April 22, 2019:
I learned something about Warsaw the day after Easter. I had planned to stop at the store on my way home from dinner with Gina on Saturday, but by the time I walked past it was closed. I ran out of bread and crackers on Monday morning. I had some cheese and pate leftover, but eating them without some sort of bread was not attractive. I wasn’t too worried since Carrefour Express is so close to my place. As it was coming up on lunch time I dashed over only to find out that the store was closed.
I would have headed over to the mall and the mega Carrefour, but the pants I was wearing, were not properly cuffed, and I was afraid that they would unroll before I got there and back. I returned to my place to change pants. Luckily I Googled “are stores closed on the Monday after Easter in Warsaw, Poland?” Yes, was the answer.
That left me in a quandary; what to eat? I really didn’t want to go out to lunch alone, then have to go out again for dinner. I knew that Ubereats has a presence in Poland. I had seen the delivery men all over the city. Going onto the website I was glad to find out there were several polish restaurants in my area, which were delivering on the holiday.
I wasn’t able to use Apple Pay, though Apple Pay is in Poland now. The credit card I had linked to Uber was expired. It took a bit of fiddling to get my new card in. It was all operator error. I was using the zip for my old mailing address not the new one. Finally I got the payment set up and ordered enough food to keep me for several days. If I am going to play a delivery fee, I going to make it worth my while.
I looked at the menus of local restaurants with polish cuisine, and selected Podwale 25. I ordered: Polish Hot Pot – Sauerkraut and Meat, Dumplings with Sauerkraut, Schnitzel, French Fries, Potato Salad, and Mushroom Soup. I made sure that one of the dishes I ordered came with bread, so that I would have some for my breakfast.
Later, after the food was delivered, I remembered that in the first few days I was here, I had bought a loaf of bread that was, okay, but not what I really wanted. I had put it into freezer, just in case I ran out of bread later. Had I remembered it, it would have been enough with the pate and cheese to last me until the next day when the stores would be open.
For lunch I ate all the french fries, since they are one thing that is best eaten fresh. Everything else could be eaten cold or reheated. Once all the extra food was put away, I headed out on a walk. Continuing with a theme, I picked some local parks to check out. Park Sady Żoliborskie, was a glade of trees with various pathways around it, sandwiched between apartment buildings. It was nice, but nothing much there made for a good photo opportunity. There were some men drinking there, which made me a little uncomfortable.
I headed across the street to the smaller Park Żołnierzy Żywiciela.
No matter what country I have been in I have always seen lost pet posters. People are pretty much the same everywhere, despite looking different and speaking different languages.
After walking through the second small park, I made my way over to an area I wasn’t sure was a park. It was partly shown in green on the map, but had no label. I was pleased to find that it was a long path leading around a small body of water, that looked almost like a river, though it was actually a long pond.
I was too tired to walk all the way around the pond on this day, so I crossed one of the bridges and walked back on the other side. There were a lot of people in the park enjoying the day off work.
April 23, 2019:
I headed out the next day for my walk determined to make it completely around the pond. I went straight to this park, rather than walking miles through other parks before getting there. There were not quite so many people in the park, since it wasn’t a holiday. I made it all the way around before heading home.
A community style garden near the pond. The are areas of these gardens on both sides of the pond toward the middle. I have been told that the gardens were assigned during the communist era. They are controversial because people feel they were not assigned fairly.
The sidewalks here are made from unmortared bricks. This makes it easy for them to be removed and replaced for maintenance. The bricks give the sidewalks an illusion of being flat. Actually the surface is undulated. I trip on these seemingly smooth sidewalks more than I ever did on the apparently rough sidewalks in Mexico.
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