I was in Poland for the European Writing Center Association Conference-- my mom and I had planned to road trip New England this summer, but then I was accepted into the conference which was scheduled for the same time as our road trip, so we went to Poland instead. First to Warsaw for a few days before the conference.
We arrived in Warsaw around noon on July 5-- after a very long overnight flight and nearly 4 hour layover in Copenhagen (which is not the most comfortable airport to be stuck in for hours. There's nowhere to sit-- not even at the gates.) and found our hotel, Castle Inn, in the historic district (even if you miss the somewhat small sign, you can find the cute traveling man hanging out the window).
Castle Inn is in the Koscielski family townhouse-- each room is themed to a work of art or literature. We were in the Orient Express Room (there are also rooms like Napolean's Room and Alice's Room).
One of the biggest perks of this hotel is its location. It's is a few feet from the Royal Castle-- easily seen from our window.
So, that's where we went first-- the Royal Castle (because what better way to stay awake and get on local time than to visit a castle?). The original castle dates back to the 14th century. It was expanded into a 5-winged building under King Zygmunt III Vasa (who has his own statue which is the center of the square-- he was wearing a scarf while we were there, though it's not clear why. One might think pranksters climbed up and put it there, but it was also incredibly windy while we were there, so it's also possible that he snagged a blown away, lost scarf.)
and then was further expanded in the 18th century under King Stanislaw. However, what is here now, as with much of the Historic District in Warsaw, is a reconstruction. The original castle was blown up during WWII. What is here now was built in the 1970s and opened to the public in 1984. It's quite large and so a bit hard to get all in one picture.
This is the courtyard you get to once you go through the visitor's entrance.
The tour of the interior is of state rooms and chambers like the throne room,
the King's bedchamber,
and his bathroom (which I think is wonderfully grand).
The coats of arms and frescoes have largely been recreated as well.
Much of the artwork that is in the Castle is work that was returned from the Russians who took in in the 19th century. Other artwork is work that is on display though not originally from the Castle.
The entire Historic District of Warsaw is charming and beautiful-- as I said, dutifully reconstructed to be just like the original, down to doorknobs and window trimmings. After visiting the Royal Castle, we wandered around through the small cobblestone streets to Stare Miasto (Old Town Square)
where the detail on the buildings is incredible. All of the facades on the buildings, with the exception of two, are reconstructions after the destruction during WWII.
Most of the buildings in Stare Miasto house restaurants, though there are also shops and there are apartments in the upper levels of the buildings. Most of the shops aren't touristy (in the sense of selling typical souvenirs)-- many of them sell jewelry and much of that jewelry is made of amber, an industry which is pretty heavily regulated in Poland (see http://www.polamjournal.com/Library/APHistory/Amber_in_Poland/amber_in_poland.html for a brief history and explanation). You can get anything from fairly cheap bracelets (which look a little plastic) to expensive and intricate pieces. Much of what you buy comes with a "certificate" of authenticity (really a business-sized card)-- I don't know what it means if you get a piece of amber that doesn't come with this certificate (I'm unsure whether it's not really amber or if it's Baltic "suitcase" amber, or that the vendor just didn't have any more cards).
In the historic center is also what remains (and has been reconstructed) of the Barbican, a defensive tower that was partially dismantled in the 19th century.
It's kind of just plopped in the middle of the historic center, still surrounded by charming and colorful houses.
We wandered around Old Town until about 6 pm and then went back to the hotel to rest for a bit (which is the cardinal sin on the first day, but we'd been up for more than 36 hours at this point) and then out to dinner at a small restaurant down the street from our hotel, Zapiecek, a restaurant specializing in pirogi.
The place we went was really small (what you see in the picture is pretty much the whole thing)
which made us think it was a cute, independent, family owned place. It turns out it's a chain (which we found out later when we were walking around and found other locations). However, I asked about it on our food tour the next day, and our guide said that despite the fact that their group wanted to find a more traditional and independent pirogi restaurant to recommend, they had come to the conclusion that Zapiecek's makes the best and most authentic ones, which was good to hear because I had thought our meal was pretty good (I liked the verification that I was right that they were good pirogi).
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| A juice concoction and Polish beer |
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| Spring Vegetable Soup-- really yummy and fresh |
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| Borscht (my mom actually ordered chicken noodle soup, but got this instead, which turned out to be really good) |
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| Three different kinds of pirogi with sour cream sauce. |
After dinner, we wandered a little ways past the Royal Castle Square down Przedmiescie St. (which is where discovered a second, larger Zapiecek)
and then back to the Royal Square as the sun set, where I tried to get some "artsy" photos of the square and castle at dusk, while the Royal Castle was lit up.
And then, we gave in rather early and went to bed.
July 6: Jewish Quarter and Food Tour
Our food tour wasn't until 1 pm, so we still needed breakfast and opted to have it in the breakfast room of the hotel, which was charming and had some nice breakfast options.
Right next to the Royal Castle is a tower attached to St. Anne's Church
which you can climb to get some really picturesque views of Warsaw, especially the Royal Castle and surrounding square and street.
Having climbed to the top and fought the quite considerable wind to get pretty pictures, we headed out in the general direction of where our food tour was meeting, though we detoured along the way to see the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
which, if you approach it from the direction we did, serves as the entrance to Saxon Gardens. Apparently, there is a change of guard every hour, though we didn't see it. The actual, ceremonial changing of the guard happens at noon on Sunday (we were not in Warsaw on a Sunday).
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was erected after WWI and is the only part of Saxon Palace that remains. The Palace itself was destroyed during WWII (apparently there are plans to reconstruct it, but they are quite expensive and haven't happened yet). The gardens themselves, however, are still there.
They were the first public park in Warsaw and date from the early 18th century. They were modeled after Versailles. (And, the pictures were taken early in the day, before it started raining, so the sky looks lovely in them.) If you walk through Saxon Gardens and exit from the opposite side, you're quite near the Jewish quarter of Warsaw, which isn't particularly large-- and if you weren't looking for it, you might miss it. It is nicely marked by this mural (I don't really know what elephants and giraffes have to do with Judaism, but there's not mistaking the Hebrew writing).
Nozyk Synagogue is in this section of Warsaw-- it's the only synagogue in Warsaw to have survived WWII. It was built between 1898 and 1902. It's an Orthodox Synagogue which gets its names from the couple who founded it (which is what the sign below says).
Usually, you can tour the synagogue, but on the day we were there, there was some kind of event going on-- one that merited police presence as well as plain-clothes security who told us that if we came back after 2 pm, we may be allowed in. We didn't have time to go back though, so we only saw it from the outside.
Located in the Jewish Quarter is also this church, which, even though it's under renovation (though I did manage to get a picture that mostly obscured the evidence of construction) allowed us inside.
From there, we walked to the meeting site of our Food Tour, passing the Palace of Science and Culture along the way.
The Palace of Science and Culture is notable because it's the most controversial building in Warsaw. It was a "gift" from the Soviet Union in the 1950s, though Poland was forced to pay for 50% of its construction and for the most part its nicknames, like "elephant in lacy underwear", are derogatory. And, its Polish initials, PKiN, is also a nickname for male genitalia. Apparently, there have been many calls to tear it down, but it keeps surviving and now is something of an icon. It also, supposedly, has the best view of Warsaw, though we didn't take the high-speed elevator to the top to find out.
Our food tour met to the side of a traffic circle most notable for the lone palm tree in the center. We met Marta, our guide, in front of this statue, along with the other members of our tour-- a couple from Sweden and their two, quite young, children.
As we walked to our first stop, Marta pointed out some of the architectural anomalies of Warsaw, most notably that there are wonderfully restored buildings right next to buildings which have fallen into disrepair and been condemned.
These two are on the same street; the one on the right is condemned. It's not that the Warsaw government doesn't care-- it's that it's often hard to tell who owns buildings in Warsaw. Many Poles were run out of their homes by the Germans in WWII and then when Poland was "liberated" by the Russians, the buildings were appropriated by the Soviets. Many of the records of ownership were destroyed and so no one knows who owns these buildings-- and there doesn't seem to be a statute of limitations on showing back up to reclaim them. So, the local government is reluctant to put money into renovating buildings for which ownership is unknown or unclear for fear that after the renovations are finished, someone will show up and lay claim to a building the city has just put a lot of money into.
The other shift in architecture you can see in this part of Warsaw is the mixture of pre- and post-Communist buildings. There will be a lovely historic, 18th or 19th century building right next to a basic, blocky "modern" construction. The intermingling of the two is pretty seamless.
Our first stop on the food tour was at Kamanda Lwowska
where we had fairly traditional Polish "peasant" food-- which started with a shot of vodka. This is my mom, who doesn't drink, pretending she's going to enjoy her shot. She did, in all fairness, take a small sip of it. But she did not enjoy it. (I, on the other hand, did the whole shot as instructed.)
We had two different kinds of soup as part of this meal (I've captioned all the photos with their names in Polish, though I can't pronounce most of it. And, the accents are missing from all the spellings.): cauliflower soup and beetroot soup with dumplings.
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| barszcz czerwony z uszkami |
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| zupa kalafiorowa |
We talked a lot about ways that soups like this were made make vegetables and meat stretch and how foods like our pork lard on rye bread and fermented cucumbers are pickled as an easy way of preserving food when there aren't refrigeration options.
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| ogorki malosolne |
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| smalec (pork lard) and chleb zytni i pszenno-zytni (sour dough rye and wheat rye bread) |
From here, we went to Solec 44 which takes its name from its address. It's much more "hip"-- located in a hipster part of town (which I think was recognizable as such if you lived there, but didn't look all that different from the rest of the area to me).
It did have a vast array of pickled offerings in jars (that's Marta, our guide, pointing to them)
next to a wide variety of board games (which were a welcome distraction for the two kids on the tour).
Here, we had a platter of meats and cheeses for which you can sort of see the labels to match them with the descriptions below.
What isn't listed in the condiments and garnishes is actual honeycomb. It wasn't uncommon to get honey served with the comb in Poland-- it's amazing how much better it tastes when it served "fresh" in that way. The "hot homemade mustard" was hot as advertised-- I can handle pretty spicy food and I could only take a small dab of it.
From Solec 44, we wandered through a park (the picture includes the backs of the others on our tour)
back towards where we had started our tour. We passed this church, St. Alexander's, most notable for it's triad of crosses (and, for me, its somewhat odd placement in the middle of a traffic circle)
on our way to Bibenda, a more upscale restaurant.
At Bibenda, we had seared duck breast with asparagus, bok choi, rhubarb, clilantro and sesame
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| piers kaczki, puree ze szparagow, bok choi, rabarbar, kolendra, sezam |
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| schab z koscia ze swini zlotnickiej, sos z pieczonych burakow i chipotle, mloda kapusta, sumak, musztardowiec |
Our last stop was for dessert, though first we ducked into a few alleyways to look at some of Marta's favorite "hidden architecture" spots. In the first one was these two buildings: it's a little hard to see what's remarkable about the first one, but look to the middle of the picture at the white trellis-looking structure on the building. Because the courtyards of these alleys are a bit tight, they don't actually get much light. So, they've added these white reflective surfaces to the outside of buildings to help direct the light into those courtyards.
This is an example of a mural on a building. There isn't too much street art in Warsaw, but there is in Lodz (which I'll get to). There is the sort of expected graffiti in some places-- tagging and other sorts of spraying on walls-- but there is a lot more actual street art in Poland (i.e. murals) than other places I've seen.
