Well I would walk 500 miles....

To our amazement, Lucy did make the 8 am mass and looked ridiculously cheerful for that time in the morning. Helena too was an early riser, so I was left holding the flag for the people that can't think straight until at least 9 am. We had a leisurely breakfast with Weronika before heading out on the metro to the Old Town. Our first port of call was the Warsaw Uprising Monument, a collection of sculptures of people emerging from the rubble. It was right outside what we assumed were the courts, a strikingly modern complex of buildings, which framed the sculptures beautifully and was, I think, a fitting tribute.

After that, our wander took us through lots of little winding streets to the Old Town Square, complete with a fountain with a mermaid on it which is the symbol of Warsaw for some reason. The buildings were of course largely destroyed after the Uprising but have been beautifully restored, so that they look very like the old pictures you see of this area on postcards. The old centre was absolutely heaving with people, especially families who were indulging in the most amazingly tall ice cream cones you have ever seen and given that an important aspect of this trip is immersing oneself in the local culture, we decided to follow suit.
Following our 'immersion in culture', we headed into the Royal Palace to explore. Again it was completely devastated during the war and wasn't rebuilt for decades afterwards. It houses a beautiful mirrored room where concerts are held, as well as a series of rooms that depicted different eras of the royalty of Poland. It was interesting to see just how many of the portraits were either the same as or relations of the portraits we had seen in Vienna. You get a sense of just how inter-related the royal families of Europe were.

We lunched in one of the many beautiful parks in Warsaw, the Saxon Gardens, watching all the people out for a Sunday stroll. Warsaw feels very family centred, as well as incredibly safe and was definitely a city which was stealing our hearts. We could have stayed sat in the sunshine for the rest of the afternoon, but instead had madly decided to walk to the Uprising Museum, out in the business district.

It has been a failing of ours on this trip, that we have sometimes failed to acknowledge the fact that distances on the map, even when you know the scale, can look much smaller than they are. This was our mistake trying to get to the museum; it took hours and as 4 o'clock came around and it just came into view, we had the awful premonition that we were about to discover that Poland operates early closing times on Sunday. Thankfully it didn't and we got a couple of hours to explore what turned out to be an amazing museum.

The museum itself works chronologically through the beginning of war to the aftermath of the Uprising. It is brilliantly done with lots of visual and auditory aids. Particularly moving for me was the section about the Home Army, the men and women who fought against the Nazis and were prominent in the Uprising itself. After the war, the Soviets (who incidentally had refused to come to the civilians of Warsaw's aid, despite being just the other side of the Vistula) tried to undermine the significance of the Uprising and the importance of the role of the Home Army in a spectacular retelling of history in which it had been a pointless sacrifice of civilian life by the thoughtless ruling class. It was only after the fall of communism that the musuem was able to come into existence. Also deeply moving was the role children, particularly Scouts made to the Uprising, carrying messages and equipment to the Army. Most of those who survived were sent to camps afterwards, when Hitler ordered that the city be destroyed.

Knowing what a long walk back it was to the centre of Warsaw, we attempted to catch a tram, but not realising how to get tickets, we had to jump off and walk the several miles back. We felt that after this we probably deserved a beer and sat in the early evening sunshine, looking out towards the Palace of Culture and Science. Feeling refreshed, we headed back to Weronika's who was most amused at our catastrophic attempt at veggie stirfry, which managed to fill her entire house with the smell of burnt broccoli, not our finest culinary moment...