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Poland
  • Tim Lynette Wilkins
  • Tim Lynette Wilkins

Poland

A 8-day adventure by Tim Lynette Read more
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  • Trip start
    May 30, 2019
    Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler
    Square and royal castle, our apartment at the back of the square
    Lunch in the old town squareDetail of one of the reconstucted buildingsOur apartment in the castle squareCastle square from our apartmentSeventeenth century royal castle, rebuilt in the sixties

    Arrival in Warsaw

    May 30, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

    The travel worked ok, after leaving 45 minutes late, and the apartment was ready for us move in. It's right in the heart of old Warsaw and is light and airy and well-appointed, so every thing is fine. I was surprised to find that I really like Warsaw, the modern parts are full of trees and parks, the streets are wide and tree-lined and everywhere is clean and tidy. The city was turned to rubble in the war, and before the Germans left they demolished and blew up absolutely everything, even blowing up the cobbles in the streets. After the war the communists carefully reconstructed the old town, using old paintings as guides as to what it looked like, so today it's an old medieval city, but built in the sixties and seventies. It should feel like Disneyland, but it doesn't!Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler

    Luton airport

    May 30, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C

    Luton airport, as always, is a massive building site. This time they are constructing a rapid transit to Luton Parkway train station (I suppose it does need it). This means the drop off zone, even for disabled passengers, is about half a mile back up the road. Luckily we are travelling light with only carry on bags - it would have been a nightmare with big heavy cases.
    However, once inside and through security, there is an Enrique Tomas shop selling wonderful Spanish jamon and we just had to have a jamon and manchego baguette for breakfast. Yum.    Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler
    The Barbican fort just outside the city gate
    Little insurgent monument to the children in the Warsaw uprisingCity walls

    Warsaw by night

    May 31, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C

    Despite having had platefuls of pierogis, polish sausage and beer for lunch in the sun, we still went out for dinner and managed to put away most of two courses each. Delicious cured herring and rye and sausage soup for starters, followed by roast half a duck and wild boar. The duck with roast potatoes and apples and a blackcurrant sauce was one of the best duck dishes we've had anywhere. Feeling bloated we went for a walk round the walls of the old city (reconstructed) before retiring.Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler
    St John's cathedral
    Marie Curie home and museumEarly periodic tablePhoto of the giants of early 20C physicsMonument to the unsuccessful ghetto uprisingReplica of a 17C synagogue wooden ceiling

    First day of sightseeing

    May 31, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C

    After a good night's sleep and leisurely breakfast, we wandered round the old town and out of the gate into the new town which despite its name dates from the 15C. It too has been reconstructed in parts but one building is the home of Marie Curie who then went by her Polish name of Maria Sklodowska. It is now a museum to her and is a fascinating place containing some of the lab equipment and lots of photos and possessions. They were a remarkable family of teachers, doctors, physicists, chemists, bioengineers with several Nobel prizes between them. Some lovely photos of Marie attending science symposiums with a roll call of the greats of science in the early 20C.
    Then on to another museum - a new one celebrating the contribution of Jews to Poland from the 13C onwards to their extermination. The section on the Warsaw ghetto was particularly sobering, it's incredible that one section of humankind can do that to another section, but of course things continue to the present day. A very impressive museum which makes us realise how little we know about eastern Europe.
    It's been another beautiful warm and sunny day much better weather than we expected.    Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler
    Cathedral
    CathedralCathedralJesuit churchDifferent kind of cathedralChopin concert

    Saturday - cathedral and museum

    June 1, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    Warsaw was where Chopin was born and brought up so the city has Chopin stuff everywhere (even the airport is called Warsaw Chopin) so last night we went to a small Chopin concert just round the corner from the apartment. Today was cloudy and overcast at first then very humid and at 24 degrees very hot and then sunny so a cool visit to the cathedral, which is pleasantly light and airy, was very welcome. It was destroyed of course and rebuilt. It is full of wonderful stained glass windows - nearly full height, roof to floor, - and really well done. Next door is the Jesuit church - also very plain and tasteful. Then on to the national museum - a 20 minute walk in the sun before we found that the antiques section - Egyptian, Roman etc - was closed for renovation. However they have a very fine section from an excavation in Nubia of a cathedral stuffed full of frescos dating to the 8th to 12th centuries, and that was wonderful, and lots of Coptic and meroitic material.

    Saturday seems to be family fun day in Warsaw and all the squares and streets are packed with people. The square outside the apartment has buskers and jugglers and balloon sellers and dancing groups ..... Now .. Where can we find somewhere quiet to eat??    Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler

    On to Krakov

    June 2, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    Last night in the main square in Warsaw there was a young lady with a beautiful voice playing a big strange looking instrument. Anyone know what it is? Could it be a zither played vertically?

