Monday, July 23
Our plan was to walk over the bridge to the East side of Warsaw to see the Praga district. This area was only about 20% destroyed during WWII and so we hoped to see what Warsaw looked like before the war. Along the way, while walking through Old Town, we stopped at three churches: The Shrine of Our Lady of Graces, The Basilica of Saint John the Baptist and The Church of Saint Anne. The basilica is a large Gothic stye church. It is physically connected to the Royal Palace and was the place that the Royals worshipped. The church contains many famous burials including the composer Paderewski. Saint Anne’s is beautifully decorated in Baroque style. Public performances are given on its magnificent organ daily.
Before the 18th century there was no bridge across the Vistula River so Praga was actually a separate town. In 1791 King Stanislaw August Poniatowski declared that Praga was now part of Warsaw (he wanted the tax money). A bridge connecting the two sides of the river would be built some years later.
Upon reaching the other side of the river our first stop was The Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Florian the Martyr. This church was built in reaction to construction of a nearby Orthodox church that the Russians constructed when Warsaw was partitioned in the 18/19th centuries. It is a Gothic style church whose towers are higher than any surrounding buildings. It can even be seen from the Western side of river. The church was rebuilt after being completed destroyed by the Germans in WWII.
Next we visited a sculpture called Praga Courtyard Band that commemorates a band of street musicians . It’s dedicated to a group of musicians that regularly entertained in the Praga district. One member is still alive and it is said that you can sometimes see him performing on the streets.
(Praga Courtyard Band)
Then we walked over to see the Praski Park Bears. Years ago brown bears were forced to fight one another in a pit near the park. That practice died out long ago. In 1949 the bears were moved to an enclosure at the edge of the park. They have a nice space to roam and a large pond to swim in. Today there are three bears in the enclosure (Tatra, Mala and Sabina). They are descendants of the original bears from 1949.
Our next visit was to the Cathedral of Saint Mary Magdalene. This church was constructed in 1869 to accommodate the large number of Russians who were living in the area. This is the Orthodox church that we referred to earlier. It’s a rather small but nicely decorated Eastern Orthodox church with five beautiful onion domes. We’d seen a lot of these when we were in Bulgaria.
Finally, it was time for a break. We headed over to the mall for a pit stop and some lunch consisting of our new favorite food (zapiekanka) before buying two tickets to the zoo.
The zoo in Praski Park was made famous a few years ago by the movie entitled, “The Zookeeper’s Wife”. The zoo was originally opened in 1928. It was bombed during WWII and by 1945 all of the animals were killed, deported to the Third Reich, eaten by locals or escaped. The zoo re-opened in 1949 and now has more than 500 species of animals.
(Lounging Leopard)
We had a very good time during our visit. The facility is very modern and the animals are all kept in naturalistic habitats. Many of the animals were happy to pose for pictures. The Llamas convinced several people to feed them grass from a nearby field; they ate all they could get. The animals seemed to enjoy frolicking in the warm sunlight or even interacting with the people. It was all very amusing.
(Meerkat Posing for Pictures)
For dinner we went back to Resturant Zapiecek and ordered Pork Ribs on a bed of sauerkraut along with – ready for it – another potato pancake. This time we got it with mushroom cream sauce (on the side). Delicious!
Distance walked: 10.1 miles
Tuesday, July 24
It’s Donut Day! Many years ago we saw a story on either the Travel or Food Network on a donut shop in Warsaw. It was a small, family run shop that had been in business for about 90 years and was said to be the best in Town. They showed long lines of people queuing up to get their fix before the shop inevitably ran out. For some reason we remembered that program and today we went in search of that shop.
After a little creative googling we finally found the address. It was in the Jewish Quarter about two miles from our apartment. The name of the shop is Zagoździński. When we turned on to the street we looked for the telltale line of people waiting for their donuts. What we found was a closed door with a sign saying that they would be on vacation until the end of the month. We were VERY disappointed. 😣
Undaunted (but very unhappy) we found several other highly recommended shops and started walking in their direction. We’d been doing a lot of walking since we hit Poland and told ourselves that we’d have an easy day today. It didn’t turn out that way.
The second donut shop was actually a cafe near the Chopin Museum called Blikle Café. Their selection of donuts was very small but we ordered two and a couple of coffees. The donuts were not particularly fresh or light, had almost no filling and were not at all satisfying. To make matters worse the waitress was completely rude. We’re never going back there.
Our third choice was a small stand just around the corner. Cukiernia Pawłowicz is one of those small booths that you could walk by a million times and never notice – and you’d be making a HUGE mistake. The donuts were hot, fresh, greasy and delicious. We had one filled with rose jelly that was covered in a sugar glaze while the other was filled with chocolate and cherry cream covered in glaze and small balls of crunchy sugar. Before leaving we made a point of telling the woman how good her donuts were. We’ll definitely be back.
Suffering from a serious sugar high we somehow made our way over to the National Gallery. It was another free day. The Gallery has several exhibits including 18/19th century Old Masters, 19th Century Polish Art and Decorative Arts.
The Old Masters collection was very nice. There were no famous works by famous artists but we did see quite a few works that we liked – mostly by little known Dutch and Italian artists. The Polish collection had a large number of works by Jan Matejko (we’d seen his work and been to his house in Krakow). Both collections had many fine paintings that we enjoyed. We didn’t visit the Decorative Arts Collection. We didn’t know what to expect but were pleasantly surprised by this museum.
(Tax Collectors by Marinus van Reymerswaele from 1566)
Distance walked: 10.6 miles