Monday, June 24, 2019

Zuiderdam MegaVoyage 2018-2019, Warsaw, Poland

After our morning tour in Krakow we traveled to Warsaw. Arriving midafternoon in Warsaw we did not lose any time, luckily the Palace of Culture and Science was across the street from our hotel so we decided to visit this huge skyscraper. This massive Russian style Palace built in the 1950s was a gift from Stalin to the people of Warsaw...Everything about the palace is big...to date it is the tallest building from Frankfurt to Moscow at 760 feet...we rode up to the observation deck for the commanding views of Warsaw and the view from the ground was also very impressive. We maneuvered our way through the underground tunnels back to our hotel to meet our guide John for a city tour. We drove by the Palm Tree Circle past the former Communist Party Headquarters now home of the Polish Stock Exchange and the only Ferrari Dealership in Poland...from this point, we started our walk to Old Town via the Pilsudski Square passing the Hotel Bristol to St. Anne Cathedral where I climbed the Tower for a panoramic view of the Old Town, Castle Square, the Royal Way and across the Vistula River. In 1945, with the exception of two buildings nothing remained of the Old Town...by 1956 the Old Town was totally reconstructed. Entering the Castle Square, we came upon a lively area of cafes flanked by the distinctive pink Royal Castle...continuing on we came to St. Martin Church and to a viewpoint overlooking the escarpment of the Vistula River...from there we walked back to where the car was parked taking in the sights of Old Town Warsaw...Warsaw is a very progressive city...from an infrastructure perspective Warsaw has peeled away the many signs of the Communist regime with huge building projects from skyscrapers, roads and immense shopping malls....our time was short but we enjoyed the city very much...onto the first of our 3 Baltic states...Lithuania.






































































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