There are also some really lovely remnants of archways and decorative ceilings. These are both part of a passageway from the main street to a courtyard-- technically an alley, I guess, but nicer than any alley I've seen.
Our final stop was at Wedel's for dessert.
Wedel's is the oldest chocolate store in Warsaw-- this is the original store (though there are now many locations, and not just in Warsaw. We saw some in Krakow as well.) It's both a chocolate shop and a restaurant.
Here, we had hot chocolate-- like real hot chocolate, the kinds with actual melted chocolate.
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| czekolada tradycyjna deserowa |
By then, we were very full, and it was 5 pm. We walked back towards the historic district down Nowy Swiat (which is New World Street). It's not quite a walking street (until it becomes Krakowskie Przedmiescie which leads directly to Liberty Square which is where the Royal Castle is located) but it is a pretty large shopping street. And, there are some notable buildings along the way, including Warsaw University
with its sign dedicated to Chopin
who, according to the sign, lived and studied on the campus from 1817-1827, and the Presidential Palace
which was already in the process of being blocked off for the visiting United Nations the next day. We weren't particularly hungry after all the food of the food tour, but later that evening, we went back out to get waffles and ice cream at Kasa Lody.
The waffles make it count as dinner...
It was actually a pretty rainy and cold night, not so great for walking around, and so the ice cream and waffles brought an end to the day.
July 7: Lazienki Park and Traveling to Lodz
On Wednesday, we had to eventually make our way to Lodz (pronounced like woodge) because my conference started the next day. But, there are trains between Warsaw and Lodz all the time, so we had a whole other day we could spend in Warsaw. After breakfast in the hotel again, we decided to go to Lazienki Park, where the Palace on the Water and many gardens are located. It was a longer walk than to our food tour meeting spot-- a little more than two miles, much of which we had walked before. We did pass this monument along the way
which is some tribute to WWII, though the explanation was all in Polish, so I'm not exactly sure who it's for.
Because we were following the directions my HERE Maps app was giving me (a great app if you need to be able to navigate offline and off network), we entered Lazienki Park from something other than the main entrance, directly into the Chinese Garden.
The Chinese Garden is based on a model of Prince Kung's mansion in Beijing. This version of it was officially opened in 2014, though there has been some kind of Chinese Garden dating back to about 1780 when King Stanislaw August renamed the Road to Wilanow "Chinese Avenue". This is the northern side of the park. We wandered through the paths and eventually came to the White House, which is really more of a pavilion.
It is now a sculpture gallery.
Much of the interior of the Old Orangery was at some point plastered over, covering up the murals and frescoes, but there has been an effort to uncover and restore them. There are places where you can see them; in others, I think the damage was too much to restore. But, the restoration doesn't seem like it's yet complete.
It also has a small theater in which this orchestra was rehearsing, though I'm not sure for what. But, they let passers-by watch and record, so I did.
From the Old Orangery, we went back to the White Pavilion
which was built in 1774 as a temporary residence for the King until the Palace was complete. After that, it was where he housed some of his royal wardrobe and his mistresses. It's really quite small, especially considering it was a home to the King for a while. The interior still had some really nice details, a lot of which do seem Asian-inspired,
with the notable exception of the cherub-themed doorknobs.
the summer residence of King Stanislaw August Poniatowski. Even the peacocks like it.
This one does not have cherub doorknobs-- he went more regal and mighty this time.
The interior tours (unguided in this case-- one of the caveats of free-Thursday is that there are no docent guided tours available) includes grand rooms like ballrooms and receiving rooms
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| Chapel |
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| King's Bedroom |
There are also lovely fireplaces (which makes sense because even though it's a summer palace, we were there in July and it wasn't exactly hot).
Off to the side and in front of the Palace on the Water is the amphitheater
next to which is Cafe Amfiteatr
where we had variations of hot and cold tea, salad and sandwiches.
The other real highlight of Lazienki Park are the remaining gardens and grounds:
The Royal Garden
The New Orangery (which, as best I can tell, is now a fancy restaurant) with its sundial out back
and the Modernist Garden which is a giant tribute to Chopin. The pictured don't do justice to how big the sculpture is.
From Lazienki Park, you can also see Belvedere Palace (which it claims as part of its grounds even though its outside the gate) which is a Presidential Palace (the Polish presidents from 1945-1952 and 1989-1994 used it) not open to the public.
but Belvedere Palace isn't as pretty from that view, mostly because then you can't photograph it without cars and barriers in the way.
We spent quite a few hours in Lazienki Park and then, mid-afternoon, went back to the hotel to collect our suitcases and go to the train station to get to Lodz. The train ride itself was rather unremarkable with the exception of the struggle with my mom's suitcase (which could be an entire blog unto itself-- it's way too big and incredibly heavy even when empty and most of the time it became my problem, lugging it up stairs or trying to drag it onto a train or off a baggage claim carousel. My worst encounter with it was in Krakow, after which I told my mom she's no longer allowed to travel with me if that suitcase is involved. However, in Warsaw, a very nice young man helped her get it onto the train and up into a luggage rack-- less my problem but no less embarrassing to be seen with.). It's about an hour and a half from Warsaw to Lodz and a relatively quick cab ride from the train station to the hotel we were staying at: Andel's, which is located in part of what used to be the Manufaktura (the hotel is the part to the left of the gate).
Andel's is a gorgeous hotel-- certainly the nicest in Lodz, but really inexpensive by American standards (it's a 4 star hotel for less than $100 a night). There is still exposed brick in the hallways, part of the original factory structure, and you can see all the way down to the lobby or up 5 stories from all the floors.
The room was also lovely-- with one of the nicest hotel bathrooms (with a huge tub) ever. I especially like the pink under-lighting.
We got into Lodz in the evening, so the first night we only really had time to go get dinner in the Manufaktura complex.
The Manufaktura itself is a giant outdoor space of dining and entertainment attached to a huge mall that will make you feel like you are right back in the US. There was even an outdoor Zumba class going on.
So, supposedly, the outdoor area of the Manufaktura was designed to be like California-- which does explain the beach volleyball courts, even though Lodz is nowhere near a beach,
and the carousel ride (a la Disney?)
Apparently, California equals fitness, beach volleyball, amusement park rides and shopping...
After walking around a bit, we ate at Galijca, a traditional Polish restaurant located right outside the hotel,
where we had pirogi and pork, which were both really good.
It wasn't a particularly scenic walk, though we did pass remnants of Jewish influence (My mom had really wanted to go to the Jewish cemetery but that didn't work out for two reasons: 1) because it closed at 1 on Fridays and didn't reopen until Sunday and with my conference schedule, that timing was difficult and 2) because the mini-guide to Lodz that was in our hotel suggested that the Jewish quarter is quite dangerous, like a place where one can expect to be mugged. It was really discouraging-- no other guide suggested that this wasn't a good place to visit, but between timing and this one publication's rather adamant warning, we didn't try to go.)
as well as churches.
And, on the way to and from the University, we saw examples of the street art that Lodz is now famous for. There are several articles about the prominence of street art in Lodz (like this one: http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/11/travel/bigger-than-banksy-polish-street-art-goes-large/) highlighting some of the more famous ones. Supposedly, there is one by Banksy in Lodz, but I haven't been able to identify which one it is (or if I even saw it, which I'm kind of guessing I didn't).
The Philology Building of the University of Lodz is apparently very new.
It is quite modern looking both inside and out-- though not particularly charming in that European way I imagine universities to be. After I was done at the conference, we headed back to Piotrkowska St., the long pedestrian avenue with gorgeous architecture, much of it Art Nouveau from the 19th century.
Piotrkowska St. has a lot of restaurants-- in fact, one would think there would be a lot more shopping than there was. It really did seem to be mostly restaurants with some shops thrown in. We stopped at Arianos
for lunch: pizza and a Greek salad.
The pizza gets served with dipping sauces for the wood-fired crust which are much like marinara and ranch. The pizza was made to order and really good-- what I think we would consider an artisan crust in the US-- and about $4 US for a pizza large enough for two. This is also (I think) where my mom first ordered black current juice which she then ordered pretty much everywhere for the rest of the time we were in Poland.
I felt really badly when we were leaving-- I don't really know where my mom is going to black current juice in the US on a regular basis, but it was her new favorite thing.
Piotrkowska St. is also famous for its Hollywood-like walk of fame, complete with stars (it's all famous Poles in film... Roman Polanski is the only one I recognized)
and its many, many statues.
Some of the famous street art is also on Piotrkowsk
as well as this strange, faux walk of fame in which famous actors' names are punned and combined with animal prints.
There are also fountains
and, for reasons unknown, a tank on display in front of a statue of Leon Schiller, a famous Polish theater and film director.
In the early evening, we had to head back to our hotel for massages-- even in a luxury hotel, a massage is significantly less expensive than in the US (about $40 for an hour). When we got back to the room, our "presents" for not requesting new linens were waiting-- it turned out to be a sort of candied nut bar.
My mom and I each visited the spa Friday night and had lovely and relaxing massages before going out to a late dinner at a Kosher restaurant in the Manufaktura (overlooking the beach volleyball courts) named Anatevka (like the town in Fiddler on the Roof) where I had duck dumplings with a cranberry sauce and my mom had grilled duck with a baked potato. Duck and goose are go-to staples for the kosher community because, as I said earlier, they are small and don't need a lot of land to raise (and, they're not pork). And, we both had a side of steamed vegetables, mostly because we were excited to see them on the menu-- non-starchy vegetables are a little hard to come by in restaurants.
I don't think we even got to dinner until at least 9:30, so this meal marked the end of our day.
July 10: The Zoo and Poznanski Palace
The hotel breakfast at Andel's was really quite reasonable considering the size of the buffet and the numerous options which clearly took into account an international clientele,
so that's where we had breakfast before heading off to find the zoo. It wasn't the nicest day to head off, and it rained quite a bit while we walked. The zoo is located in a park that includes this monument built in the 1970s to commemorate the 1905 industrial insurrection against Russia.
It also has some lovely flower beds
on the way to the zoo entrance.
The zoo winds around a bit, as you can see from the map (which has the names of the animals in Polish)
so, it was a little hard to work around it in any sort of organized fashion (though, I think by the end of our time there, we had seen everything). The first building we came to when we entered the zoo was filled mostly with birds-- there were a lot of birds at the zoo, including this one with a vivid yellow beak (which is a little hard to see because of the painting on the glass).
By the time we got outside, it had pretty much stopped raining, which made wandering the zoo much more pleasant. This isn't my favorite zoo of all time (and, it was noticeably missing some of the more common zoo highlights, like elephants), but it had some nice variety. And, you could get pretty close to some of the tamer animals.
There weren't many options for lunch, but there was a waffle stand where all the peacocks seemed to hang out. Most of the peacocks were interested in the waffles; however, this particular male peacock was desperate to get the attention of the lone female
who was much more interested in these
as were all the other male peacocks. This one was my new best friend for a while (he's much closer than he appears--
and is a different male than the one in the video who never gave up preening, not even for waffles. It got a little sad after a while. The hen was having none of it.). There were some more animals to see after lunch including the butterflies,
which includes an honorary degree from Wake Forest University (which is relatively close to where I live).
This one does highlight the purpose of Auschwitz I, which was much more a labor camp than an extermination one. Originally, it's where the Russian prisoners and other political prisoners were sent, and while many of them perished after several months due to malnutrition and horrible work conditions, this wasn't a camp set up for mass extermination. It was intended as a labor camp and prison. And so, the sleeping conditions weren't as crowded and dismal as the ones from Birkenau, which are the more familiar images of the Holocaust. The bunks for political prisoners in Auschwitz looked more like this.
