10 Things That Surprised Me About Warsaw

We weren’t originally meant to go to Warsaw.

Our plan was to visit Gdansk for a weekend, but a few weeks before the trip our flight home got cancelled and we were moved to a flight the next day instead. Unfortunately this meant we had to book the day off work, for a lunchtime flight which wouldn’t allow us any extra time in the city. What a waste of a day off, I thought.

Then I noticed that we could change the return airport for free. And so I got to work, looking up flights from other places in Poland, and found that flights from Warsaw to Edinburgh ran late at night. Well, if we’ve got to book a day off, we might as well make more of a day of it AND see another city!

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So on the Sunday afternoon, instead of heading back to the airport in Gdansk, we walked to the train station and 3 hours later, we were in Warsaw. So I suppose the first thing that surprised me about Warsaw is that we were in Warsaw in the first place.

However, here are 10 more things that surprised me about the Polish capital.

The public transport

We strategically stayed right next to Central station, thinking that it would be easy to get around from there.

And it is…………………….. sort of.

We looked up how to get to the old town, and couldn’t believe that it would be two separate trams. I hoped it wouldn’t be too hard to navigate, so we bought single tickets from the machine and figured out our route.

Within two minutes, a tram we needed turned up, we hopped on for a few stops, crossed the road, and literally jumped straight on another tram that dropped us a few stops later on the edge of the old town.

It was seamless. And we weren’t just lucky – it was the same on the way back to the hotel, and then there and back the following day too. The longest we ever waited for a tram was three minutes.

I was so impressed! And altogether, we spent about £5 each on public transport for our entire visit! Unreal.

Tip: the day tickets are probably only worth it if you’re going to use it a lot. A single ticket lasts for 90 minutes, meaning we just got two singles per day at 4.40 zloty each. So altogether we spent 8.80 zloty in a day, whereas the day tickets are 15 zloty.

Also don’t forget to validate your ticket when you first board the tram!

How spread out the city is

I was really surprised when I saw that our hotel, next to the most central train station, was a full 45 minute walk from the old town.

Usually I choose to walk as much as I can in cities, but I had no desire to here, especially when public transport turned out to be so efficient.

But I was definitely surprised that it was so spread out. When we had to leave for the airport, we had to make our way to Warsaw West station, which on a map looks like it’s virtually next to Central Station. Nope – it’s more than a half hour walk, so we got the train! In fact, it felt miles away from the city centre when we got there.

And yet the old town is tiny – smaller than Gdansk or Krakow

Now I feel a little bit guilty saying this, because Warsaw’s old town was completely flattened in WW2. Everything there is rebuilt, so it stands to reason that it lost a lot of its character. I don’t know if it was ever bigger than it is now, but it just surprised me how quickly we had walked through all of it.

In fact, we very nearly went back to the hotel on our 90 minute single ticket.

But that was maybe more due to the next point…

The Christmas markets aren’t great

We arrived at our hotel, checked in, and made a beeline for the old town square where we planned to grab dinner from the Christmas market. At first, I was a little disappointed because the lights weren’t on, but I grabbed a mulled wine to browse the other stalls with. Before realising… every single one just sold mulled wine and hot chocolate.

There was literally nothing else there except the ice rink.

We hadn’t really done our research, so we soon found out that the actual Christmas market was around the edge of the old town, along the Barbican. This was more like it, I thought.

Except… it wasn’t. There were a few nice Christmassy stalls with similar wares to those we’d seen in Gdansk. But where was the food? And, oh, now we’re at the end of the row of stalls, and excuse me, where the f*ck is the pierogi?!?

I kid you not, guys – Ash turned back and grabbed something from the only food stall, and I had… a skewer of chocolate marshmallows. There was nothing on offer that I really wanted to eat.

Top marks for the Christmas tree, though!

Prices are weird (read: inconsistent)

When we added Warsaw to our trip, I decided we should treat ourselves to a nice hotel – because it is soooo cheap. We booked a four star hotel for £72, with an amazing city view.

When we arrived, we were asked if we’d like to book breakfast. I had to double check the price and the conversion because I thought I’d misunderstood. £20 each. I’ve never paid that for breakfast in any hotel – and, for two people, costing over half of the price of the stay?!? (Needless to say, we went to a bakery round the corner.)

Yet generally, everything is real cheap. Tram rides cost under £1 for 90 minutes. And then, absolutely desperate for the loo, I ran into one in the train station and paid 4 zloty thinking that wasn’t too bad. Then realised that’s almost a pound! More expensive than the rip-off UK train station toilets!

…the 4.40 zloty that we had just paid for the tram then covered our train ride to the bus station. So we caught two trams and a train, for virtually the same price as it cost me to pee.

Earl grey tea is common everywhere (without milk, of course)

This isn’t exclusive to Warsaw as I noticed it in Gdansk too, but both our hotel rooms had one type of black tea: Earl Grey. In cafes, it was all Earl Grey.

I’m so used to just asking for English Breakfast tea when I’m abroad as that’s what they’re most likely to have, but here Earl Grey is everywhere! Luckily, I love Earl Grey, so I’m pretty happy about this.

