Tag: Warsaw

  • Wizz Air (Luton Airport to Warsaw)

    Wizz Air (Luton Airport to Warsaw)

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    After an uneventful rail journey to Luton Airport, I popped in Big Smoke where I get £18 to spend with my Priority Pass card. There has been another price rise, which is the fourth of the year to my knowledge, which makes menu ordering slightly more difficult each time.

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    I opted for the dirty fries with beef brisket, the latter of which is just about hidden in the photo but there was a big lump of it at the bottom. It was entirely adequate, with the service being friendly and helpful.

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    And a quick visit to My Lounge to see their collection of dirty crockery and to try their Heineken 0%. They’re really nailed the flavour of it, it tastes just as bad as Heineken so that’s a win for the brewery. The Mexican chicken and spicy rice is actually decent, the food standards do seem to have improved here over the last few months. Or my standards have dropped, either is possible.

    I was moderately amused as the customer in front of me asked for two Birra Moretti beers. They’re quite tight here, so every customer gets 2/3rds of a bottle, unless you have the 0% Heineken where they just give you the whole thing as I don’t think many people want that. This whole thing just makes matters more faffy and the bar server ended up with one glass of Birra Moretti full and the other 90% full. The customer complained he wanted 100% in each and the barman actually just tutted in response. The customer looked annoyed and the glass was topped up begrudgingly. Lounge entry here is nearly £40 (unless you have a lounge card or similar) so this tightness does them no favours. But, since I get free entry with Priority Pass, I won’t complain about anything else in here…..

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    They started boarding twenty minutes earlier than advertised, but Wizz Air are efficient and everything here was under control during the boarding process. One customer got charged £70 for having a large bag, he had got confused which bag sizer he was meant to use and I thought he was very gracious about it all. We were on the aircraft at the time that the gate was meant to have closed, something that British Airways always struggles to manage as customers faff about with their bags.

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    Boarding the aircraft which was HA-LGO which I don’t think I’ve been on before. The seating Gods gave me a window seat and it also transpired that there was no-one in the middle seat despite the flight being around 90% full.

    The flight was, yet again, peaceful and uneventful. The crew were efficient and polite, sweeping down the aisle selling things without waking everyone up. The aircraft was clean, I had plenty of space and I was rather pleased with my £8.99 flight cost.

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    We were put on a bus to get the 75 metres to the airport terminal and they really struggled to get everyone on two buses, I think they’d usually use three. It felt slightly sub-optimal, but it was hardly a long bus journey so I was only briefly annoyed.

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    My shiny new passport, which doesn’t have around 120 stamps in the bloody thing, is allowing me to sweep through border control so I was able to get one of the last trains of the evening into Warsaw. I don’t have much leeway here, although there are plenty of night buses which serve the airport if required.

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    It’s always good to be back on public transport in Warsaw, peaceful and efficient.

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    Arriving into Warszawa Zachodnia (Warsaw West) railway station, which is currently being upgraded. However, it feels at times that Warsaw is constantly being upgraded, such as the fast rate of change here.

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    And there’s the Ibis Budget, hidden behind road works. This was only a ten minute walk from the railway site, and I’ve stayed at the adjoining Ibis several times, and fortunately I found a gap in the road works to actually gain access to the hotel.

    All in all, I was once again pleased and content with the whole airport and flight experience.

  • Warsaw – Metro System : C14 Stadion Narodowy (Visiting Every Station)

    Warsaw – Metro System : C14 Stadion Narodowy (Visiting Every Station)

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    Continuing on my theme of visiting every metro station on the Warsaw network. This is Stadion Narodowy, namely the National Stadium.

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    The station, located on the M2 line, opened on 8 March 2015 which was a few years after the stadium itself opened, but there is also a national rail network station here. The stadium was built on the site of the Tenth Anniversary Stadium, which opened in 1955 and was built on rubble from the Second World War. The stadium was a bit sub-optimal, it was a ten minute walk for football players to get back to the dressing rooms, so half-time had to last for half an hour. It closed in 2008, ready for the development of the new site.

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    Here is the lovely shiny stadium, which is used by the national Polish football team amongst others.

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    It’s possible to walk around the perimeter, it doesn’t seem to be closed off at all.

