In the afternoon I started down the Royal Route which leads to the Wilanow Palace is in the southern district of Warsaw, also called Wilanow. Its probably 12-15 miles, so there is no way I would walked the whole thing, but I figured I would head down that until I got tired. Along the way you pass the presidential residence, and the ministry of culture. There are of course, more beautiful churches along the way. I walked for about 30-40 minutes, but once I got pretty far from Old Town, it was less interesting. There will still quite a few monuments, and other random stuff, but I was getting tired and I wanted to spend some more time in Old Town.
I did a little souvenir shopping, and the proprieter put my things in this really bright purple/pink gaudy looking gift bag. "I'll put this in nice gift bag for you," he says, "you can reuse it for someone else." Right. I wouldn't do that to anyone I cared about. I realized then that the bag also screams, "hey this guy is tourist, all you folks around begging for money, be sure to hit him up." At least the one guy was honest, and said he wanted the money for beer. Actually he was the only, but I felt sure it was the bag that drew his attention, so I dumped it off back at the hotel.
There are always people playing music or doing some kind of show around the Old Town square. Its hard to make out but at the end of this alley there is a lady playing beautiful violin music. Earlier in the day another fella was playing the accordion. And the tram one time there was a gentleman playing the violin. All sharply dressed folks too. The violin players looked they just stepped out of the orchestra.
By this time was about 6:00pm (18:00) and I was getting hungry. I saw a nice place that in a side alley earlier that I had picked out. Looked like a simple place, and their sign said "traditional polish food." I was a bit skeptical of a place that wrote their sign in English, but since I don't know any Polish I had to be flexible and the prices looked reasonable. When I went in and ordered "meat dumplings" the hostess didn't understand a thing I said (which actually reassured me a bit). But then she thought for a moment and got it. So I had meat dumplings (perogies) and hot mead. I ordered cold mead, and she confirmed "cold" but I got steaming cup mead with my meal. I can say, hot mead will become winter staple around my house. It was awesome. The dumplings were great too. The meat filling reminded me a little of my grandfather's homemade ravioli filling. The "shell" was very flaky and very slightly sweet which went terrific with the savory filling. And it was served with chopped fresh dill. All in all, and excellent meal.
I noticed earlier in the day, a chapel for the Benedictine Nuns of Perpetual Adoration. I saw on their schedule (which they had posted in Polish and English) that they have public Compline and Matins (well Office of Readings). So I popped back over for that. The chapel is very small (it can hold maybe 50 people). The whole nave is under a dome that creates that an awesome sound. The chant of the nuns was very simple (mostly recto tono for the psalms, but they did do normal plain chant for the compline psalms) but it was angelic. Especially in that chapel with the audio effect of the dome. A great way to cap off the day!
Tomorrow will be the first day of the IGI conference. So, I'll be doing much less traveling.
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