No coffee shops in the old town

Another thing that surprised me as we walked through the old town was the stark lack of coffee shops… it was all restaurants and bars.

Just outside the old town, the street towards the palace is full of cafes, but half of them appeared to have no indoor seating! On a freezing cold day, the last thing we wanted to do was sit outside, so we wandered further down the street to find one that wasn’t Costa.

I didn’t think finding a coffee shop would take much effort!

But plenty of amazing traditional Polish food

Bear with me on this, because it shouldn’t be surprising that the capital of Poland has good Polish food. I think what surprised me was the sheer number of excellent traditional restaurants in the old town. I had to narrow it down because I kept adding places to my list! With how modern the rest of the city seemed, I thought there would be a lot more trendy, modern restaurants too.

The one we chose was fantastic, and I, of course, had various types of pierogi. I realised that we’ve mostly had Christmas market food in Poland (our trip to Krakow last year was also for Christmas markets!) so perhaps not a fair comparison, but this was one of the best meals we’ve had in Poland! It was sooo good.

Afterwards, I warmed up with a mulled wine with rum in it, but what I didn’t do was brave the mulled beer on offer.

My Polish colleague is extremely disappointed in me for not trying it!

Anyway, I highly recommend dinner at Gościniec Polskie Pierogi!

It has the tallest building in the EU

When we walked out of the train station and turned towards our hotel, I yelled out, “bloody hell!”

“That is a MASSIVE building,” I exclaimed.

Our room was right next to it and I could look out of our window up to the top, so of course we googled what it was. Ah, just the tallest building in the EU.

I was curious – EU? What about Europe? Turns out it’s the sixth largest building in Europe – the entire top 5 is in Russia! Who knew Moscow had so many skyscrapers?

Anyway, that means it’s the largest building in Europe outside of Russia! Even bigger than the Shard in London (in fact, I was surprised to see that the Shard isn’t even the tallest building in London any more…). Pretty cool. There’s meant to be a viewpoint opening up next year, so we missed out on that, but that’s fine.

It feels a bit American – wide roads & big buildings

Speaking of large buildings… who expected this to be the view from our hotel room?!

I sent a photo to my friend, and she immediately messaged back saying, “that looks very American.”

And she’s right – the massive billboards, and the massive roads. Everything was massive, which in turn does feel rather American, especially compared with pretty much, well, everywhere else I can think of in Europe.

Even the alleyways in the old town have huge buildings. There was a very strange juxtaposition in the old town, where the narrow alleyways should feel charming, but they’re dominated by these absolutely massive churches.

They were really hard to get photos of, too. Picture on the left is the churches in the old town – the photo on the right is my attempt at getting a photo of the Palace Of Culture & Science, with two taxis having a long and aggressive stand-off in the foreground.

I think that summed up how we felt about Warsaw, really. Potentially picturesque, but often not quite. A bakery just round the corner from our hotel, but it took more than ten minutes to walk there under the huge overpass (now that’s VERY American, not being able to walk somewhere that should be easy to get to!). A huge square for Christmas markets, and a lacklustre row of stalls off the square instead. Lots of cute corners of the old town, but no coffee shops to sit and enjoy it.

We did not love the Polish capital, to be honest. It was a bit too much of a city – a very lived in, business city. Which is fine, but it wasn’t really for us as we’re not big city people. The public transport, on the surface, is really convoluted, but then works exceptionally well when you’re using it. There wasn’t a lot to entice us into the old town, or out of it, if I’m honest. And the reason this isn’t under a header? Because we weren’t expecting to love it. Which is fine!

Ash also didn’t have much luck with ordering anything! The restaurant we went to, although excellent, had run out of pork knuckle which he was really keen to try. At a cafe (where I had earl grey, of course), they had run out of hot chocolate and ended up putting together a makeshift hot chocolate with Nesquik!

Our hotel was fantastic though – NYX is genuinely one of the nicest we’ve stayed in! Everyone we met was incredibly friendly, although that goes for all of Poland. We stumbled across a really cool antique store too which is worth a browse.

And oh boy, the food. We haven’t had a bad meal in Poland, but that meal down a little alleyway in Warsaw’s old town is up there with the best.

At the end of the day, you can’t love everywhere. I’m glad we went, as it was a new place for us and probably somewhere we wouldn’t have made a conscious effort to visit otherwise. And we had fun regardless!

Are there places you’ve been that you haven’t really been inspired by?

Want to read more about Poland?
⭐ A Getaway In Gorgeous Gdansk: Gates, Museums & Markets
⭐ Krakow: A Contrasting Trip Of Christmas Cheer & Harrowing History
⭐ Facing The Worst Of Humanity At Auschwitz
Or how about some nearby countries?
⭐ Bratislava: The Unexpectedly Pretty Capital Of Slovakia
⭐ Christmas In Kaunas: Feeling Festive In Lithuania
⭐ #tbt: A Day Trip To The German Christmas Markets
⭐ Three Days In Fairytale Budapest, One Of My Favourite Cities