Our last day in Warsaw was to be dedicated to the Warsaw Uprising museum after the usual hostel breakfast of cereal, bread and cold meats.

The walk was quite long – by a mere mortal’s standards – but we took it in our stride (quite literally) and made it there in about half an hour to forty minutes, despite the extremely blustery conditions.

The museum itself was definitely one of the best we’ve encountered to date. The history of the 1944 Uprising, along with a look into the life of those involved and the events leading up to it, was vividly portrayed through a use of traditional and more interactive exhibits. The museum also had a wall with the names of all the Poles who died in the uprising. Needless to say, it was an extremely large wall.

After being in the museum for about two and a bit hours we went to the observation deck that looked out over the entire city. Boards helped you to identify all the buildings that were built before the Second World War. From that high point in Warsaw you could only see 40 – over 85% of Warsaw was destroyed from 1939-1945.

The museum was a highly informative and moving experience: if you have to see one museum in Warsaw, let this be it.

After we’d finished we walked back to Nowy Swiat (the street our hostel is on) for lunch.  Heading to our inexpensively nicer Polish equivalent of Maison Blanc, Blikle’s, we both enjoyed a variety of Polish ravioli with a cold pint.

This was followed by – yet again – afternoon tea and cake. Isn’t life grand?

The rest of the day frankly wasn’t that interesting as we got back about 0500, also known as blog o’clock. We went to the supermarket and bought some stuffed pasta, resulting in the first pasta dish we actually enjoyed – you get what you pay for. The more important news of the evening though was the discovery of a MaxiBon ice-cream in the depths of the Carrefour freezer. Naturally, much excitement ensued and NS had to slap me back to reality from the giddy delirium that I was in.

The night was finished with a few more beers over the pasta and watching Bandits – a film I’d seen when about twelve but was actually surprisingly funny and equally good the second time around. I must’ve had good taste.

In all honesty I will be very sad to leave Warsaw. It’s a beautifully vibrant city with some great places to go and inhabited by a very hospitable, friendly set of people. My accomplice and I both have it down in our top 5 cities and would thoroughly recommend a visit to anyone that gets the chance.  We’d love to come again.  We’d even show you around.

We’re getting used to this lie-in lark. We woke up more refreshed than ever, leisurely rolling out of bed far nearer to 1100 than 1000. That’s about as close as we get to a lazy Sunday morning on our travels.

Although we were ready for a new day of baking Polish heat, the Warsovian weather had other ideas. Torrential rain was the order of the day, and we suited up in our cagoules. Yeah, that’s right, I gave another outing to my malfunctioning waterproof – more in. Holding up far better this time, we braved the brief walk to the Old Town. This was bit of a misnomer as the entire city was rebuilt (albeit painstakingly faithfully) after World War II.

Choosing to visit the Old Town on a Sunday appeared to be akin to hitting the sightseer’s jackpot, because everything was free! Skipping most of the churches on the way up as a result of Sunday Mass being given, we decided to visit the Royal Castle/Palace.

An array of art appreciated and paintings perused, we had a quick look at the perimeter of the city’s fortifications and moved on to a traditional Polish lunch at Subway. Killing time before Mass finished with our footloong sandwiches, we finally braved the oldest church in Warsaw: St. John’s Cathedral.

Altars appraised, it was off to the Warsaw Historical Museum, contained within a labyrinth of Baroque buildings in the Old Town square. Not the most organised of museums, it’s informative look at Warsaw’s development took a rather scattershot approach to artifacts and exhibits – a costume piece here, a bunch of paintings there, some posters of the museum’s previous exhibitions among a model of WWII Warsaw & a Luftwaffe plane? Why not.

Before we knew it, we’d finished looking around the Old Town and the drizzle had finally stopped. Celebrating with a typical Polish tall whippy ice-cream, we went to see the impressive Warsaw Uprising monument in preparation to a visit to the city’s most famous museum tomorrow. Commemorating the Polish resistance, the monument was easily one of the most striking things we’d seen, reminding all of the rebellion beginning in August 1944.

