Day 89 POLAND Warsaw

Today was to explore Praga, a suburb of Warsaw that was not bombed much and retained much if it's pre war architecture. It's was described as a hip bohemian area with an arsty culture. On the way to the tram stop, we saw marquees being set up with a strong police presence, and trucks that were decorated parked up the street. Ruby found on Google that it was for a parade at 2pm for Equality. (We call it Pride in Australia). Not totally trusting google, we confirmed with a bored looking police officer that the parade was indeed at 2pm. We decided that we would be back for that as it was passing right infront of our apartment window.

We took a tram to Praga for breakfast.
A lovely waiter from TOAST called Patrick offered free coffee or dessert when he found out that it was my birthday. Unfortunately we had already had dessert and coffee, and could not eat anymore. It started to rain intermittently during breakfast and continued so till early afternoon.

In between rainfalls, we visited 2 churches and on the way to the market square, we found a graduation tower. That is the tower stuffed with twigs that drips salty brine which we sit beside, inhale the salt vapours and is magic for clearing our allergies. It was so good to sit there for about 15 mins to clear the hayfever and Ruby's cold. I think the markets were scaled down because of the rain, only a few craft stands for kids to make crafts were there. This was our only day for shopping for souvenirs and we found none. The shops we wanted to visit were all rather far apart, and we decided to not risk getting too wet especially as Ruby was still getting over her cold. The only thing we bought was an asparagus pastry and a strawberry croissant for lunch back at the apartment whilst we watched the parade.

We had somehow always missed the Pride Parade back home in Perth, so it was a treat to watch the one in Warsaw from the box seat at the window of our apartment. The participants here did not seem as lavishly costumed and floats were not as decorated as those in Australia. However, there was still quite a large crowd and was it was great to see so much support for the Equality Parade in what we thought was a conservative Catholic country.

My birthday dinner was at WYRAJ, another Michelin Bib restaurant with traditional Slavic cuisine. When we walked in, there was a goth looking DJ playing what sounded to us like acoustic goth music. It was all very atmospheric and rather delightful. Everytime a new customer came in, our DJ would don his mask and perform a Slavic cleansing ritual with a sage smudge stick, waving the bowl around the restaurant, table to table. He cleansed the guest but the staff were super stressed out. Take away containers from an open shelf fell on the chef in the half open kitchen. Coffee that was made and sat at the bar for 7 minutes not served. Wait staff were being told off for something. Then an order that was plated then put into takeaway boxes after a lot of blah blah and gesticulation amongst the boss lady and her staff, and these boxes taken to the back of the restaurant. It was all very entertaining, and we had premium seats for this show. Food was wonderful too.もっと詳しく