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    This is the Ryszard Siwiec (1909-1968) Memorial and is one of the heroes of the Polish nation. On 12 September 1968, he set fire to himself in front of the country’s leaders and 100,000 spectators. The communist authorities were livid, it took the shine off their day and they pretended that he was an alcoholic who was mentally unstable. They seized the letter that he sent to his wife and tried to pretend that the whole thing didn’t happen. But it did, his vision for Poland took a long time to come about, but it has.

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    The neighbouring rail station.

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    A tunnel under the railway line which gives access to the stadium.

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    There’s a nearby park to the metro station, Skaryszewski Park.

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    A long path through the park, which was built on the site of a floodplain in 1905. Some beavers made the park their home in 2006, but they caused so much damage that they removed the little angels and plonked them in the nearby zoo.

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    This memorial needs repair as it’s nearly impossible to read, but it commemorates the lives of those Poles who died in the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

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    A sculpture outside the park of Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) who served as the Prime Minister of Poland for most of 1919. He was perhaps more well known as a pianist and he served as part of the Polish Government in exile between 1940 and 1941. The entire park has now also been named in his honour.

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    Apparently, if AI is to be believed, the circular wheel is a telecommunications mast.

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    The old looking building is one of the towers constructed as part of the bridge which was designed to be ornamental and it also houses the staircases.

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    This Adam Roman (1916-2013) sculpture is named ‘The Relay’ and is located outside of the stadium and it dates from the previous 1955 structure. It was originally meant to be located at the Central Park of Culture in Powiśle, with the artist adding a third runner to his initial plans to have just two.

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    Back into the metro station, which is also planned to be one of the ends of metro line M3 which is currently under construction. There is another island platform and two tracks already in place for this, but they’re not currently in use. Hopefully by the time the first section of the M3 line opens in around five years I’ll have actually finished visiting all the stations that are currently open….

  • Warsaw – Metro System : C18 Trocka (Visiting Every Station)

    Warsaw – Metro System : C18 Trocka (Visiting Every Station)

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    One thing I’ve done with my attempting to visit all of the metro stations in Warsaw is that I’ve started at the ends of the line, generally away from the most interesting areas in the city that the network crosses through. This meant that visiting Trocka was a little bit sub-optimal as there wasn’t a great deal of note to have a look at. So writing this is more for the sake of completion than surprising and delighting my two loyal blog readers.

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    It’s all residential, which is lovely, but there’s less of a story to tell. Although I’d note that this felt a safe area, I meandered around some of the tower blocks and it seemed a part of the city that it would be pleasant to live in. There’s a bus station here, although I’m not sure if that’s of enormous excitement to write about, but it’s visible in the above photo.

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    Tadeusz Korzon (1839-1918) was a Polish historian and he also took part in the January uprising that sought to free Poland from its Russian control. Sadly, he died a few months before the creation of the Second Polish Republic, so he didn’t live to see Poland become independent.

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    As an aside, Warsaw is rather good at putting benches nearly everywhere, something which must encourage people to walk if they know that there’s somewhere to stop. Back to the station, the city gave the contract to Italian firm Astaldi in March 2016 to build this extension and work started in April 2016 and it was completed in May 2019. The station opened on 15 September 2019 to the excited locals and the project was part financed by the European Union.

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    The Church of St. Mark the Evangelist.

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    Back to the station, which was designed with the intent of having clean, geometric forms and a feeling of space. The groundwater here was relatively high, which led to some considerable engineering challenges, including apparently diaphragm walls which were sunk up to 60 metres deep, but that will mean more to my civil engineer friend Liam than to me. For a while, this was the end of the line, but in September 2022, another three stations were added to extend the M2.

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    The decoration is plain, but functional.

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    The plan of the metro station.

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    And the next train to Bródno.

    In terms of what is nearby, there is a large cemetery and some other historic structures of interest, but they’re all closer to another Metro stop. That’s also true of a nearby park, so I haven’t entirely neglected these, I’m just saving them up…..

