Warsaw in a weekend and Malbork in a day

A weekend in Warszawa - just what we needed to blow the cobwebs away. After all, there's only so much work a person can do before they need another break! So we left Krakow behind again and had a couple of days in the country's capital.

When you only have that short time, it's really best to decide before you go exactly what you will see. I wanted to make the Warsaw Rising museum my priority as well as walk through the 'old' city. I can't recommend the Museum highly enough. From the entry area with Warsaw's beating heart to the displays and commentary it was a wonderful museum. It's fairly new, and we spent nearly 4 hours there. We lost track of time and it was only because we were hungry that we decided to wander to town to eat - looked at our watches - and 4 hours had gone past!

The displays cover the progress of the Rising in 1944, social commentary, memories and even a film made in 1944, hidden, then re-hidden by the Communists before being put back together again. I did have personal reasons to go here - my Uncle Stefan, his wife and little boy were all murdered in the Rising - and I really wanted to find out more.
Other things to see are Stalin's gift - a truly ugly building the Palace of Culture (??), and the Little Insurgent. This is a little statue to pay tribute to the children of the Rising. It sits just outside the old city walls, is not too easy to find, but is worth searching for.

We finished off our weekend by going to see the cereminail changing of he guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It's held every Sunday at 12 noon and is extremely good.

Of course, you have to have a look at the old city. It is very small and quite remarkable considering it was totally destroyed in the Second War. Thanks to old pictures and paintings, it was possible to reconstruct it - and herein lies another story...

After our weekend in Warszawa, we had another couple of weeks before we were off again - this time a long train journey up to Malbork. For a comprehensive history see the website:

http://www.zamek.malbork.pl/en/index.html

It was fantastic - and lucky to still be here! After the end of the war when the good burghers of Warszawa wanted to rebuild, they looked around for the right sort of bricks - and... they turned their gaze to Malbork. They were going to use all the bricks from that ancient castle to rebuild the capital, but luckily, they were stopped. And so Malbork still stands.

It was and is the largest Gothic castle in Europe - the Teutonic Knights held it, and t was never taken by force - ever. However, it was sold once - a Polish King bargained for it and got it. The tour is well put together - our Guide had wonderful stories to tell and we saw a great deal. this was another marathon - 3 hours this time.

Have to say however, that this is only attraction in the town - luckily we only went there for a couple of nights, and as it takes 7 hours to reach it by train we weren't really short of time.

We enjoyed walking around the castle at night as it is floodlit and you can - and should- cross the bridge to the other side of the river to get a good view and appreciate its size. We stayed in the Zamek Hotel - this was originally in the Lower Castle (there are 3 castles too - in one) and was the infirmary for the lower orders. The rooms were... quaint, not too bad, but they need new beds really. We ate out as the restaurant was silly prices!

The autumnal colours were beautiful and warranted photographs and we enjoyed walking along the river and through the wooded areas. However, any longer and we'd have gone crazy without a car!

Apart from that, we now have a long weekend in Praha coming up in November... not All Saint's weekend which is today; next weekend. Next blog after that!