Museums, Castles and Christmas Lights in Warsaw

Warsaw was a quick stopover of just two days, mostly just because it was on the route and we had never been there before. However, since it’s also in the European Union and we know it will be easy to go back to Poland someday, we didn’t spend as much time there as we might have otherwise. I hadn’t heard great things about Warsaw (everyone always suggests going to Krakow instead), but it’s surprisingly packed with things to do. We also got really lucky because it’s November, which is the month that Poland celebrates its independence–two weeks ago they celebrated 100 years!–so all of the royal residences and museums were free. The first day we mostly walked around, ate and enjoyed the small Christmas market open inside the city walls near the barbican. Old Town Warsaw is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to the fact that it was almost completely destroyed in WWII and was meticulously rebuilt using as much of the original building material and style as possible. The colorful buildings are a stark contrasts to a lot of the Soviet-style, utilitarian apartment and office buildings outside of the Old Town.

The Royal Palace is right in the middle of a huge plaza where peaceful protests were going on, street performers were dancing and playing music, and a large sign commemorating Warsaw’s 100 years of independence had been put up for people to take pictures of. We were able to get into the Royal Castle for free, but then managed to take the wrong route through the castle and walked through an entire art exhibit rather than the rooms of the castle itself, which we were kind of disappointed by. We then weren’t allowed to go back to the beginning because the castle was already closing for the day. Oh well.

We also went to Lazienki Park, which houses a couple of other palaces, the Old Orangery, which had a large theatre and many sculptures inside, and a large monument to Chopin. Again we lucked out with it being November because we got into all of the buildings for free.

One of the most interesting places we went was the Warsaw Uprising Museum, which was devoted to the failed Uprising of the city of Warsaw against the Nazis in 1941. The museum is free on Sundays, so we had to wait in line for a while and the museum was packed, but at least it was budget-friendly. The museum itself was incredible and huge and extremely interactive, however, I’m not sure if it was because of the language barrier or because of lack of previous knowledge about the Uprising, but we felt like there was important information we were somehow missing. Also, I found Emily and Cristóbal about half way through the museum and they had accidentally skipped an entire floor and had to go backwards, so that probably didn’t help.

Probably my favorite thing that we did was go about 25 minutes out of the city to King Jan III Palace in Wilanów to see their Garden of Lights display. The entire grounds of the palace are covered in colored LED lights, including a timed light show in one of the gardens that was synched to music as well as another light show projected onto the palace facade. It was absolutely worth the time it took to get there and the $10 entry fee.

Leaving Warsaw was a little sad because we were taking the train to continue on to Belarus and Emily was flying back home to Berlin. It was great being able to spend a little over a week with Emily in Berlin and Warsaw, and spend Thanksgiving with her! It will probably be the last time we see anyone we know for a few months, so I did my best to enjoy every minute of it.