Summer Trip Days 11-12: Travel to Warsaw and on to Moscow

We had purchased our tickets to take the train to Warsaw from Krakow, and so checked out of our hotels about 9:00 and met the Stices on the square in front of the train station.  We were about an hour early, and spent the time sitting and waiting.  The train arrived a few minutes late, and then there was a mad scramble to get everyone on board.

We were in different cars on the train, but all of our family was in one compartment.  There were eight seats, but the six of us were the only ones, so it was pretty comfortable.  The train trip was pretty similar to the journey that we had taken from Prague to Krakow a few days before. We spent most of the time reading books.  The station in Warsaw was underground, and there wasn't an announcement, and we just sat for a few minutes, until a group of young people came to get in our car and we asked them if we were at the station.

Reading while riding on the train to Warsaw

Lina reading on iPad

We exited the station and found the office of the apartment rental company and got our keys.  The Stices were in a different building right next door, but their room wasn't ready yet.  Ours was, so we walked a few blocks and dropped off all our bags.  We walked back to the mall and ate a lunch/dinner at McDonald's.  The next thing we needed to do was to find out where the bus stop was where we could catch the bus to the airport the next morning.  We wandered around a bit, but then found it, and bought tickets for the next morning.

By this time it was about 5:30 p.m., so we walked back to our apartment and just settled in for the evening.  The apartment was a bit spartan - it didn't have full curtains, just gauzy filmy ones, and the beds were not great.  We had bought some groceries to have breakfast the next morning, so we were up early (5:00 a.m.) to eat and get to the bus stop.  It had rained all night, but it had broken.  It started up again when we started walking, so we were quite wet when we got to the bus stop. The bus came right on time and we got to the Chopin Airport as planned.

We flew Baltic Air to Moscow, with a layover in Riga, Latvia.  The plane from Warsaw to Riga was a turbo-prop with high wings, but a nice airplane and a beautiful view of the Baltic Sea as we landed.  We had to go through passport control and wait for about an hour before boarding our plane to Moscow.

Baltic Sea from up high

 We got through passport control and customs okay and were able to get tickets on the train just in time, so we made good time.  We took the metro from the Belarus train station to our hotel.  The hotel was in an area that had three streets named the same thing, and we had to wander a bit and ask directions before we found it.  It turned out that it was very easy and close to the metro station once we knew how to get there.

The hotel wasn't sure we were coming, so they had given one of our rooms to someone else.  We had a two-room set up with a shared bathroom that was supposed to be just for the girls, but we settled into it okay and the girls bucked up and shared two beds and did okay.  We also saved a bit of money.  The hotel was a standalone building - it was older, but had been remodeled and was very nice, and in a good location.  We were out of the center of the city, but not too far, and very close to the metro.

Cool painting at our hotel

We settled in, and then went across the street to a KFC to have dinner.  It had been a long day of travel, and a long couple of days of travel with the day before's trip to Warsaw, so we settled in for the evening.  The kids were happy because they could watch television and understand it (we watch Russian television at home usually anyway).  We were settled in to our last hotel of the trip, and ready to see the sites of Moscow the next day.

Dinner at KFC

Relaxing at the hotel.