My Travel Blog for past, present and future countries and cities visited.
Location: Poland
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Warsaw
My most recent visit to Poland was part of Expat Explore's Northern Explorer tour. We spent 1.5 days here with the first evening consisting of a meal with the group and walking tour. The 2nd day was a full free day to do as we please with some optional activities provided by the company. One of the optionals I joined was a Nysa Van tour of the city. This is a type of van produced in Poland between 1958-1994 which we used to see the sights of the city. This tour gives you an insight into what it was like in communist times. In the evening I chose to tour the National stadium and meet up with a friend who I had met a few years prior in Norway.
Nysa Van.
PGE Narodowy National Stadium.
My video from Warsaw can be found here:
Krakow
My first time in Poland was to Krakow in 2015, this was part of Expat Explore's Eastern Highlights tour. We had travelled from the Czech Republic and I remember the traffic was quite bad after some motorway maintenance slowed us down. Because of this we had to change the itinerary but I didn't mind too much as I was unsure what I wanted to do on the free day. In the evening when we eventually arrived we had a walking tour of the city.
Wawel Castle, Krakow
Auschwitz
We travelled to Auschwitz concentration camp on the free day in Krakow instead of the day before because of the traffic problem I mentioned. Getting to walk around here is definitely an experience, and without a doubt one of Europe's darkest memories. We then travelled to Birkenau just around the corner which is also used by Nazi Germany in World War 2. The local tour guide here was excellent and very knowledgable and her English was very good.
Auschwitz Concentration Camp entrance.
In the evening with also visited a UNESCO world heritage site Wieliczka Salt Mine. This was very impressive to see and was better than I expected by the end of walking through the tunnels. My video from Krakow and Auschwitz can be found here:
I waited in the lobby to meet half of the group, and we joined the other half already on the coach making 17 of us in total. We made the very short trip from our hotel around the corner to start the day at Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square Within the first 10 minutes I had already had my first photo taken because of my height. The square is one of the biggest squares in the world and is perhaps most famous for the 1989 protests. On the square you will find Monument to the People's Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. We slowly walked around the square making our way across the road via the underpass to the Forbidden City. Forbidden City The sheer size of this place is amazing, there are around 980 buildings to explore you could spend all day here if you wanted to. We were guided through some of the most important buildings as we learned more about them through local knowledge. In total I think we spen...
I am now just over 4 weeks away from my Journey to South Africa. This will be my 32nd country I have visited and the first time travelling to the Southern Hemisphere. For the long haul overnight flights I have chosen the extra leg room in the emergency exits so I can get some good rest. It was quite expensive to choose those seats but I feel it was worth it for such a long flight. I have lots of optionals to choose from when in South Africa for the free days. One of those things was a cable car up to Table mountain in Cape Town. I have bought a ticket in advance as I am expecting it to be very busy as it is closed for maintenance a few days after I arrive. So to avoid queuing I advanced purchased a ticket which is valid for 7 days from the chosen date. Cape Town has recently struggled with a water shortage. The locals are continuing to save water the best they can until the dam levels eventually return to normal. I'm not sure how this will affect me when I travel but I am alw...
We got the train back into the exclusion zone from the overnight stay in Chernihiv , this took around 40 minutes. Before eating breakfast we went to the close up viewpoint of reactor 4 to take a photo of the new sarcophagus. This was paid for by many European countries at a cost of €2billion. We then ate breakfast which was at the same place we had eaten lunch yesterday. Reactor 4 sarcophagus We would then head to the city of Pripyat where upon arriving we would take a photo of the welcoming sign. This is on the edge what is known as the red forest, which is the 10km radius zone that surrounds the reactor. It gets the name red forest from the colour of dead pine trees as a result of the accident. We then had an extended period of time out of the minibus seeing the growth of nature in the area of Pripyat and viewing some of the cities important buildings that crumbled and decayed over time. Pripyat sign During the morning we would see: Pripyat Hospital(H...
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