That isn't to say they didn't directly execute anyone at Auschwitz-- since it was a prison camp for those who had committed crimes against the Nazi state, many who were there were quickly "tried" and found guilty. The wall where they were executed by firing squad has been recreated (the original one was deemed too gruesome to leave up).
The memorial is the last stop on the tour-- we got back in the van and headed back to Krakow. We were dropped off in a square somewhat adjacent to Main Market Square
which is pretty but not particularly active (except for the kids running through the fountain-- this was the one hot day we experienced. It was about 90 degrees for some reason- the whole rest of the trip the temperatures were in the 70s. But actually that seemed appropriate to the day-- the heat made touring Auschwitz-Berkenau somewhat physically uncomfortable and that seemed right.) So, we returned to the Main Market Square where we lightened the mood a bit by wandering around taking in the architecture
as well as these "sculptures" of sheep playing flutes (I have no idea why)
and doing some souvenir shopping in Cloth Hall, which runs through the middle of the square.
We wandered down one of the side streets off the square as well: Grodka St.
on which is the Church of Saints Peter and Paul
which was built by the Jesuits in the 1500s. It was the first Baroque-style building in Krakow. (It's not the oldest church in Krakow though-- the oldest is the Church of St. Adalbert, located in the Main Market Square. It was built in the 11th century
and sits kind of strangely off center in the square because it was there before the rest of the square was built.)
The interior of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul isn't particularly elaborate (certainly not as elaborate as St. Mary's,which we visited a couple days later), but it's pretty in its simplicity.
Grodka also leads to Wawel Castle, or at least the back view of it
which we were planning to visit the next day, so we turned around at this point and headed back to the hotel for a nap (the heat was getting a bit oppressive) before dinner.
We had dinner at a place in the square: Wesele.
It has a small outdoor patio, but that was full, so we ate inside.
The food was really good; I had beef stew over potato pancakes and my mom had goose. And, we had small salads, once again trying to eat a vegetable that wasn't a starch. And, I had a requisite Polish beer (I wish I knew the names of any of these-- but even this one, which was a bottled beer, came to me already poured in a glass, no bottle with a label in sight. My mom didn't like this one either.).
After dinner, we wandered around the square, which is lovely at sunset,
and then got ice cream at Wentzl
(different from the place we had dinner, but also in the square) at the dessertery part which is attached to a full restaurant and fancy hotel.
The two guys in line in front of us sampled every single flavor before ordering cones so we were waiting for a while during which time a very large group of British tweens came in causing chaos and obliterating any sense of a line (which was a bit strange because, in general, the Brits really like to queue). When the woman behind the counter was finally done with the two guys in front of us (who I can't believe still were hungry after having some of every one of the ice creams in the case already), the guy chaperoning the large gaggle of children tried to step up and start ordering for all of them and-- because I was quite tired and harried by this point-- I sort of yelled at him that we were there first. But we were-- and it did mean that I got my cone before the 15 or so kids who were now packed into the small dessertery. Ice cream in hand, we headed back to our apartment for the night.
July 12: Wawel Castle
All through Warsaw and Lodz, there had been no lines at tourist sites, and so while we got up and going on Tuesday morning, we didn't rush to be at Wawel Castle when it opened. Instead, we headed to a recommended breakfast place: Charlotte
where we again had to eat inside because the patio was crowded (despite the drizzly weather).
We ended up eating downstairs (which was pretty empty) because the upper level was pretty full. The lower level began to fill up a little later too-- for what looks like a pretty tiny place at the front, Charlotte is quite large and does a pretty brisk business. We had what I think was termed a British breakfast-- lots of kinds of breads and a hard boiled egg with coffee for me and tea for my mom.
And then we headed off to Wawel Castle, this time entering from the front.
We probably should have gotten there when it opened because there was a pretty long line to buy tickets. You buy tickets a la carte in order to see different parts of the castle. By the time we got to the front of the line, the tickets to see the Royal Apartments were sold out. But, we got tickets to the State Rooms, Crown Treasury and Armoury, and to an architecture and gardens tour. I only have pictures of the last, however-- this is the one castle we went to that didn't allow pictures inside.
What is here of Wawel Castle has been built and added onto since the 16th century. This is the highest point in Krakow (though, not really that high up. Krakow is pretty much perfectly flat) and so the easiest point to defend. It was the heart of royal life from the 11th century. However, most of what was here burned down in 1499 and then was rebuilt. While in pictures it looks like it's all one castle, what it actually is is a cathedral and a castle.
The left part of the complex, where the black and gold domed buildings are connected to larger towers, is the Cathedral. The right part of the picture, where there are archways, is the castle proper. (It's not the best picture-- but is the best one I have to represent the division.) There is actually a small space between the two (a very small space) that separates the two which we got to see on the garden tour... but that came later in the day. The black domed part was built first in the 1300s and then the matching gold-topped dome was built later. It was meant to imitate the original but also to be much fancier, ditching the Gothic style.
Our first stop was in the State Rooms (when you get your ticket, you get appointed times to go to different exhibits, so we had set times to go tour each part. Our start time was for about 5 minutes after we bought the ticket.). The entry is in the courtyard of what is actually the castle part of the complex.
The State Rooms are what you would think they would be-- rooms like the Hall of Senators and the Hall of Deputies in which different groups of statesmen met, balls were held, and business was generally conducted. By the time we came out of the State Rooms, it was raining quite hard which meant that there were crowds of people hovering in any covered space. (The above courtyard photos were actually taken while it was raining-- it's not easy to take a photo while also balancing an umbrella.)
Our next stop was at the Crown Treasury and Armoury where there were displays of a variety of weapons like swords and knives and crossbows from the 15th-17th centuries and pistols and cannons from later years (including some very small cannons, like small enough to pick up and hold, which didn't seem particularly effective-- they seemed cumbersome to load and like you might have to ask the person you wanted to shoot cannon fodder at to stand still and wait for the attack. But maybe that was the way of war way back when?). And, there were jewels and other valuables on display as well. We had a little bit of time before our architecture and garden tour, though not quite enough time to eat a full lunch, so we had a snack (which was really mediocre and not quite what either of us was expecting-- basically nougat between two wafers)
and then went to wait for the tour to begin.
Our tour did give us access to parts of the grounds that others who hadn't paid for the tour didn't get. We got a brief history of how the castle has changed over the years, which parts have been built up or torn down or renovated between the 11th century and the 20th century. You can see some of the remnants of buildings that used to exist.
The stones in this patch of grass are the remains of the foundations of what used to be homes for the religious leaders of the Cathedral. This, however, is in the center of the Wawel complex. What we got to see that most don't, unless they take the tour, were the Royal Gardens We started by being let out a locked gate at the back of the castle courtyard to this rose bush
which, I have to say, didn't look all that impressive to me but our guide was very excited about it. It's a heritage rose, very rare and pretty much exclusive to Wawel Castle. At the moment, since it's not blooming, it's hard to tell what makes it different, but I think we were supposed to be really impressed by it.
More scenic were the Queen's gardens
which didn't have really rare or special flowers, but were nicely laid out and landscaped.
We also got to see sort of behind the scenes of some of the Castle including, as mentioned earlier, the space that does actually separate Cathedral from Castle.
Not very big... but you could walk between it. In this part of the exterior, you can also see examples of where new wall meets old wall (or where original meets refurbished). The stone is older, dating back hundreds of years while the brick is much newer, only about 100 years old.
There are also remnants of the Queen's bathroom.
By the end of our architecture and garden tour, we were quite hungry and so we stopped for pizza (much better than expected for food at a tourist attraction)
at the restaurant next to Sandomierska Tower
before climbing the 137 steps to the top. Sandomierska Tower was built around 1460 as one more tower to strengthen the defenses of the Castle. (On our architecture and garden tour, we heard a lot about how different towers were added at different times in order to increase fortification.) It offers lovely views of the grounds. (Also, the skies had cleared up by this point, so they sky looks quite nice as a background in these.)
Our final stop was the Dragon's Den which is a cave where the legendary Wawel Dragon used to live. My mom opted not to go in, so I went through it alone.
There's not much to it. The open space of the second picture has lighting that changes as you stand there. It gets dark and then slowly brightens and then darkens again-- though I don't really know why except that you can't get a picture of it until the light is at its brightest. At the exit of the cave is a statue of the dragon which does breathe fire every few minutes (you can see the fire in this picture if you look closely).
By now, it was getting close to 5-- on our way out, we did quickly tour the inside of Wawel Cathedral (the parts you could see without a ticket-- it closed at 5, so it wasn't worth paying for a tour because we only had about 15 minutes). And then we headed back towards the apartment for a nap before dinner.
For dinner, we went to this totally amazing Italian restaurant called Bianca's
which Yelp had listed as pretty expensive-- and it well might have been by Polish standards, but we had a full meal with appetizer of stuffed zucchini blossom
two entrees
and dessert (panna cotta)
as well as the original aron kodesh (where Torah scrolls are kept)
It further promotes hummus with its slogan:
and clearly part of what was a much older building, or at least I'm guessing that by the ancient looking, carved out door that led to the bathroom.
I had an omelette and my mom had French toast.
Nyhavn isn't a particularly big area-- I think if you take one of the boat rides along the canal, you can probably see more of it, but we never actually got back to the Nyhavn area to do that. From Nyhavn, we walked to Amalienborg Slot-- the Queen's Palace.
The palace is pretty much a full circle of a complex around a courtyard (which makes it really difficult to get a complete photograph). This was my best attempt.
My guide book had led me to believe that it was possible to tour the Royal Palace-- it even listed the exhibits available, including the Royal apartments. However, when we went to find out about prices for tours, there weren't any available which was really disappointing. I don't know if there are only tours when the Queen isn't in residence-- I'm not even sure if the Queen was in residence (a flag was flying and if it's like England, that means that she is, but I don't know if the flying of the flag means the same thing in Denmark). But, in any case, there was no tour of the interior (I said something about this to our food tour guide later that day and she seemed surprised that anyone would even suggest there was a way to tour the Palace-- so, I'm not sure why my guidebook suggests that there is.)
There are 4 ways to exit the Palace courtyard-- one of them leads to Frederikskirken (also called Marmorkirken which means marble church), which was consecrated in 1894. Construction on it actually began in 1749, but money ran out, so it wasn't finished until late in the 19th century.
It's not a particularly big church, but the interior does have a lot of marble.
We headed back to the middle of the courtyard to exit out the way we had come in and walked into crowds gathering for the changing of the guard. So we stayed to watch what turned to be the most boring changing of the guard ever. For most of the time we were there, there were a couple guards stationed at entrances to the courtyard-- and not even all of them.
But, at the beginning of the changing of the guard, many more appear from two different directions: one group from the direction of Frederikskirken and the other from the entrance to the right (which is where we initially came in).
This is, by far, the most boring changing of the guard I have ever seen. Other than marching in, this is pretty much what it looked like--
The people on the food tour with us (which also included a couple from California) didn't seem to really understand my whole need to photograph the food, so I didn't get a picture of the bowl that was being passed around before everyone dug in to make their own Smørrebrod. There was a sort of rye bread passed around and then everyone heaped what was in the bowl onto their slices-- it wasn't pre-made sandwiches like we would think of.
After the tour of treasury, we headed outside to walk the grounds which are open to the public. It's free to be on the grounds-- it's only if you want to go inside the castle that you have to pay.
