Days 20-21: Finals Days in Warsaw

Our last two days in Warsaw were a great way to relax before going home. We picked a couple museums we really wanted to see, and also went back to the market square. The weather was absolutely gorgeous!

We also saw the museum of the Frederyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw. It's a fairly modern museum, despite it's old exterior, with lots of multimedia displays and interactive exhibits highlighting his biography and musical development.

We then returned to the Ogród Saski (Saxon Garden) by day. This inner city park has many flower beds and a really big fountain that we sat by for a few minutes.

One of the few museums we managed to fit into our schedule was the Warsaw Uprising museum. Housed in an old industrial building, this is another relatively new museum (opened in 2004 for the 60th anniversary of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.) The exhibits leading you on a very powerful, chronological journey from Nazi occupation to Soviet control through personal stories, exhibits of day-to-day life, military artifacts, and various memorials to the underground army.

For our last evening in Warsaw, Kuba's aunt, uncle, and babcia took us out to the old town for dinner and a stroll around the market.

On our last day, right before going to the airport, we stopped by Kuba's babcia's house for lunch. We had a great time looking through old photos of Kuba and his family from before and after they came to Canada.

We'd like to thank all of Kuba's family (in Canada and Poland) for being such great hosts and for all your help in making our trip as great as it was. It would not have been nearly as warm, friendly, and insightful an experience without you!

Thanks for reading our blog! It was a pleasure to be able to share it with all of you.

- Kuba and Isabel

Day 19: Vienna

Today was a very busy day! It was our final day in Vienna. This will be a quick post, as we are about to get on the train returning to Warsaw. We wanted to post our final Vienna pictures, as we won't have internet access in Warsaw.

This morning we went to the Spanish Riding School, in Hofburg Palace, and watched the morning exercise of the Lipizzaner stallions! The horses are exercised in the Winter Riding School, which is a very fancy indoor arena.

Afterwards, we toured through Hofburg Palace. We visited three museums in the palace: the Treasury, the Sisi Museum, and the Imperial Private Apartments and State Rooms. Below is a photo from the tour of the Treasury. This is one of the gold dinner services that were used by the imperial family for state dinners. 

This is the special Imperial napkin arrangement  The secret of how to make this arrangement is closely guarded, and to this day only two people know how to make it. It was only allowed to be used at dinners when the Emperor was present. Now it is only used for dinners with foreign heads of state.

We then walked to the State Hall of the Imperial Library. This is in a different part of Hofburg Palace than the current National Library. The State Hall has the same level of opulence as many of the cathedrals we have visited... you might say it's a cathedral for nerds :)

 Our last stop before going on the train was Stadtpark, which is Vienna's City Park. 

Now we are on the road again :) We will post any final pictures from Warsaw once we return to Canada at the end of the week!

Day 18: Vienna

This morning we visited Schönbrunn Palace. We toured the palace, but couldn't take any pictures inside, so you can read more about it and see Wikipedia's pictures here. The palace is huge, and our tour took us through rooms that were restored to the time periods of various Austrian emperors.



For lunch, we ate at a cafe on the grounds of the Palace. We had a Viennese specialty for dessert... torte!

That afternoon, we located the apartment building where Kuba's family lived during their time here. This is where Rogowski's lived until coming to Canada when Kuba was three months old! There is a plaque on the front of the building, commemorating the fact that such an amazing individual lived here.


Around dinner time, we walked through Nasch Markt, which is a large market of about 120 stalls. The stalls selling fruit, vegetables, cheese, spices, meat, fish, and sweets are interspersed with cafes and restaurants. The atmosphere in this market was great, and the food looked delicious!

We returned to Schönbrunn Palace in the evening, to see the park.

This poster shows a small piece of a large painting that we saw inside the palace on our tour. The painting commemorates the wedding of one of the princes, and this child is Mozart! As our audio-guide explained to us, Mozart was not actually at the wedding, as he was only 4 years old at the time and had not yet become well-known. However, by the time the painting was finished he had become famous, so the image of him as a 4 year old was added to the wedding painting!

