Warszawa

Waiting to drive to Toronto was the longest day ever. I only had to do a little bit of last minute packing and say my good-byes to Meagan who decided to ditch me to go to a concert with her boyfriend... OK, OK, it was her last day before she moved into residence at her college. Whatever.

I occupied my time like this....

 The finished product of these hours of hard work was this:

Not bad for 6 months!

Eventually, we hit the road and made it to the Toronto airport. I had to pack and repack my luggage because a) the suitcase was too heavy and b) my backpack had to be converted from carry-on to checked baggage (luckily this was free because I booked in June!). All I transferred from the big backpack was a pair of pajamas and my laptop. I'd done a two-week trip with a backpack before! What was three days! This is what I looked like pre-boarding. Andrea called me a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle:

The woman at the registration for Residence at ENS said it looked like I was carrying my house on my back. It should have dawned on me that I had to carry all this stuff through Paris in a few days.


My flight to Poland was an easy one compared to the trip to Australia from June - July earlier this year. I had the pleasure of being asked to move places twice by people that didn't speak any English. That's what you get for travelling alone, but it was really no inconvenience, except for the giving up the aisle bit.

The man next to me kindly put his leg into my seat area for the entire flight. I pushed right back with my leg, which he might have taken as flirty, but I assure him now that it wasn't. I was just kindly body-languaging that if he wanted more space, he should have paid for First Class. ;)

The best part of the flight was reading the letters of a few friends that made me promise not to open them until I got on the plane. I was anticipating being very weepy, but they turned out to be really funny and instead of suppressing tears, I was supressing giggles.

My arrival in Poland was smooth sailing. I didn't yet have to worry about all that luggage. I bought a 24-hour transit pass at the airport and asked the women for directions. They must have thought I was slow because when I passed them the address, they pointed to the area on the page where I had circled directions to the hostel from the airport. Oops!

One bus ride and a few minutes walking later, I checked in and started exploring. I walked from the hostel up the Nowy Świat road toward "Stare Miasto" or the "Old Town" which was reconstructed following WWII. There was a street festival of some sort and there were performers everywhere. The Royal Palace exterior was a little lack lustre, but I didn't really get a chance to go in and look around. It was the general buildings that really struck me. They were almost mythically old. It seemed like we were on a medeival street with the gravel and everything. The walk definitely required comfortable shoes. There are tons of hills and the cobblestones were a bit hard on the feet.

I wandered next passed a few random photo ops including the statue of soldiers near the Warszawa Library and through a gorgeous park in the middle of the city. I stumbled upon my next destination: the Palace of Culture and Science. I took a photo for some German tourists and then took the elevator up 30 levels to the panoramic view of Warszawa.
 

I headed back to my hostel and stopped for dinner on Nowy Świat at Zapiecek Polskie Pierogarnie, a "traditional" Polish pierogi restaurant. The girls dressed in "traditional" dresses. I moved places three times before I got a menu, but the food really was delicious and the servers were really nice. Thankfully, they spoke some English.