Getting to Warsaw

Well we did make the train and even managed to pick up lunch supplies with our incredibly limited Polish - we keep getting pitying looks from the old ladies whenever we try and pronounce 'apple' and 'two'. The five and a half hour journey was spent with me trying to read Kafka (I think that life may be too short...) and Lucy re-reading The Pianist as she has now read through absolutely everything we brought with us and requires a re-stock in Warsaw.

We arrived at about 4, outside the enormous Palace of Culture and Science (a gift from the Soviet Union), and headed to a cafe to wait for Lucy's friend Helena to arrive. A restoring sandwich and coffee later, we heard from Helena and gave her directions to reach us. It was only after half an hour had passed and she had still failed to arrive that we thought there might be a problem and discovered that there are multiple black fountains and little parks around the Palace, and poor Helena was stuck looking for us on the other side.

Once we were all assembled, we headed up to the Old Town, beautifully restored since its total destruction after the Warsaw Rising for an initial wander and were struck by quite how stunning it was. We found a lovely little restaurant for Pierogi and a catch up, before heading to the supermarket to stock up. After standing in a queue for hours we were finally stocked up and ready to find Weronika's house, where we were staying.

Having said that we would be there by 9 and with no way of contacting her to let her know that we were going to be late, we were slightly panicked at the discovery it was going to be nearer 10.30pm by the time we got there. However, we finally made it and were made to feel very welcome and comfortable by the lovely Weronika, who even managed to persuade Lucy to attend the 8am mass the following morning (Helena and I shared somewhat astonished expressions...)