and still has family in Poland…no we did not meet them).

We landed in snow-covered Warsaw on Sunday and immediately realized the flaw in our thinking; it was instantly winter. Things started to look up once we got to our four-star hotel (booked at an extremely low rate either due to low prices in general, or due to the fact that November is surprisingly not peak travel time). From our hotel, we took a brisk walk through the city center up into old town, for a late lunch of traditional polish food (pierogi, barsch, and nalesniki). Lunch, surprisingly, happened to be incredible, and might have been my favorite meal of the entire trip. Despite being warmed by the food, it took a cab ride back to the hotel with the heat on full and a 2 minute sauna fully clothed (jacket, scarf, gloves, hat, everything) to get back to a normal body temperature.

After defrosting, we bundled back up again (this time layering on every piece of clothing I owned) and headed to dinner just down the street. Dinner, again, increased my appreciation of Polish food, and might have started an unhealthy addiction to beef tartar. Full from dinner, and flushed from the wine and plum liquor (which tasted more like Robutussin than anything) the walk back to the hotel was quick, but not painful.

Although we did not see much of Warsaw, (I still couldn’t name a single local site), I was already in love with the country. Despite the cold, how can you go wrong with a country that requires at least a few shots of high-end vodka before calling it a night!