Warsaw; Monday, 27 May, 2013

The original plan had been to just have a wander around town for a couple of hours before heading off to the airport. Unfortunately, I hadn’t taken into account how dire the weather was going to be.

I took advantage of a short break in the downpours to head over to the central station and pick up the hop-on-hop-off (thankfully with its open top covered for the day) bus to go on a tour of the city.

By the time the bus made it back an hour later the weather had deteriorated even further so I stayed on and went round another time taking in the sights from the opposite side of the bus.

On the second arrival back at the central station the rain had temporarily eased off to an unpleasant drizzle so I quickly wandered round to the Palace of Culture and Science to take in the views of the city from the top of the tower.

Thankfully the clouds had lifted enough to get some OK views for a little while, but then the cloud rolled in again so I headed back down.

I caught a tram into the old town and carefully leaping between cover made it to a café near the castle where I had a late lunch watching people getting soaked.

Around 3 the cloud suddenly parted and the sun started to shine, so I took that as a hint to make a move back to the hotel to collect luggage and then head out to the airport.

I was thankful I’d taken the hint as a few moments before reaching the railway station the skies opened again. It was still chucking it down a couple of hours later as the plane took off into a monsoon on its way back to the relative dry of the UK.