New year in Warsaw

It took me a long time to find the time to write this down on this blog... it comes out that retirement is a very difficult life... :-D - maybe this is the reason why they say that retirement is the most dangerous profession in the world, that one that nobody comes out of it alive.

Well, some weeks after we returned from the Via Transilvanica hike in Romania, Lily was talking to Louisa, my friend's Shmil wife, and they decided to look for a short vacation for Christmas or New year, elsewhere in Eastern Europe. After looking at all kind of options, they found a good option for travelling to Warsaw for the New Year, from December 28th, 2025 to January 1st, 2026.

And suddenly I found myself at the Ben-Gurion airport again on December 28th, waiting for the plane that would take us there.

Let me say in advance that this time we won't have a video of the trip. I took into consideration, in advance, that with the low temperatures there at the time, from -3º C to -7º C, keeping my hands out of my pockets to record video was a kind of a torture that I was not interested in.

Our tour plan through all the interesting points of Warsaw had been prepared by ChatGPT and carefully verified by Shmil and myself, so we felt ready to walk through the streets of Warsaw under those freezing temperatures.

Our flight departed at 5 PM, so we arrived at 9 PM to Warsaw, and went directly to sleep. Our hotel was a very comfortable hotel, the Mercure Warsaw Centrum, which had the advantage of being very near to all the touristic places in Warsaw, but always was exactly in front of the biggest shopping mall of the city, the Zlote Tarasy.  Since our flight back would leave on January 1st at 9 PM, we had 4 full days to visit the city.

First Day: Warsaw Old CIty and vicinities

After breakfast, we ordered an Uber that would take us to the old city, and around 10 AM we were already there. The first thing we saw was the Old City Christmas Market, which wasn't very big but was very beautiful and interesting.

The Christmas Market was exactly at the Castle Square, so that was our natural continuation of the walk. We visited all the castle area, walked through the little streets there, visited the Barbikan and continued walking until we found ourselves again in the main street, and decided to find a cafe to drink a glass of hot wine in order to expell the cold that had already gone into our bones.

After the wine, we began walking to the Rapaport Monument, the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The memorial is composed of two monuments within a few meters one from the other, one of them the Rapaport monument. Both can be seen in the pictures below.

From there we continued to the Polin Museum, the museum of the history of the Polish jews. We arrived there around one hour before closure, and 2.5 hours before dark, so we did not visit the museum and decided we would come back in the next day. So we continued to the bunker and the monument of Mila 18, where Mordekhai Anilevitch and his people planned the uprising against the Nazis, and also the place where they were killed. We also visited the Umschlagplatz, the place from where jews were sent to the concentration camps.

One thing that disappointed me a little was that the Ghetto walls were almost completely erased. All that you can see are some marks at the sidewalks marking where the walls were, and some plaques at the extremes of the wall, places that marked the end of the ghetto in each direction.

The uber to the old city was the only one we took that day. The whole visit was done by foot, and so was the return to the hotel. We were lucky, there were signs of snow around, but we did not have any snowfalls at the time we were in the streets. But the cold... that was terrible, specially in the area of Mila 18, where we almost froze completely.

Back in the hotel, via the green tower of the clock, we warmed up a little and went to eat dinner at the Hard Rock restaurant, which was very near.

Second Day: Shopping day

The second day was completely different. We began the day in two separate groups: the girls went to the shopping Zlote Tarasy, in front of the hotel, while Shmil and me travelled some 30 minutes to arrive to the largest motorcycle equipment shop in Warsaw, RRMoto. I was told that the motorcycling scenery in Poland is very advanced, and that shop was the living proof of that statement. The store was enormous, at the same size of any Louis shop in Germany, and they had in stock many options for everything you can desire. I was looking for waterproof riding pants. It took me some 5 different pants to measure and see regarding size and style until I found the one I wanted.

When we left the shop, there was snow falling over our heads! First time! We took an uber back to the hotel, and after leaving the package from the shop in my room, we crossed the street to the Zlote Tarasy shopping, where we met the girls and had something light to eat.

From there, we went back to the Polin Museum, only to discover that it was closed and would be closed through the next 4 days, and to understand that we should have entered it in the previous day, even if it was for seeing it for one hour only... We continued from there to the point monument marking where Mordekhai Anilevitch and the partizans were discovered and killed, and from there, to the Arkadia Shopping, which was close by. There, Louiza and Lily went to browse the shopping, while Shmil and I went to find a place to sit and drink some beers.

When we exited the Arkadia shopping, surprise! Snowfall was filling the ground with snow, which had already accumulated to some 5cm height. As it always happens in this situation, it was impossible to find an Uber or a Bolt car. So we decided to go back to the hotel by foot. It was a long walk, and with the cold and the snow falling over us, a difficult one. But we did it. For the evening, we went to the Zlote Tarasy to eat something.

Third Day: New Year's day and evening

We began the day by visiting the Warsaw Christmas Market at Plac Defilad, which was a 5 minutes walk from the hotel. We visited the area, and then continued walking and visiting some streets around the area. From there we went to stroll Krakowskie street and Nowy Świat. This was a beautiful walk, but we discovered that we had already been in Krakovskie Street in the first day, since the end of that street is at the old town. This time we only did it from the other direction. The street is very interesting, full of shops, cafes and restaurants, a pleasure to tourists.

At some point, the weather became really difficult, so we decided to return to the hotel.

On our way back to the hotel, we suddenly remembered that we had not reserved place anywhere for the New Year's dinner. On our way, we tried to enter some restaurants that looked good and ask, and even to reserve at the Hard Rock Cafe, but there was no place in any of them. The only place in which we managed to get a place was the hotel restaurant, but only at 8 PM. No place later than that. So we accepted our destiny, and had our New Year dinner at 8 PM. The hotel restaurant was excellent, by the way. We wanted to wait until midnight at the lobby, but at the end we understood that we were too tired for that, and we spent the midnight already dreaming at our beds.

Fourth Day: resting and flying back home

We woke up later this day and went for the last moments that breakfast was available. We had plans of going out to visit Lazienki Park that morning, with its lake, castle on the water, Chopin statue and ducks, but the weather did not help us with that. There was snow, and the snow lasted the whole day. No point in visiting an open park in this situation. Since it was the first of January, all shopping options were closed, and the only open businesses in the city were the restaurants. So we decided to get organized at the hotel, and to have a late lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, which was very good to us in the first night. We arranged a late checkout from the hotel, which left us with our rooms until late afternoon, and since we needed to be at the airport at 6 PM, we left the hotel at 5 PM. 

The snow delayed our flight around 2 hours, so instead of arriving to Tel Aviv at 3 AM, we arrived at 5 AM. After taking the luggage and getting the car, we arrived home at around 7 AM, and went directly to sleep.