The King's Gardens have a royal entryway with lions guarding the path back up
but are a bit more plain than other gardens
The display was lovely, though the chalkboard above explaining the variety was all in Danish, so we had to guess a little.
and roller coasters
The room was also lovely-- with one of the nicest hotel bathrooms (with a huge tub) ever. I especially like the pink under-lighting.
We got into Lodz in the evening, so the first night we only really had time to go get dinner in the Manufaktura complex.
The Manufaktura itself is a giant outdoor space of dining and entertainment attached to a huge mall that will make you feel like you are right back in the US. There was even an outdoor Zumba class going on.
and the carousel ride (a la Disney?)
Apparently, California equals fitness, beach volleyball, amusement park rides and shopping...
After walking around a bit, we ate at Galijca, a traditional Polish restaurant located right outside the hotel,
where we had pirogi and pork, which were both really good.
The pork was surprisingly good-- I'm not sure what cut it was or how it was cooked, but it was the tenderest and moistest pork I've ever had. I don't ever think I'm a huge fan of pork (though there's a lot of it in Poland, along with duck and goose because those are smaller animals. There's not a lot of beef because there isn't a lot of land on which to raise cattle.), but I think if it were prepared the way it was at Galijca, I would eat it more. I also had a Polish beer, which is notable only because my mom, who doesn't drink, was intent on trying everything and so kept trying my drinks-- and then making faces of discontent like this one.
Andel's is an environmentally friendly hotel, and so it offers a "present" if you leave a bag on the door that signals you don't want new linens on your bed or fresh towels.
So, we hung our bag on the door and thus ended our last day in Warsaw/first day in Lodz.
July 8: Lodz and Conference Day 1
That Friday was the first day of the EWCA Conference and so after grabbing coffee and yogurts at a coffee shop in the Manufaktura, my mom and I decided to walk to the University of Lodz Philology Building where the conference was taking place. I wasn't in too much of a hurry to get there because the whole morning schedule was conference and organizational business which I'm not involved in, so walking 2 miles there didn't seem like too big a deal. (This really isn't going to include much about the conference-- that's not really interesting to anyone but those who were there.) University of Lodz is definitely a city campus-- there's no one central campus (which is why when I asked the concierge how far away it was from the hotel, she told me I'd have to tell her which building the conference was in. That made a lot more sense as we walked because we kept passing random buildings marked as part of the university mixed in amongst other business and cultural sights.). Our walk really started at the traffic circle at the top of Ul. Piotrkowska which claims to be the longest pedestrian street in the world (and which I'll come back to).
Plac Wolnosci (Freedom Square) is at the top of Piotrkowska, though that's not the road off of circle that we initially took. Within the circle, however, is a Pharmacy Museum, stores, and a church (which is not the original, but rather the one that was rebuilt in the late 1800s), as well as a statue of freedom fighter Tadeusz Kosciuszko (which is also a recreation resurrected in 1960 after the original was destroyed by the Nazis in 1939. I have no idea who put a t-shirt on him.).
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It wasn't a particularly scenic walk, though we did pass remnants of Jewish influence (My mom had really wanted to go to the Jewish cemetery but that didn't work out for two reasons: 1) because it closed at 1 on Fridays and didn't reopen until Sunday and with my conference schedule, that timing was difficult and 2) because the mini-guide to Lodz that was in our hotel suggested that the Jewish quarter is quite dangerous, like a place where one can expect to be mugged. It was really discouraging-- no other guide suggested that this wasn't a good place to visit, but between timing and this one publication's rather adamant warning, we didn't try to go.)
as well as churches.
And, on the way to and from the University, we saw examples of the street art that Lodz is now famous for. There are several articles about the prominence of street art in Lodz (like this one: http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/11/travel/bigger-than-banksy-polish-street-art-goes-large/) highlighting some of the more famous ones. Supposedly, there is one by Banksy in Lodz, but I haven't been able to identify which one it is (or if I even saw it, which I'm kind of guessing I didn't).
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| This one is by Aryz, a Spanish artist. |
The Philology Building of the University of Lodz is apparently very new.
It is quite modern looking both inside and out-- though not particularly charming in that European way I imagine universities to be. After I was done at the conference, we headed back to Piotrkowska St., the long pedestrian avenue with gorgeous architecture, much of it Art Nouveau from the 19th century.
Piotrkowska St. has a lot of restaurants-- in fact, one would think there would be a lot more shopping than there was. It really did seem to be mostly restaurants with some shops thrown in. We stopped at Arianos
for lunch: pizza and a Greek salad.
The pizza gets served with dipping sauces for the wood-fired crust which are much like marinara and ranch. The pizza was made to order and really good-- what I think we would consider an artisan crust in the US-- and about $4 US for a pizza large enough for two. This is also (I think) where my mom first ordered black current juice which she then ordered pretty much everywhere for the rest of the time we were in Poland.
I felt really badly when we were leaving-- I don't really know where my mom is going to black current juice in the US on a regular basis, but it was her new favorite thing.
Piotrkowska St. is also famous for its Hollywood-like walk of fame, complete with stars (it's all famous Poles in film... Roman Polanski is the only one I recognized)
and its many, many statues.
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| This is Arthur Rubenstein's Piano. |
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| This is famous Polish poet Julian Tuwim's Bench. |
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| This is Mis Uszatek, a famous fictional bear who has been around since 1957. |
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| This is author Marcel Szytenchlem |
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| This is multiple Polish authors sitting around a table. |
as well as this strange, faux walk of fame in which famous actors' names are punned and combined with animal prints.
There are also fountains
and, for reasons unknown, a tank on display in front of a statue of Leon Schiller, a famous Polish theater and film director.
In the early evening, we had to head back to our hotel for massages-- even in a luxury hotel, a massage is significantly less expensive than in the US (about $40 for an hour). When we got back to the room, our "presents" for not requesting new linens were waiting-- it turned out to be a sort of candied nut bar.
My mom and I each visited the spa Friday night and had lovely and relaxing massages before going out to a late dinner at a Kosher restaurant in the Manufaktura (overlooking the beach volleyball courts) named Anatevka (like the town in Fiddler on the Roof) where I had duck dumplings with a cranberry sauce and my mom had grilled duck with a baked potato. Duck and goose are go-to staples for the kosher community because, as I said earlier, they are small and don't need a lot of land to raise (and, they're not pork). And, we both had a side of steamed vegetables, mostly because we were excited to see them on the menu-- non-starchy vegetables are a little hard to come by in restaurants.
I don't think we even got to dinner until at least 9:30, so this meal marked the end of our day.
July 10: The Zoo and Poznanski Palace
The hotel breakfast at Andel's was really quite reasonable considering the size of the buffet and the numerous options which clearly took into account an international clientele,
so that's where we had breakfast before heading off to find the zoo. It wasn't the nicest day to head off, and it rained quite a bit while we walked. The zoo is located in a park that includes this monument built in the 1970s to commemorate the 1905 industrial insurrection against Russia.
It also has some lovely flower beds
on the way to the zoo entrance.
The zoo winds around a bit, as you can see from the map (which has the names of the animals in Polish)
so, it was a little hard to work around it in any sort of organized fashion (though, I think by the end of our time there, we had seen everything). The first building we came to when we entered the zoo was filled mostly with birds-- there were a lot of birds at the zoo, including this one with a vivid yellow beak (which is a little hard to see because of the painting on the glass).
By the time we got outside, it had pretty much stopped raining, which made wandering the zoo much more pleasant. This isn't my favorite zoo of all time (and, it was noticeably missing some of the more common zoo highlights, like elephants), but it had some nice variety. And, you could get pretty close to some of the tamer animals.
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| I like this because it looks like we're standing next to the lion. Alas, we're not. |
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| This is the baby. |
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| This is the female tiger going for a swim while the male watched over her. I don't quite know what to make of the water. |
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| This is also the baby. |
who was much more interested in these
as were all the other male peacocks. This one was my new best friend for a while (he's much closer than he appears--
and is a different male than the one in the video who never gave up preening, not even for waffles. It got a little sad after a while. The hen was having none of it.). There were some more animals to see after lunch including the butterflies,
the fish in the aquarium,
and smaller monkeys (there weren't really any larger apes).
We walked back from the zoo to our hotel and decided to visit the Izrael K. Poznanski Palace, which is attached to the Manufaktura complex-- it's not really a palace in the royal sense (and it's also referred to as the Museum of History of the City of Lodz), though it is impressive. It was the largest industrial residence in Poland, home to Izrael Poznanski who was the "textile baron" in the 19th century. It's not actually as pretty from the front as you might expect (or, maybe this is the back since the courtyard images are much prettier-- maybe that was considered the front).
The interior, however, is lovely (though sometimes a bit hard to photograph because of all the chandeliers which cast large glowing balls of light in a lot of pictures). We got to tour rooms like offices, bedrooms, sitting rooms, and game rooms.
The detail work on the doors and ceilings was incredible-- and obviously hand-carved.
Unfortunately, most of the signs were in Polish, so I didn't learn all the much about Poznanski except that he was a Polish-Jewish textile baron until the war when he and his family were run out. When that happened, the Manufaktura was turned into a plant for just about everything, not just textiles. And then, when the Russians ousted the Germans, it continued on. Because this is the Museum of History of the City of Lodz, it does have other exhibitions incorporated into some the rooms, the largest of which is dedicated to Arthur Rubinstein
which includes an honorary degree from Wake Forest University (which is relatively close to where I live).
When you finish the interior tour, you can get outside into the garden/courtyard which gives you a real sense of how grand the building is from the outside.
We decided to sit outside (because it had finally turned into a lovely day and it was late afternoon) and have tea at the palace while overlooking the courtyard.
And then we went to explore the actual mall for a while, though that really was like stepping into any mall in America.
For dinner, we went to a vegetarian restaurant in the Manufaktura, Zielona. By this point, it had gotten rather chilly, so we ate inside.
This was the only place in Poland that actually provided complimentary bread-- and it came with really good hummus.
For dinner, I had a chili over pumpkin pancakes and my mom had gnocchi. It was all amazingly good.
And then, we headed back to Piotrkowska to find an ice cream place, Cukiernia, that our food tour guide, Marta, from Warsaw had told us had the best ice cream in Lodz.
I got hazelnut. Ice cream is the perfect way to end any day.
July 10: Conference Presentation and Train to Krakow
Sunday was the last day of the conference and the day of my presentation (which was the last session of the last day). So, after breakfast in the hotel again, I headed out in a taxi to the conference and gave my presentation in what might have been the loveliest classroom ever-- at least the one with the best view I've ever had.
That went well (though, the first presenter and chair of the session didn't show up)-- and after a quick lunch (the closing conference event), I headed back to the hotel to get my mom so we could catch a train to Krakow.
