Hi friends,

Today we made our way to Warsaw. We woke up uncharacteristically early at around 5am Irish time as Matthew was hungry and wanted food. He in turn woke Alexei up and both stayed awake from then on. The couple that run the house brought up a nice breakfast which consisted of bread, scrambled egg with bacon, different flavors of jam and butter, a plate of cold meats and cheeses and there was a Dolce coffee machine to have nice coffee.

A big surprise that awaited us when brightness came was a blanket of snow..

We, in Ireland, this year had a lot of snow and knowing how Ireland came to complete standstill during that weather, I was filled with dread of not being able to handle the drive to Warsaw. However, I shouldn’t have worried, the car has winter tires on and drove very smoothly. My hubby was on gps giving me directions on where to go and we safely made it to a hotel Osir-Polna in Warsaw city center.

The hotel is lovely, albeit a bit unusual, in that it actually starts on a second floor and is on top of sports and swimming pool center. We did have an hour of free swimming, if we wanted, but decided against it as were very tired after our outing. We both agree however that we will definitely stay here again if we come to Poland. The room has 4 beds, is very spacious with nice modern bathroom, and a fridge in the room, which is especially handy for a family with kids who need a place to store milk.

Today we decided to go and do some shopping as we are only staying here for one day and want to go and see the sights later on in the week when my sister gets here. The hotel provided us with a map and marked all the major shopping centers that are all reachable via metro and tram. We decided to go to Arcadia shopping center.

We got a metro train to the required stop, which was only couple of minute walk from our hotel. We got a 20 minute ticket to use any transportation and it was enough to get us there via a metro and tram (to Alexei’s excitement).

The shopping center was massive. We spent approximately 5 hours there and had to leave only because were getting tired and Matthew desperately needed a nap. You can find everything there, from carrefour to Clarks to Disney/baby shop, all the major labels, food court, and Alexei’s favorite a playzone with a massive slide going from 3rd floor to second.

One tip that my hubby learned on internet and which saved us a bit of money was when u are paying for a things or taking out cash, do it in zloty not in euro, as the exchange rate is better in our banks. So for example, when we took out 400 zloty from one bank machine it said that it will charge approximately 108 euro for that. However , we chose for our bank to convert and ended up paying 96 euro instead! So that’s a good tip for any people who want to visit Poland (perhaps other countries too).

When we got back to our hotel we just chilled out… Alexei opened his presents and Matthew seemed to be in a much better way health wise. It was a much less stressful day and we definitely enjoyed it 🙂

Hope you all had a nice day 🙂