Warsaw; Saturday, 26 July, 2008

I headed out early from the hotel and was in the Old town shortly before ten, consequently I was one of the first into the Royal Castle and was able to wander around the state apartments in peace and quiet without all the tour groups standing in the middle of the rooms!

After the Royal Castle I had a wander round the old town and took in St Johns Cathedral, the old city walls, Little Insurgent Monument, Monument to the Warsaw uprising and the Barbican before stopping for some lunch.

With lunch settling I hopped onto the Warsaw Old Town Mini-Train for it’s short tour around the old and new towns. I then walked down from the old town to the trams towards the city centre and popped down to the Palace of culture and science.

The Palace was given as a gift of friendship to the people of Poland from their Overlords, sorry neighbours, in the USSR. It is a truly impressive pile. Whether you like the building or not (and most people don’t), you can’t help but be impressed by the sheer size and scale of the thing. You also can’t help but be impressed by the views from the gallery from the 30th floor.

From the palace I caught the tram out to the site of the Jewish Ghetto. Originally this was the heart of Warsaw’s massive Jewish community, and then in 1940 the Nazis forced all of the Jews in the city into the Ghetto and walled them in. Today markers around the edge of the ghetto show where those walls were. The site has several monuments in particular to the people who were taken from here to the death camps, and to those who were involved in the Ghetto uprising in 1943.

The monuments are located in quiet streets and parks, it’s hard to imagine on a sunny quiet Saturday how horrific the conditions, and the terror and fear were. Having looked around the Ghetto I returned to the hotel to drop off my bags before heading out for dinner.