I had looked up train schedules and seen that there was a 3 pm train. I still swear by this-- I checked multiple times to be sure. However, when we got to the train station, we were told there was no such train. (I'm not sure whether this makes me glad or not that I didn't buy tickets for it-- tickets would have proved I was right but I'm also guessing I would never have gotten my money back.) Instead, we had to go to a different train station (there are 3 in Lodz, which seems like a lot considering it's not that big) for a train that would leave at 6:35 pm. So, we headed to Lodz Widzew where, after quite a bit of frustration (because no one in the station spoke English, at all-- and I do realize that I was in Poland and should have no expectation that anyone will speak English, but it was an international train station, so I would figure they have to deal with people who speak something other than Polish on a regular basis. This was also the only place in nearly two weeks in which no one spoke any English.), I managed to buy us two tickets, with no actual seats, to Krakow. And then we waited for more than three hours here:
Meanwhile, I spent time using the train station wifi to try to contact the people who rented the apartment we were staying at in Krakow to tell them that we would be late. And then, after we went out to the platform and discovered that our train was delayed, tried to connect again to tell them we'd be even later. Finally, the train arrived-- and, as promised, was quite full. There were a few empty seats because people kept getting on and off-- however, my mother's giant suitcase proved difficult because it wouldn't actually fit in the train cars or easily onto the luggage rack, though it is big enough for her to perch on it. And, so, for much of the ride (which is about 3 hours), I perched on mine as well (still dressed in my conference clothes).
My mom is actually leaning against the bathroom, the door to which was broken and wouldn't lock, so she did provide a valuable service by telling everyone (with gestures) who came to use the bathroom (pretty constant traffic) whether it was occupied or not. At one point, a mom and her kid actually did get locked in and then there was the excitement of multiple people trying to break the door open to get them out. (Also during that time, someone kept trying to push the emergency button to get the conductor to come help-- no one ever showed up.) Eventually the door opened. For about the last hour of the trip, when the train had cleared out a bit, I went and found a seat (my suitcase fit in the luggage rack)-- during which time, apparently, someone else also got stuck in the bathroom.
When we got to Krakrow, it was about 11 pm and quite dark-- I knew the apartment we were staying at was relatively close to the station and we were going to walk, but the darkness was making it really hard to see street signs or figure out the map and so we wound up taking a cab to the square where the apartment was. To be fair, the driver had tried to explain to us how to walk there to save us money-- however, once we were too frustrated to bother anymore, he totally ripped us off for fare, charging us about $7.50 to go about 3 blocks. Then, once in the square, we had a really difficult time finding the actual buildings-- the main square in Krakow is quite busy at night and was even busier that evening because there was some big soccer match on. And, the numbers on buildings are small and hard to see. But, eventually we found it (or, I found it-- I left my mom sitting in the middle of the square with our luggage to make it easier to walk around and find the place)-- and then had to lug our luggage up 3 flights (though seems much longer) of narrow spiral staircase.
Fortunately, our lovely landlord helped get my mom's up the staircase-- she was a pretty small girl. I felt really badly that she was suffering with that suitcase. It was close to midnight when we finally settled into Pod Sloncem, our apartment in the main historic square of Krakow.
There was also a TV in the apartment and so I took a moment to see if we could get any stations that were in English (there had been one news channel in English in our Warsaw hotel and maybe 2 channels that had programming in English in Lodz). There wasn't anything in English-- but, as in Warsaw and Lodz, what there was was American programming that was dubbed over. Not, however, dubbed over with multiple voices. Rather, you can hear the English dialogue and then one male voice, in Polish, translating what was said. It struck me as really odd, so I recorded it. This is what dubbed TV is like in Poland...
It felt like a somewhat wasted day, despite the successful conference presentation, and the frustrations of what had turned into nearly 9 hours of travel had been exhausting. And, we had to be up early the next day to visit Auschwitz.
It felt like a somewhat wasted day, despite the successful conference presentation, and the frustrations of what had turned into nearly 9 hours of travel had been exhausting. And, we had to be up early the next day to visit Auschwitz.
July 11: Auschwitz-Birkenau and Historic Krakow
We had to board the bus for our Auschwitz-Birkenau tour before 7:30 am-- though, the sun rises quite early in Poland in the summer, so we finally had enough light to see how gorgeous the Main Market Square is.
It's about 90 minutes out to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and it's much easier to do by tour group than on your own if you don't have a car. And, arranging this particular outing as a tour ensures that a guide will be there and ready to take you on the tour when you arrive.
Our guide was amazing-- incredibly articulate and passionate about the history and horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The tour starts in Auschwitz I, the original site. Auschwitz I was actually built long before WWII as a training camp for Polish soldiers, so it's not particularly big and it doesn't look as ominous as I was expecting (though, the barbed wire speaks to how it was transformed into a prison).
It's relatively intact because the barracks-- which were intended for soldiers in boot camp-- were pretty well built.
Apparently, the Germans were quite excited when they first arrived because the camp was so well equipped and suited to their purposes. It even had dining and kitchen facilities for them (which I believe is what the building two pictures above, directly inside the barbed wire, is), though of course that was providing food for the Nazi soldiers, not the prisoners. Labor prisoners were fed about 500-700 calories a day (and, I'm sure it wasn't a tasty few hundred calories). The tour itself takes you through several of the barracks which have been transformed into more of a museum with exhibits about the Nazi occupation of Poland and the extermination of the Jews. All of the signs are in Polish, English and Hebrew.
This one does highlight the purpose of Auschwitz I, which was much more a labor camp than an extermination one. Originally, it's where the Russian prisoners and other political prisoners were sent, and while many of them perished after several months due to malnutrition and horrible work conditions, this wasn't a camp set up for mass extermination. It was intended as a labor camp and prison. And so, the sleeping conditions weren't as crowded and dismal as the ones from Birkenau, which are the more familiar images of the Holocaust. The bunks for political prisoners in Auschwitz looked more like this.
That isn't to say they didn't directly execute anyone at Auschwitz-- since it was a prison camp for those who had committed crimes against the Nazi state, many who were there were quickly "tried" and found guilty. The wall where they were executed by firing squad has been recreated (the original one was deemed too gruesome to leave up).
The tour of Auschwitz does give a narrative of the horrors the Jews experienced when they were brought to Birkenau (Auschwitz II), the camp that many of the prisoners of Auschwitz I were forced to construct. One of the things it really highlights is the process of initially being confined to ghettos in their home countries, sorted out there, packed onto train cars with what belongings they had, sorted on platforms at the camp and then moved either to a labor site or sent immediately to the gas chambers. And, the displays emphasize how much was stolen from them during that process-- there is display after display of things taken from the Jews. Everything as sort of invaluable as a comb or brush or dishware
to necessary and intimate as glasses
or prosthetic limbs
or as sacred as prayer shawls.
Part of what makes this so difficult to hear about is that all of this was taken as part of a narrative of hope being told to the Jews. They were told to write their names on their suitcases because once they were settled their belongings were going to be returned to them.
They were greeted, in some cases, by other prisoners from their country who spoke their language who told them everything was going to be ok (those prisoners participated for fear of their death or the deaths of their families). And then, those who did survive for a while learned of the truth of what was happening to everything they owned-- it was sorted and stored in factories, sold back to the people in Germany for money to run the camps and to fund the war effort. Those storage facilities, which were vast, were referred to as Canada, the land those in the camps imagined as wealthy and prosperous. The displays of stolen items are sorted and separated in the same way they would have been in those storage units.
There is also a display of human hair along with all the other sorted items. It's the one thing you're asked not to take a picture of, out of respect. It's mostly women's hair-- and it apparently too was sold back to the Germans and used to make stockings. It's horrifying to think of German women walking around wearing stockings made from human hair-- it's dehumanizing, which is probably the point.
There are attempts to re-humanize those who were there. There are large walls of photos of those who were imprisoned and died at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They have as much information about each individual as is known-- which sometimes includes when they died and other times loses track of the prisoner after he or she entered the camp and was photographed.
There is one crematorium on the grounds of Auschwitz because the Nazis did have to get rid of the bodies of those who were executed or who died of malnutrition.
It's not particularly big and likely wasn't particularly efficient. When the Nazis wanted to become more efficient at killing and getting rid of bodies, they built Birkenau.
Birkenau, also called Auschwitz II, is a couple miles away from Auschwitz I. (There is actually an Auschwitz III as well, though it was a small labor camp attached to a factory and while I'm sure it had to be somewhere nearby since all three camps were named for the town of Auschwitz in which they reside, I'm not sure where it is-- or that it even still exists.) We got back into our vans to drive over there, though the prisoners of Auschwitz I walked the route everyday as they traveled back and forth to build the camp. I found Birkenau to be more harrowing than Auschwitz because, I think, Auschwitz feels like a museum (like the Holocaust museums I've been to in Israel and DC) while Birkenau has been left as is and feels like what it is-- a death camp. You walk up to it through the old gate that was the original ending point of the railroad tracks that brought train cars full of Jews in. It's really the only structure that is left fully intact. It was built early, out of brick (the Nazis were taking brick from buildings in the town and using them to build the camp but they ran out pretty early).
Birkenau was built on ground that had previously been undeveloped because it was ill-suited for anything to last. The land flooded in warmer weather and froze in the winter and shifted constantly. So, nothing could stay standing and intact for very long on the land-- but the Germans didn't really care because they weren't building for comfort. However, what this does mean is that very few of the actual barracks the Jews were kept in are still standing because they were poorly constructed out of wood (once the brick ran out). Those who maintain Birkenau rebuild a few of the barracks every 5 or 6 years so you can see what one row of them looks like
and you can go into those few (where you can see the gaps in the construction and tell how poorly insulated and constructed they were).
The structure down the middle with the holes in it is what served as a toilet and then there were bunks all along the edges.
However, most of what remains of Birkenau are the chimneys which were made of brick (and, also have to be rebuilt, though they are constantly reassembled out of the same bricks while the barracks aren't the original wood). It's vast land with a lot of chimneys which gives you a sense of just how many hundreds of thousands were being brought in and killed.
The train tracks, which originally only ran up to the gate but were later extended to run through it to the "sorting" platform, are also restored every 7 or 8 years because the land shifts and the tracks shift and break with it.
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| This is the extended part of the track, looking back at the gatehouse from inside the camp. |
The Nazis had to extend the tracks to cull the mass panic that had been occurring. Initially, the Jews were taken off the train outside the gate and then had to walk more than a mile to get to the platform where they were divided by gender and then sorted for either the labor camp or gas chambers. And, in that time, they began to panic, ask questions, and break down (some were too sick and weak to make the walk in the first place). The Nazis found it easier to make the tracks longer and pull directly up to the platform where they told the Jews that they were being divided by gender for the decorum of the showers, consoled about the arduous journey they had just entailed, with 80 or more confined into a train car like this one (which they were told couldn't stop because the Russians had been trying to attack them),
and promised food and comfort. Almost all the Jews who arrived at Birkenau were immediately destined for the gas chambers-- only a few were sent to be laborers. The life expectancy of a Jew sent to the labor side of the camp was about three months, so it's not like it was a more life-preserving fate, just a more prolonged death. And, while the prisoners in Auschwitz had been receiving a measly amount of food, those in Birkenau received even less, often as little as 200 calories a day, which basically is one slice of bread. There were three gas chambers at Birkenau, though two of them were completely destroyed and the third is largely rubble. When the Russians were closing in, the Germans tried to hide the evidence-- they successfully blew up and got rid of the rubble from two of the chambers, The third one they didn't have time to finish destroying.
It was hard to get a good angle through the grate, but the last picture is the stairwell that led into the actual gas chamber. At the end of the chamber complex is where the crematorium was located, where many of the ashes of the dead still remain buried. A memorial, with the same message in 4 languages on four stones, has been erected on top of that spot.
The memorial is the last stop on the tour-- we got back in the van and headed back to Krakow. We were dropped off in a square somewhat adjacent to Main Market Square
which is pretty but not particularly active (except for the kids running through the fountain-- this was the one hot day we experienced. It was about 90 degrees for some reason- the whole rest of the trip the temperatures were in the 70s. But actually that seemed appropriate to the day-- the heat made touring Auschwitz-Berkenau somewhat physically uncomfortable and that seemed right.) So, we returned to the Main Market Square where we lightened the mood a bit by wandering around taking in the architecture
as well as these "sculptures" of sheep playing flutes (I have no idea why)
and doing some souvenir shopping in Cloth Hall, which runs through the middle of the square.