After all of that, we deserved a break, and less than two minutes away from our hostel was Blikle’s Cafe, dishing up the best cakes in Warsaw since 1869. It woould’ve been rude not to have some Assam tea and a pączek (a traditional Polish doughnut, filled with rose jam…)

By the time we returned to our hostel, some American girls had arrived in our dorm, as well as two English guys they’d met in Krakow who’d followed them here for the day. Although somewhat perturbed at the revelation that these boys had brought their hair straighteners with them, they both seemed nice enough.

Going our separate ways for dinner, we managed to rustle up a takeaway pizza from the local Pizza Express clone, Pizza Marzano. Sitting in front of The Talented Mr. Ripley with our new dormmates, we enjoyed the slightly homoerotic thriller before retiring for the evening.

It was 0500 on a clear, warm Warsaw morning when we pulled into the bus station on the outskirts of the city.

As is customary in these situations, bags are collected and iPhone with directions to the relevant hostel on is whipped out in order to determine our next course of action.

iPhone tells us to catch bus: no problem. We look for somewhere to buy tickets but there is nowhere in sight and the driver doesn’t appear to be interested – but the people with official-looking badges who get on at the next stop seem to be… Funnily enough, they don’t go for the locals (who as far as we could tell didn’t have tickets on them), so we engage in a brief exchange in Polglish. We play the dumb tourists (not too far off the mark) and just about any other angle you can think of (well-honed through conversing with Russian border officials) but this does not please them – so we are marched off at the next stopo to the nearest ATM and told to get out 106 zloty for the ’special tax’ that we have now incurred. Brilliant start, followed by the even better response to the question,

“So where do we buy tickets from?”

“Driver… sometimes.”

How useful – they just charged us £20 for being ignorant.

The next bus we got on we tried to buy a ticket from the driver – and guess what? He’s also not interested. So by directive 2981 of the Independent State of Nickdom it is decreed that we’ll just stay standing and jump off the bus at the sight of anyone in uniform. Luckily enough no other personnel get on and we take the bus to the end of the line, forced walk the rest of the way as the street we needed is pedestrianised at the weekends.  Of course.

What a street. It’s lovely, with a lot of fairly high-end shops, restaurants, coffee bars (including a Starbucks – I guess this now counts as ‘the West’) as well as a UK-baiting Warsaw University. The hostel is indeed located on the street, and it’s similar to St. Petersburg’s Crazy Duck, large-ish dorms, nicely decorated in a modern style and plenty of facilities while remaining very personable at the same time. But as is the way with these things, check-in isn’t until 1430. For any other travellers this might be an issue, but after doing a similar stint in St. Petersburg we’re actually looking forward to this city and so after a cheap and filling breakfast  at 0800, off we intrepidly went.

Off we intrepidly went, past the impressive and very Soviet Palace of Art and Science – a gift from Stalin – to the financial centre. This is filled with a vast plethora of weird and wonderful architectural constructs. It’s as if there is a city ordnance against plain buildings: everything has something jutting out, a curved section or even bits that missing that probably should be there.

This led us to the Jewish ghetto, or where the ghetto was. After the ghetto uprising the Nazi completely and utterly razed the place to the ground, leaving very little evidence it was ever there.

On the way back to the hostel we passed the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that was constantly guarded and had an ever burning flame – a tribute to all the Polish soldiers in all the conflicts in which the nation had been involved.

Lunch followed and 1430 slowly rolled around. We’d already covered a large distance on foot, so what could we possibly do that afternoon? As any good interthinker would know, the correct answer is, “Walk further.”

So off we crusaded a few kilometers south to Lazienki Park. The walk was long and extremely sweaty (you would be too at 34 degrees Celsius) but worth it. The parks were magnificent and colossal, including a lake, a statue of Chopin, a palace and enough grounds to get lost in for a significant amount of time. All this in combination with some toffee ice-cream made for a pair of happy Nicks.

After the trek back, the best time of the day was due – nap time.

The rest of the evening passed without much incident – a few Zzzzzs were caught, some pasta was cooked and we finished the night watching Polish-subtitled Apocalypse Now.

Warsaw starts with two thumb up.