    Today we got the train from Warsaw to Krakov. The high speed train running from Gdansk to Krakov, so all the way across Poland from north to south. Very comfortable, on time, and very popular. It's even hotter in Krakov than Warsaw, 25degrees today. The apartment is lovely, on the sixth floor of a modern block, overlooking a park and with a sun terrace with deck chairs.Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler
    Breakfast on the balcony
    Central squareCloth hall market buildingTop of Mariaki churchRichly painted inside of Mariaki churchSt Barbara church 14C

    Krakow old town

    June 3, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C

    We didn't take to Krakow as quickly as we did to Warsaw which surprised us as it's original medieval buildings rather than reconstructed and undoubtedly attractive. We think the main reason is the large number of tourists, mostly foreign, whereas the people in Warsaw seemed mainly Polish families and schoolkids. There are lots of touts for tours and restaurants and it generally feels over touristy.
    Still breakfast in the sun on our balcony was lovely. Several places today were closed or only open restricted hours despite the times they publish. One museum was a big disappointment- the excavations under the main square have been preserved in situ and an underground museum created. The ruins were interesting and some artefacts looked nice but the only explanations were on touch screens that gave generic screeds rather than telling you what each piece was. We got frustrated and gave up. There are some nice churches, old city walls and gate, a Barbican fort but what we enjoyed most was shopping in the market and bringing it home for lunch.    Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler
    Krakow cathedral 14C
    Nave of cathedralSide altar with black crucifixRoyal tombs in the cryptWawel castleDance of death painting

    Long day sightseeing - 1

    June 4, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 25 °C

    Starting with the castle and cathedral, which was where Poland's kings and queens were crowned and buried, and as such seems be one of the places they take huge groups of schoolchildren to appreciate their heritage. So the queues to get in were huge and, as it's quite a small cathedral , inside it was completely rammed. You really couldn't see much through the crowds. You could also go down underneath the castle where excavations have revealed lower layers of buildings, including the base of an earlier church dating from 10th century, and as the school groups don't go down there it was quiet and peaceful, but sadly again even though there were cases of some of the artefacts found there showing life in medieval Kraków, there very few information points to tell you what you were seeing. From there to a nearby church in which is a 17th century painting by a krakowian monk that we had seen a copy of in Warsaw. Called the Dance of Death, it shows a ring of women from royalty to serfs dancing each with a skeleton, and round the outside panels of men from many professions, each also with a skeleton.

    Then a little walk into the old Jewish quarter, which became the Kraków ghetto, and a visit to a couple of the remaining synagogues, an older and plainer one, with an old Jewish cemetery attached, and one dating from the late 1800s, much more fancy with lovely stained glass windows. Hard to tell though how much is original and how much reconstructed after the war, because the Germans demolished everything they could.    Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler
    Jewish cemetery
    19C richly decorated synagogueStained glass windows in the synagogueTramLeonardo's Lady with an ermineWawel castle and cathedral floodlit, from our balcony

    Long day sightseeing - 2

    June 4, 2019 in Poland ⋅ 🌙 20 °C

    After the Jewish quarter a tram ride back to the apartment, a cup of tea and a rest! Then to the national museum in Kraków to see one of my favourite paintings in the flesh - Leonardo's lady with an ermine. Painted in 1490, the lady is a seventeen-old mistress of Leonardo's patron the duke of Milan, and it's beautiful! But there we were again in a crowd - it's in a decent sized room, on its own, but the room was full of a school group, being lectured at, at great length, in polish of course, about the painting so nobody else could get near. Eventually we managed to see it, just before a party of Chinese tourists arrived, and yes it's wonderful, but I'm getting very fed up of the overcrowding here. There were supposed to be some fine mediaeval stained glass windows in the museum that we wanted to see, but we couldn't find them and none of the museum staff, including the information desk , knew anything about them so we decided that they must been moved somewhere else some time ago.

    Stopped on the way home and bought big slices of butterscotch cheesecake - the best thing we've done all day!    Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler
    Entrance to auschvitz
    Auschvitz ovensCanisters of Zyklon B cynanideEntrance to birkenhauBirkenhau gas chambersThe end of the line

    Auschvitz - Birkenau

    June 5, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    We decided in the end that it would wrong to come here and not go to auschvitz. It was a long hot day at auschvitz, and birkenau, but I'm glad we went, even though we've seen the pictures and know the basics it just really underlines the deliberate planning of such horrors. Auschvitz was designed first as a slave labour camp, then birkenau, next to it, for mass extinction. Between 1941 and 1944 over 1,000,000 people were gassed or worked to death there. Some 75% of the people arriving didn't even get away from the trains before being herded into the gas chambers. Only men and women without children who were fit for work were taken into the camp, the rest, including all the children , were stripped of clothes and belongings and gassed.

    Today between 10,000 and 12,000 people a day make the journey to see for themselves.    Read more

  • Tim Lynette WilkinsPolandTraveler
    Cult statue, ukraine, xth century
    Bronze ibis, egypt, 600 BCJar with human figure, peru, 1000 ADChilds cap with bird on, peru, 1000ADInterior of churchGlass bracelets, celtic, Krakow, 300 BC

    Leaving Krakow

    June 6, 2019 in Poland ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    Our flight wasn't due to leave till 18.45 so we had most of the day spare. We bought some stuff then went to the tiny church of st. Adalbert in the main square. It dates to before 1000 a.d., but was rebuilt in the seventeenth century. It's just one small room with a domed roof and some unusual frescos. Then we went to the archaeological museum which has a large collection from ancient Egypt, from early pre-dynastic to late periods. Most of the material was very late - from Greek and Roman times, and not really of great quality. The galleries were very, very dark and badly lit so it was difficult to make out what was there. They also have a good collection of Peruvian, pre-inca material, which was very good and much better displayed. It was one man's collection from his time working on engineering projects, and he clearly loved the civilisations that existed along all the river valleys along the west coast. It was great to see lots of things that we could recognise from our big trip there a few years ago. Also interesting was a floor of material showing the development of civilisation in the valleys and hills around Kraków. Didn't know the celts were there around 300 BC.

    Just time for a long, and very good, lunch and a sit in the park before catching our flight. It was delayed half an hour or so, but we were still home in time to see the end of England's footballers messing it up again!    Read more

    Trip end
    June 6, 2019
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