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| Exterior of Cloth Hall |
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| From inside Cloth Hall looking out on Main Market Square |
We wandered down one of the side streets off the square as well: Grodka St.
on which is the Church of Saints Peter and Paul
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| Side view of the church-- sense of how it sits on the street |
which was built by the Jesuits in the 1500s. It was the first Baroque-style building in Krakow. (It's not the oldest church in Krakow though-- the oldest is the Church of St. Adalbert, located in the Main Market Square. It was built in the 11th century
and sits kind of strangely off center in the square because it was there before the rest of the square was built.)
The interior of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul isn't particularly elaborate (certainly not as elaborate as St. Mary's,which we visited a couple days later), but it's pretty in its simplicity.
Grodka also leads to Wawel Castle, or at least the back view of it
which we were planning to visit the next day, so we turned around at this point and headed back to the hotel for a nap (the heat was getting a bit oppressive) before dinner.
We had dinner at a place in the square: Wesele.
It has a small outdoor patio, but that was full, so we ate inside.
The food was really good; I had beef stew over potato pancakes and my mom had goose. And, we had small salads, once again trying to eat a vegetable that wasn't a starch. And, I had a requisite Polish beer (I wish I knew the names of any of these-- but even this one, which was a bottled beer, came to me already poured in a glass, no bottle with a label in sight. My mom didn't like this one either.).
After dinner, we wandered around the square, which is lovely at sunset,
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| Cloth Hall |
and then got ice cream at Wentzl
(different from the place we had dinner, but also in the square) at the dessertery part which is attached to a full restaurant and fancy hotel.
The two guys in line in front of us sampled every single flavor before ordering cones so we were waiting for a while during which time a very large group of British tweens came in causing chaos and obliterating any sense of a line (which was a bit strange because, in general, the Brits really like to queue). When the woman behind the counter was finally done with the two guys in front of us (who I can't believe still were hungry after having some of every one of the ice creams in the case already), the guy chaperoning the large gaggle of children tried to step up and start ordering for all of them and-- because I was quite tired and harried by this point-- I sort of yelled at him that we were there first. But we were-- and it did mean that I got my cone before the 15 or so kids who were now packed into the small dessertery. Ice cream in hand, we headed back to our apartment for the night.
July 12: Wawel Castle
All through Warsaw and Lodz, there had been no lines at tourist sites, and so while we got up and going on Tuesday morning, we didn't rush to be at Wawel Castle when it opened. Instead, we headed to a recommended breakfast place: Charlotte
where we again had to eat inside because the patio was crowded (despite the drizzly weather).
We ended up eating downstairs (which was pretty empty) because the upper level was pretty full. The lower level began to fill up a little later too-- for what looks like a pretty tiny place at the front, Charlotte is quite large and does a pretty brisk business. We had what I think was termed a British breakfast-- lots of kinds of breads and a hard boiled egg with coffee for me and tea for my mom.
And then we headed off to Wawel Castle, this time entering from the front.
We probably should have gotten there when it opened because there was a pretty long line to buy tickets. You buy tickets a la carte in order to see different parts of the castle. By the time we got to the front of the line, the tickets to see the Royal Apartments were sold out. But, we got tickets to the State Rooms, Crown Treasury and Armoury, and to an architecture and gardens tour. I only have pictures of the last, however-- this is the one castle we went to that didn't allow pictures inside.
What is here of Wawel Castle has been built and added onto since the 16th century. This is the highest point in Krakow (though, not really that high up. Krakow is pretty much perfectly flat) and so the easiest point to defend. It was the heart of royal life from the 11th century. However, most of what was here burned down in 1499 and then was rebuilt. While in pictures it looks like it's all one castle, what it actually is is a cathedral and a castle.
The left part of the complex, where the black and gold domed buildings are connected to larger towers, is the Cathedral. The right part of the picture, where there are archways, is the castle proper. (It's not the best picture-- but is the best one I have to represent the division.) There is actually a small space between the two (a very small space) that separates the two which we got to see on the garden tour... but that came later in the day. The black domed part was built first in the 1300s and then the matching gold-topped dome was built later. It was meant to imitate the original but also to be much fancier, ditching the Gothic style.
Our first stop was in the State Rooms (when you get your ticket, you get appointed times to go to different exhibits, so we had set times to go tour each part. Our start time was for about 5 minutes after we bought the ticket.). The entry is in the courtyard of what is actually the castle part of the complex.
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| The panorama view skews the perspective a bit. But you can see more of the courtyard. |
The State Rooms are what you would think they would be-- rooms like the Hall of Senators and the Hall of Deputies in which different groups of statesmen met, balls were held, and business was generally conducted. By the time we came out of the State Rooms, it was raining quite hard which meant that there were crowds of people hovering in any covered space. (The above courtyard photos were actually taken while it was raining-- it's not easy to take a photo while also balancing an umbrella.)
Our next stop was at the Crown Treasury and Armoury where there were displays of a variety of weapons like swords and knives and crossbows from the 15th-17th centuries and pistols and cannons from later years (including some very small cannons, like small enough to pick up and hold, which didn't seem particularly effective-- they seemed cumbersome to load and like you might have to ask the person you wanted to shoot cannon fodder at to stand still and wait for the attack. But maybe that was the way of war way back when?). And, there were jewels and other valuables on display as well. We had a little bit of time before our architecture and garden tour, though not quite enough time to eat a full lunch, so we had a snack (which was really mediocre and not quite what either of us was expecting-- basically nougat between two wafers)
and then went to wait for the tour to begin.
Our tour did give us access to parts of the grounds that others who hadn't paid for the tour didn't get. We got a brief history of how the castle has changed over the years, which parts have been built up or torn down or renovated between the 11th century and the 20th century. You can see some of the remnants of buildings that used to exist.
The stones in this patch of grass are the remains of the foundations of what used to be homes for the religious leaders of the Cathedral. This, however, is in the center of the Wawel complex. What we got to see that most don't, unless they take the tour, were the Royal Gardens We started by being let out a locked gate at the back of the castle courtyard to this rose bush
which, I have to say, didn't look all that impressive to me but our guide was very excited about it. It's a heritage rose, very rare and pretty much exclusive to Wawel Castle. At the moment, since it's not blooming, it's hard to tell what makes it different, but I think we were supposed to be really impressed by it.
More scenic were the Queen's gardens
which didn't have really rare or special flowers, but were nicely laid out and landscaped.
We also got to see sort of behind the scenes of some of the Castle including, as mentioned earlier, the space that does actually separate Cathedral from Castle.
Not very big... but you could walk between it. In this part of the exterior, you can also see examples of where new wall meets old wall (or where original meets refurbished). The stone is older, dating back hundreds of years while the brick is much newer, only about 100 years old.
There are also remnants of the Queen's bathroom.
By the end of our architecture and garden tour, we were quite hungry and so we stopped for pizza (much better than expected for food at a tourist attraction)
at the restaurant next to Sandomierska Tower
before climbing the 137 steps to the top. Sandomierska Tower was built around 1460 as one more tower to strengthen the defenses of the Castle. (On our architecture and garden tour, we heard a lot about how different towers were added at different times in order to increase fortification.) It offers lovely views of the grounds. (Also, the skies had cleared up by this point, so they sky looks quite nice as a background in these.)
Our final stop was the Dragon's Den which is a cave where the legendary Wawel Dragon used to live. My mom opted not to go in, so I went through it alone.
There's not much to it. The open space of the second picture has lighting that changes as you stand there. It gets dark and then slowly brightens and then darkens again-- though I don't really know why except that you can't get a picture of it until the light is at its brightest. At the exit of the cave is a statue of the dragon which does breathe fire every few minutes (you can see the fire in this picture if you look closely).
By now, it was getting close to 5-- on our way out, we did quickly tour the inside of Wawel Cathedral (the parts you could see without a ticket-- it closed at 5, so it wasn't worth paying for a tour because we only had about 15 minutes). And then we headed back towards the apartment for a nap before dinner.
For dinner, we went to this totally amazing Italian restaurant called Bianca's
which Yelp had listed as pretty expensive-- and it well might have been by Polish standards, but we had a full meal with appetizer of stuffed zucchini blossom
two entrees
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| pasta with truffle butter and truffle shavings |
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| pasta with tomato, basil and goat cheese |
as well as coffee and wine for about $30. It was a totally delicious way to end the day.
July 13: The Jewish Quarter and Traveling to Copenhagen
Our flight out of Krakow wasn't until after 9 pm, so we had a whole other day in Krakow once we checked out of our apartment and stored our luggage. This was something of an ordeal because this time, I had to maneuver the stairs with my mom's luggage by myself. I was cursing her by the time I got her suitcase down the stairs-- it was not a good moment and it took me a while to get over.
Before heading out to the Jewish Quarter of Krakow, we toured St. Mary's Basilica (which I had been wanting to go into for two days), which is the tall church in Main Market Square.
The original church was built in the 1220s but it was destroyed. This particular facade dates to about the 1750s, though the actual structure of the church itself was built between the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 15th centuries. The highlight of the interior is the Viet Stoss Altar which is is difficult to get a complete photograph of. It's the "largest altar of its kind" (I don't quite know what "of its kind" means) and took from 1477-1489 to build.
After touring the church, and marveling at the interior, we headed off to the Jewish Quarter of Krakow to see the Old Synagogue and Schindler's Factory.
The actual main square of the Jewish Quarter is pretty small, and on two sides has colorful buildings.
At one end of the square is the Old Synagogue, which now houses the Jewish Museum. It's the oldest synagogue in Poland. The original was built in the 1400s but burned down and was rebuilt in 1557 by Italian architect Matteo Gucci. It was then partially destroyed by the Nazis in WWII but has been reconstructed.
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| Around the back is also this building with street art in Hebrew. |
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| The iron fence around the side wall . |
There are two parts to the museum-- one sections is basically large poster displays that catalog the history of Jews in Krakow from the 15th century to the present. The other part is a display of artifacts
as well as the original aron kodesh (where Torah scrolls are kept)
and a reconstructed bimah (platform where the Torah is read).
After touring the Old Synagogue, I was quite hungry and so we went to a restaurant located on the other end of the square, Hamsa, which promised hummus and happiness.
It further promotes hummus with its slogan:
(My mom bought us both Hamsa t-shirts that have this slogan on it-- it was the last act of my mom's mea culpa for the whole suitcase incident that started the day. It's a really nice t-shirt.) The interior courtyard is really nice
and clearly part of what was a much older building, or at least I'm guessing that by the ancient looking, carved out door that led to the bathroom.
For lunch, we had a mezze platter
with hummus (of course!) baba ganoush, falafel, olives, gherkins, and marinated peppers along with pita bread. The serving platter is in the shape of the Hamesh hand (which is supposed to be a magical protector from the envious or evil eye in Arabic and Jewish cultures).
This was also likely going to be (and, in fact was) the last time we were going to be able to order black current juice since we were leaving in a few hours for Denmark. So, this is the last black current juice of the trip...
After lunch, we walked to Schindler's Factory which took a bit longer than it probably should have according to my map app because we had to find our way around a construction zone that blocked the most direct route. Fortunately, there were several tourists who were on their way there at the same time, so we kind of followed them.