There were fewer people in the park in the evening, so it was easier to get a view of the entire palace.

Behind the palace are extensive gardens, with walk-ways lined with shrubs and trees. There are many paths through the gardens leading to fountains and monuments. It was very impressive, and it was beautiful in the evening!






This is a view from behind the palace, taken across the centre of the park towards the Gloriette (on the horizon) and the Fountain of Neptune. The Gloriette is at the centre of the park, so the park continues behind it for a long way!

This view is from the Gloriette, looking back at the Palace, on the backdrop of the modern city.
At night, the Gloriette and the Palace are brightly illuminated.






After the park closed, we made our way across the city to Prater Park, the location of the Giant Ferris Wheel. We wanted to go on the ferris wheel at night, to see the lights of the city. The view was fantastic... however our pictures of the view are less impressive as they are taken through the glass window of the ferris wheel gondola. You will have to take the look on Kuba's face as proof of how impressive it was!






Tomorrow is our last day in Vienna before returning to Warsaw. How time flies! We are not sure if we will be able to post again before returning to Canada, as we may not have internet access.

Day 16 and 17: Vienna

This is our first update from Vienna! We did not have very many pictures last night, so we decided to make a super-post today. We got into Vienna Saturday morning at 6:30am, after taking the night train from Krakow.

The first night in Vienna, after settling down in the apartment and doing a few groceries, we walked around town to see what we could find. Here is a picture of the famous State Opera House, beautifully lit up at night.

We kept walking around the city which had many people out shopping and drinking in cafes. Overall the city feels safe and comfortable, and all the locals are very friendly. This is one of the main pedestrian roads in the Inner City.

This is a night time view of St. Stephen's Cathedral, right beside the Stephansplatz metro stations which we travel to almost every day to get into the Inner City. A lot of the buildings that we have seen are under construction, as is this church.

Inside, the cathedral was filled with lights and projectors that made the whole interior look really awesome!

This morning our first stop was up the St. Stephen's Cathedral tower to get a view of the city.

After that, we started off on two walking tours we had planned. The first one took us around "medieval Vienna", and the second walked around "imperial Vienna". Here is Isabel standing near Graben street, one of the many fancy pedestrian walkways in the Inner City.

Along our walk, we stopped into a few churches to see the magnificent interior details. This was one of our first stops, St. Peter's Church, the second oldest church in Vienna.

An obligatory break in the walk, for lunch at our first Viennese cafe!

This is St. Ruprecht's Church, the oldest church in the city! According to legend, it was built in the 8th century.

This was the start of our Imperial walk. Straight ahead you can see the Hofburg Palace.

This square is Michaelerplatz, right beside the Hofburg Palace. After an entire day of rain, wind, and general coldness, the sun had finally come out!

Through the gates, we found ourselves in a large square. The biggest attention grabber here was the National Library (below). Because of its size, we've decided to dedicate an entire morning to the Hofburg Palace, so hopefully we'll have more stories about that later :) This is also the location of the Spanish Riding School.

This is the Church of the Friars of Minor.Its spire was destroyed during the Turkish invasion but the remainder of the building still stands and dominates the center of this courtyard, surrounded by grand apartments and "palaces", which are extremely common here!

This is a monument to Mozart, who lived in Vienna for some time. This statue is located in the Burggarten, which is beside the Hofburg Palace, and used to be reserved for royal use.

This is the Museum of Fine Art, and directly facing it is the Museum of Natural History, which is its mirror image. In the centre of this square is a monument to Maria Theresia, the only Austrian empress.

This panorama was taken from the centre of the square. At the left you see the monument to Maria Theresia, then the Museum of Fine Art, followed by the centre building of the Museum Quartier, and the Museum of Natural History on the right side.

This concluded our walking tours of the Inner City, highlighting some amazing buildings and monuments. In the next two days we are hoping to go inside some of the large palaces, and visit more of the many parks in the city.

This evening we went out for dinner, to try some more traditional Viennese food. It was delicious, and the coffee was excellent!