Warsaw -- Friends & Family

We spent most of the last two days in Warsaw visiting friends and family. Tuesday was a glorious fall day – sun, blue sky and multicolored leaves everywhere. We walked a lot. Warsaw changed even since last year when we were here. One of the main streets, Krakowskie Przedmiescie, was being renovated then and now it’s all done. One of the nicest things they did was to install descriptions of all historical monuments. The descriptions (in Polish and English) are on glass cubes, and each also includes the 18^th century version of the same building taken from paintings of an Italian painter Canaletto who lived and painted in Warsaw in the 18^th century.

In the evening, we visited my (Bo) friend Malgosia and her English partner, Terry. We had a great time talking about travels – theirs and ours, and eating Malgosia’s delicious food. She is an amazing cook.

On Wednesday, we walked through other parts of the city, mostly the area where Warsaw Ghetto once was. We saw monuments of the Ghetto uprising, the Umschlagplatz and the monument of the Warsaw uprising. The weather was cool and misty. Then we spent the afternoon at my father’s. Luckily, he and my stepmother are doing well and have not changed at all since we last saw them a year ago. We spent our last evening in Warsaw with Marek, Ania, Jasio and Ania’s mother in an Italian restaurant in their neighborhood.