I actually only have pictures of the outside markings of the factory. You can take pictures inside, but the factory is rather dark (and you can't use flash), so they don't come out well. I think we were expecting it to be more of a history of the factory-- and to still feel like a factory. But it's not-- it's an interactive history of Nazi occupation of Krakow from 1939-1945. A lot of it felt like a rehashing of the visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, though instead of just focusing on the Jewish experience, it cataloged all the horrors that were visited on all of the Poles in Krakow who, although they weren't sent to concentration camps, were treated horridly and often kicked out of their homes and jobs which were in turn given to Germans. The museum does give a good sense of just how swift and total the Nazi occupation was. There is less about Oskar Schindler than you would think considering the museum, which didn't open as a permanent exhibition in its current state until 2010, owes its existence to Spielberg's movie. There is one room on the second floor which is Schindler's office and that space is dedicated to his story; Spielberg makes him out to be a much more altruistic person than the museum does. The museum exhibit paints him as a con man who happened to know all the right people to be able to grease the wheels in his favor and also suggests that his real motivation for getting Jews out of the camps to work in his factory was that they were free labor for him. However, the Jews who did work for him did receive 2 full meals a day (which is significantly more food than prisoners in the camps got), medical attention when they needed it and, after a short time, were housed right near the factory so that they didn't have to face harsh travel conditions just to get to and from the factory to work each day (though Schindler was probably motivated to make this happen, at least in part, so that they could work more hours). So, in the context of what was happening, he was a whole lot better than the Nazis running the concentration camps-- but not quite the man the movie makes him out to be.
The women who had rented us our apartment had hired us a car for 6:30 to go to the airport, so after visiting Schindler's Factory, we headed back towards Main Market Square where we needed to be to collect our luggage and meet the car. We still had some time to kill when we got back to the square, so we went to a cafe and ordered very large ice creams, more so that we would have a place to sit and rest than because we wanted so much ice cream. But, it was good.
Mine is chocolate banana-- the chocolate turned out to be both syrup and a huge chunk of brownie-- and my mom's is vanilla and kiwi. Finally, it was time to meet the car and go to the airport. The car ride was a bit harrowing-- our driver raced through the windy roads that led to the airport-- but we got there quickly. And, after waiting in the airport for a while, boarded our flight to Copenhagen. We had flown through Copenhagen on our way to Poland and, since neither of us has ever been to Denmark, had decided that we were going to stop for a couple of days on the way back.
We got to Copenhagen after 11 pm. It was late-- and yet, still not completely dark. I don't think I realized how far north Copenhagen is, but it's far enough north that there is very little actual darkness. It doesn't fully get dark until after 11 and the sun starts to rise around 4. (There was a blind over the window in our hotel room, but it didn't black out the light so that there were only a few hours of darkness was really noticeable.) We pretty easily got our luggage and caught a taxi to our hotel, Cabinn Inn.
This is the smallest room I have ever stayed in-- it's like being in a cruise ship cabin (though, my cabin on the Alaska cruise was bigger). The hotel's motto is "Everything you need to sleep." And it is-- and not much else. That picture is the entire bathroom-- it was a wet bath. And, the beds took up most of the room. The hotel is, however, located right next to Tivoli Gardens, a major attraction in Copenhagen.
There was a TV with many stations in English in our room (for the first time the whole trip). In fact, as easy as I thought it was to speak English in Poland and get by, it's even easier in Copenhagen. Everyone speaks English, in many cases such unaccented English that they sound American.
However, I processed most of this the next day. That night, we basically figured out how to climb over our suitcases to get to the bed and went to sleep.
July 14: Nyhavn, Amalienborg Slot, and the Copenhagen Food Tour
We had a food tour booked for Denmark as well, but it wasn't until 1 pm (as most seem to be), so we decided to set off to see some of the sites of Copenhagen. We were headed towards Amalienborg Slot, which is the current Royal Palace and home of the current Queen of Denmark. However, the route there from our hotel was a bit circuitous and took us past and through other areas. First, we passed Christiansborg Slot which is the current home of the Parliament, Prime Minister's office, and Supreme Court. We actually entered from behind so we were in the side courtyard first.
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| The slightly skewed panoramic view of the courtyard. |
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| It's not rounded as it looks above. |
The arch to the other side of of the courtyard leads to the Royal Library
with its statue of Kierkegaard.
Going back through the courtyard, we passed by the front of Christiansborg Slot
which is right across from the "beginning" of the canal system. A walk along this canal route
gets you to Nyhavn
which is what Copenhagen looks like in the images I think of. Because our food tour wasn't for hours, we decided to stop here for breakfast-- it's a somewhat touristy area and so probably a little more pricey, but the scenery is great.
We ate at Lenore Christine, one of the many restaurants along the canal (which, like the pedestrian street in Lodz, seemed to be mostly restaurants).
Going back through the courtyard, we passed by the front of Christiansborg Slot
which is right across from the "beginning" of the canal system. A walk along this canal route
gets you to Nyhavn
which is what Copenhagen looks like in the images I think of. Because our food tour wasn't for hours, we decided to stop here for breakfast-- it's a somewhat touristy area and so probably a little more pricey, but the scenery is great.
We ate at Lenore Christine, one of the many restaurants along the canal (which, like the pedestrian street in Lodz, seemed to be mostly restaurants).
I had an omelette and my mom had French toast.
Nyhavn isn't a particularly big area-- I think if you take one of the boat rides along the canal, you can probably see more of it, but we never actually got back to the Nyhavn area to do that. From Nyhavn, we walked to Amalienborg Slot-- the Queen's Palace.
The palace is pretty much a full circle of a complex around a courtyard (which makes it really difficult to get a complete photograph). This was my best attempt.
My guide book had led me to believe that it was possible to tour the Royal Palace-- it even listed the exhibits available, including the Royal apartments. However, when we went to find out about prices for tours, there weren't any available which was really disappointing. I don't know if there are only tours when the Queen isn't in residence-- I'm not even sure if the Queen was in residence (a flag was flying and if it's like England, that means that she is, but I don't know if the flying of the flag means the same thing in Denmark). But, in any case, there was no tour of the interior (I said something about this to our food tour guide later that day and she seemed surprised that anyone would even suggest there was a way to tour the Palace-- so, I'm not sure why my guidebook suggests that there is.)
There are 4 ways to exit the Palace courtyard-- one of them leads to Frederikskirken (also called Marmorkirken which means marble church), which was consecrated in 1894. Construction on it actually began in 1749, but money ran out, so it wasn't finished until late in the 19th century.
It's not a particularly big church, but the interior does have a lot of marble.
We headed back to the middle of the courtyard to exit out the way we had come in and walked into crowds gathering for the changing of the guard. So we stayed to watch what turned to be the most boring changing of the guard ever. For most of the time we were there, there were a couple guards stationed at entrances to the courtyard-- and not even all of them.
But, at the beginning of the changing of the guard, many more appear from two different directions: one group from the direction of Frederikskirken and the other from the entrance to the right (which is where we initially came in).
This is, by far, the most boring changing of the guard I have ever seen. Other than marching in, this is pretty much what it looked like--
two groups of the Queen's guard staring at one another.
After a while of staring at the guard stare, we got tired of waiting to see what else would happen, so we left. I should mention that this is the closest point we ever got to the famous Little Mermaid statue. My mom really wanted to see it, but while this was closer to it than anywhere else we were while in Copenhagen, it was still a bit away from here. So yes, we went all the way to Copenhagen and never say the actual Little Mermaid statue. But, we had a food tour to get to.
Our food tour met out front of Church of Our Lady, in the Stroget neighborhood (or, Latin Quarter. We didn't really know how far we actually walked during the 4 hours of this tour, but it turns out we covered quite a few distinct neighborhoods.). We circled the general area where the church was for a while not understanding where my navigation app was trying to get us to turn. But, we found it with a minute or two to spare (maybe-- it felt like we cut it really close, though we were in the general area with plenty of time to spare. Just not at the actual church.) Here, we met our tour guide, Cindie, who actually owns the business.
The square itself is a bit packed with other buildings and so it's difficult to get a decent exterior shot of the church because you can't really get far enough away from it, unobstructed, to see the whole exterior.
Our first stop on the food tour, took us back through the square we had actually been circling around with this fountain/statue
on our way to Cafe Gammel Torv
where we learned that cafe, in this context, doesn't mean cafe in the way most people think. This isn't a casual cafe (which Copenhagen does have), but rather a place where the traditional, more formal food of Denmark is served. On our food tour was actually a group of Danes, several of whom were originally from Copenhagen-- though it seemed to be a couple separate groups, not a larger group of people who all knew each other-- so they also provided information on how to eat the food.
At Cafe Gammel Torv, we had traditional Smørrebrod, open face sandwiches, and schnapps. As usual, I snapped a picture of my mom trying something alcoholic which, also as usual, she didn't like (though it's harder to tell from this picture).
The people on the food tour with us (which also included a couple from California) didn't seem to really understand my whole need to photograph the food, so I didn't get a picture of the bowl that was being passed around before everyone dug in to make their own Smørrebrod. There was a sort of rye bread passed around and then everyone heaped what was in the bowl onto their slices-- it wasn't pre-made sandwiches like we would think of.
The ingredients for the sandwich included hard-boiled eggs, curried herring (though not a curry in the sense that I think of it-- the taste wasn't that strong) and apples and then a second plate which included meatballs and red cabbage. The actual plates are important as well-- they are the official royal porcelain which is a sort of blue flower design. You see dishware in this pattern all over Copenhagen, so it's not hard to get though it's also not inexpensive. I don't really ever think of eating herring, but this was quite good.
From Cafe Gammel Torv, we headed to Sankt Peders Bageri, passing this courtyard along the way. You can see the tiny doors in the building to the left, one of the more interesting architectural features. The tree is also quite old.
It's part of a university, the law school, which is set to be moved elsewhere.
On the way to the Bageri, we also passed the Rundetarn, built by King Christian IV in1642 as an observatory. Inside, the ramp leading up to the top is wide enough to accommodate a horse and carriage, which Tsar Peter the Great (as well as other nobility, including Christian IV) used to get to the top.
At Sankt Peders Bageri,
we had, fittingly, Danish-- though that's really only what those outside Denmark call it (though the Danes are aware). And actually, they don't consider it "Danish" because the recipe originally came from Vienna in the 1850s when Danish pastry workers went on strike and bakeries had to hire foreign bakers. Many of them came from Austria and brought this recipe with them. So, the Danes really think of it as Viennese pastry while the rest of the world persists in calling it Danish.
We each only had half a pastry, which was fine because this was very early in a quite extensive food tour-- this food tour did stop at more places than any other tour I've been on. There was a lot of food to come.
From the pastry shop, we walked to the food market in the Norreport neighborhood, which is actually two buildings filled with market stalls, some of which are selling packaged goods and others which are selling fresh food.
Inside the market, we went to Ostetorvet,
which was a cheese counter.
Here, we had a traditional Danish liquor
which tasted quite a bit like Ginjinha, the traditional Portuguese cherry liquor, and a variety of cheeses
including a blue cheese and a couple of goat and sheep's milk cheeses. This was our only stop inside the food market (though my mom and I did return the next day...). Outside the food market, we stopped for "street food" at another vendor, Pølsekompagniet, which sells very fancy hotdogs-- really, organic sausage on a hotdog roll (not the kind of "franks" Americans consider hotdogs).
The toppings included a spicy mayo, "Caribbean" sauce, and pesto which sounds like a lot of conflicting flavors but really worked together. It was quite a big hotdog though-- I don't know if anyone in the group actually finished it. I know neither my mom nor I did. Alone, it would have been enough to fill either of us up for the whole tour.
This happened to be July 14, so there was a small Bastille Day celebration happening outside the food market.
After the food market, we headed to a quieter section of the same neighborhood to visit Grod
which is a porridge shop. Here, we had the bygotto
which is a bit more like risotto. In it was portobello mushroom, cheese and thyme. This, like the hotdog, was incredibly filling. It was really good and I really wanted to finish all of it, but couldn't. I assume we had this less breakfasty porridge because it was mid-afternoon, but Grod does also have more traditional oat porridge that feel more like breakfast "oatmeal." only much fancier.
We walked for a bit after this, heading across a bridge
towards the Norrebro neighborhood where we walked through Assistens Cemetery. It's a lovely cemetery and is set up more like a park that happens to have graves than a traditional cemetery. There are famous Danes buried here such as Neils Bohr (famous physicist)
and Hans Christian Anderson.
At Hans Christian Anderson's grave, we stopped to have a drink of juice (which was much like the black currant juice from Poland, but not quite) and a licorice ball
which, though black licorice (which I don't particularly like) was really good. Licorice is a big thing in Denmark-- they are really fond of it. Which may be why it's a lot better than any licorice I've ever had before.
From the cemetery, we headed towards more dessert: ice cream at ISTID.
ISTID doesn't make ice cream in a traditional way, but rather mixes the ingredients in a stand mixer and then uses nitrogen to freeze it.
We had salted caramel ice cream with toffee on it.
Despite being very full by this point, this we both finished. It is up there in the running for the best ice cream ever.
From here, we walked to Ro Chokolde
a high end chocolate shop
where we had Flødeboller, which are basically chocolate covered marshmallows.
There was a choice of plain, raspberry and coconut. I had raspberry and my mom had coconut (which I finished because she's allergic to chocolate and so only had a small bite. One of our fellow tour members, who had caught on to how important photographing the food is to me, put his plain one in the picture so we get one of all three.)
Our last stop was at a craft brewery in the Vesterbro neighborhood, Mikkeller & Friends.
Here, we had two of their craft brews, a light and a dark.
I don't have pictures of my mom trying these, but needless to say she didn't enjoy either. I actually liked the lighter one more which is surprising because I usually lean towards darker beer-- it may have been because it was lighter and I was quite full by this point.
When we left Mikkeller & Friends, we were met by bike taxis to take us back to the market area
which is when it became really apparent how far we had walked. It took quite a while to get back-- and those guys who pedal the bikes must be in very good shape. The land is pretty flat (and biking is by far the most popular way to get around Copenhagen-- they are everywhere and often have the right of way over cars and have their own traffic lights in some places. Approximately 50% of Copenhagen residents commute to work by bike and there are actually more bikes than inhabitants of Copenhagen.) but pushing several adults ahead of you while pedaling still has to be a challenge.
The food tour ended a little after 5. My mom and I went back into the market, where there was also a stall that sold the licorice we had had in the cemetery so I could buy some for friends, and then we wound through the shopping area of the Latin Quarter, stopping in a few places, on our way back to the hotel. Mostly, the shopping was what one would expect, but there were also a few bizarre store fronts like this one
which was for a store that sold eyeglasses. I have no idea what lounging babies have to do with eyeglasses. We wandered into a few souvenir shops and then headed back to our hotel.
Eventually, we decided we were going to have to eat something for dinner even though we had had so much to eat during the food tour but didn't want anything really heavy. At the edge of Tivoli Gardens, which was only a couple of blocks from where we were, was a Wagamama.
Wagamama is a British chain-- but I haven't had Wagamama since 2012 and remember it fondly (as did my guide book, which acknowledged that this is really a British restaurant but so good that it still merited a visit, even when in Denmark), so we went there for ramen bowls: a chicken ramen bowl for my mom and chili beef ramen for me. It was as good as I remembered.
And thus ended our first of two full days in Copenhagen.
July 15: Rosenborg Slot, Botanical Gardens and Tivoli
On our second day in Copenhagen, we set out to Rosenborg Slot-- a castle you can actually tour. (We were heading out and then working our way back to Tivoloi in order to be there in the evening when it was supposed to be nicely lit.) On our way, we stopped at a small bakery for breakfast pastries (that's a chocolate croissant and a poppy seed pastry we had heard about while on our food tour the day before)
and then, since were, in part, retracing our steps from the food tour the day before, we stopped at The Church of Our Lady to see the inside.
Multiple churches have sat on this site since 1209 but have burned down. This particular one was inaugurated in 1840. It's relatively simple, but pretty in that simplicity. From here, we headed again to the marketplace area, but instead of heading straight across as we did the day before, we turned right towards the castle.
Rosenborg Slot was built between 1606 and 1633 by Christian IV (who is responsible for much of the building in Copenhagen, really) to be used as a summer home. After the 1700s, it was no longer used as a residence but a place to keep the kings finest and rarest objects. It became a museum open to the public in the 1830s as well as "a giant jewelry box" and is still both today. To get a decent picture of it, you pretty much have to go down to the rose garden-- that gives you enough distance.
There is, like at other castle, a changing of the guard here as well. I took a couple pictures, but after the disappointment of the guard changing the day before, we didn't record it-- or really stay to watch. It was mostly some basic marching.
Instead of watching the whole change, we went inside to tour the castle, of which you get to see quite a bit. It's a nice mix of the private and the public rooms. Touring it, you get a feeling that you are seeing quite a bit of the castle.
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| The Winter Room-- one of Christian IV's private chambers. |
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| Christian IV's Writing Room |
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| Christian IV's toilet (the tiles weren't put in until 1705) |
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| Christian V's Chamber |
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| Christian VI's Hall |
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| Christian VIII's Room |
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| The Great Hall |
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| Throne |
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| Also The Great Hall |
There are also, as promised, lots of precious items stored here-- each in themed displays like the porcelain cabinet,
the glass cabinet, or china cabinet.
After a tour of the castle proper, you exit to go to the basement and the treasury. At first this didn't seem as exciting as it could have been, having the usual display of weaponry and gear and other assorted artifacts
as well as Rosenborg Wine.
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| This wine is really old! That tag is labeling it as from the 1600s. |
However, the lower level treasury proved to very exciting, not just because it housed the crown jewels BUT because we could take pictures of them! I have never before been able to take pictures of the crown jewels anywhere. I took a lot of them (though only a couple are here-- I'm not sure everyone really wants to see more than 30 pictures of the same crowns.).
There were other jewels on display too (which I was also allowed to photograph!).
as well as scepters.
But it really was getting to photograph the crown jewels that was the most exciting part!
After the tour of treasury, we headed outside to walk the grounds which are open to the public. It's free to be on the grounds-- it's only if you want to go inside the castle that you have to pay.
The King's Gardens have a royal entryway with lions guarding the path back up
but are a bit more plain than other gardens
like the Queen's rose garden
where there are memorial flowers, like these for Hans Christian Anderson.
Because this is considered a public park, it also has a playground.
And gardens to the side of the palace.
As it turns out, practically across the street from Rosenborg Slot is the Botanical Garden (which I had wanted to go to, though the map made them look really far away-- they were not).
The Botanical Garden is part of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, maintained by the University of Copenhagen. And free.
There are several sections of the gardens including the Alpine Garden (or, the garden on the hill-- for Copenhagen, this is pretty "hilly)
as well as annuals and perennials and a pond with lily-pads.
There is also the palm house
which was built between 1872 and 1874 (when the gardens were founded) but was renovated in the early 1980s. Inside are palm trees-- and you can climb a spiral staircase to get to the top and walk amongst the palm leaves and tree tops.
It's incredibly hot and humid at the top-- it doesn't seem like it would be because it's not terribly high up, but there is a significant temperature increase at the top. It made coming down and going back outside feel quite cool and relieving.
Rosenborg Slot and the Botanical Garden were pretty close to the market we had been to on the food tour the day before, so we returned there for lunch to try more modern versions of Smorrebrod. Hallernes has been pointed out to use the day before-- it was quite close to the counter where we had the cheese and Danish liquor-- and recommended as a great place to try a fancy, updated twist on the classic open-faced sandwich.
The display was lovely, though the chalkboard above explaining the variety was all in Danish, so we had to guess a little.
In the end, we ended up with one that was roast beef (on the top) and one that was a twist on the meatballs smorrebrod from the day before.
After lunch, we headed back to the area near our hotel to end our trip at Tivoli Gardens which is the most famous attraction in Copenhagen (though, in retrospect, probably shouldn't be).
Tivoli Gardens opened in 1843. It is more amusement park than gardens, though there are some lovely parts to it
including a garden with a statue of the designer, Georg Carstensen.
It also had some strange statue gardens, like this one
which felt a little reminiscent of Beetlejuice in that scene when the giant serpent is diving in and out of the sand. But that movie probably wasn't as big in Denmark, so this likely doesn't resonate the same way for the Danes.
What I had really wanted to see was the aquarium, which had been talked up in guide books. It was not as impressive as I wanted to it to be-- really, it's one large tank of fish
(and a couple small ones).
In total, though it's small, the aquarium has more than 1,600 tropical fish, sharks, octopus and piranhas. For the most part, it's kind of peaceful to watch.
This is video of my favorite fish-- the one with the very long nose. He was quite uncooperative about being photographed or recorded, so this was the best I could do.
We were, however, there pretty close to feeding time, so we stayed and watched. It becomes a much more frenzied tank once food is introduced.
There is also squid for the more carnivorous fish to feast on. I have never seen a fish feast on a large piece of meat before, so it was kind of interesting.
After the aquarium, we spent time walking around. Tivoli really is just like any amusement park. There are the typical rides like the carousel
and roller coasters
and the Danish version of "It's a Small World"-- Hans Christian Anderson style. (It's also worth noting here that we did see a version of The Little Mermaid here...)
There are also gift shops (which sell miniature Little Mermaid statues-- this is pretty much what it would have looked like had we gone),
games, photo stands
and the loveliest bathrooms. It's not everyday you walk into a public restroom and marvel at how pretty the doors to the stalls are.
There are also restaurants of all kinds, including Groften which was built in 1874
as well as more kitschy places, like one set on a pirate ship where visitors are greeted by a robotic pirate (who is sleeping it off in this moment).
There is also Nimb, which is a restaurant and bar attached to hotel that, along with the earlier fountain picture, is really the iconic image people tend to have of Tivoli. (It was dusk when I took these pictures and there were actually small lights all over-- which is why we had waited until later in the day to go--, but they weren't really coming out in the pictures. I'm guessing I would have had to wait until after 11 pm, when the sun actually went down, to get a good picture.)
We ate at none of these places; instead, we ate at Mazzoli's Caffe and Trattoria
which was one of the less expensive restaurants in Tivoli (which, in general is pretty expensive for food) but was really quite good Italian, much better than what you would think of as amusement park food. My mom had ravioli and I had pasta with eggplant and mozzarella. We also had garlic bread-- largely because the smell of the garlic bread is what drew me into the restaurant in the first place-- and an arugula salad.
Tivoli does have fancy food going for it.
And that ended our day as well as our time abroad. The next day, we headed out to the Copenhagen airport-- where we did get to fill out a customer satisfaction survey which made me happy because I could finally express my displeasure with the lack of comfortable waiting areas in the airport-- to fly home.
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