  • Gdansk to Warsaw Rail Journey – PKP Intercity

    Gdansk to Warsaw Rail Journey – PKP Intercity

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    I’ve done this rail journey before, but since I was enthused by my trip on Lithuanian trains last week, I thought I’d compare and contrast how the Poles do it. There are two main types of Intercity service in Poland, I went on the cheaper one of the two as I can’t afford to be too decadent, but that is relevant to bear in mind. The two are the Express Intercity Premium (EIP) using Pendolino trains and the more standard Intercity. I started from the rather glorious Gdańsk Główny railway station which has recently gone under a major overhaul. It was built in the early 1900s and has that glorious Neo-Renaissance look, all a bit Prussian with a touch of Hanseatic drama, like it’s trying to impress its then German parents.

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    The main hall has been faffed about with quite a lot, but it remains an impressive structure and numerous people were taking photos of the interior. Obviously including me.

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    They’ve put a lot of seating into the railway station and plenty of power points, although these departure boards weren’t working.

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    The tracks and the city’s coach station is nearly visible in the background. Integrated transport and all that, all very positive, especially as the trams and city buses sweep past the front of the station.

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    The restoration work doesn’t seem to be complete as two of the large halls are empty and the track is still fenced off at this point. I’m not quite sure what the plans are, but they’ll likely involve some more shops and eating options as there aren’t a great deal in this station as opposed to somewhere like Krakow’s main railway station.

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    One of the empty grand rooms. There isn’t a luxurious first class lounge here as there was in Vilnius, or at least, not one that I could use.

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    Also not working, but the yellow posters with all the train times were up, so that’s all that I needed.

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    And I found a working departure board, my train was the 15:57 to Łódź. They like to advertise the platform numbers in advance in Poland, unlike the UK where they like to keep it a secret (unless you use the third party app which tells you).

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    I like this system of giving a platform number, a track number and then a sector. Numbering on quite a lot of UK railway stations is confusing, somewhere like Cambridge is a case in point.

    And since I’ve gone down that rabbit warren, here’s a map courtesy of Greater Anglia. Platform 1 is the same as platform 4 and the same as platform 4a, but 2 and 3 are up to the left and 4 and 5 to the right. Then platforms 7 and 8 are over the footbridge. The Polish system would be much better here, you’d have Platform 1 as everything from 1 to 6 (which are then individually numbered) and Platform 2 as both 7 and 8. They’d then be split into sectors.

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    Waiting on the platform, there’s lots of seating around.

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    Boarding in coach 10 which it stated during the ticket purchasing process would be at the front of the train, so I knew roughly where to stand.

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    The seats are 2*1, with every set of seats (whether a couple or individual) having its own power outlet and bin. It was all clean and tidy, not least because there were bins everywhere, it was all a delightfully neat setup that gave off strong “organised European” energy.

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    Settled in for the journey and Poland is another of those countries where the seat reservations just work. I witter on about this, but on nearly every UK train where people are forced to get reservations there are arguments, often quite bad arguments. Many people ignore the seat reservations and there is tension when they’ve asked to move after they’ve settled in. In Poland, everyone sits where they’re supposed to sit. Many UK rail companies have given up with seat reservations entirely, not least Greater Anglia, but they might as well all give up if they’re not going to actually make them reliable. As an aside, as a top tip, I never sit in my reserved seat in the UK, I find the carriage which has no reservations (usually marked on certain third party apps) and sit there, it’s usually nearly empty as other people are trying to sit near their reserved seat.

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    Crossing the river at Tczew, which I visited in 2022 because I wanted to see the bridge. We also went past the impressive Malbork Castle although no photos of that as it was on the other side.

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    I had opted for the single seat and it was all sufficiently spacious with plenty of leg room. There was a small victory that my fluent Polish (mainly counting from 1 to 100 so I know when they call out the order number at fast food locations and also knowing the word for Wednesday) seemed to fool the guard that I was Polish. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

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    And safely into Warszawa Centralna railway station which I’ve written about many times, this photo is of the train whilst I was on the travelator thing. I then discovered it was a Public Holiday (Corpus Christi) and the supermarket I planned to go to was shut. But I went to a Żabka convenience store instead and nearly broke the self-service scanner trying to buy a pistachio mullermilch.

    This first class rail journey was around £17, which seems reasonable value to me. UK rail trips of the distance can be this price, but you can routinely get £17 fares on the Polish rail system for this journey even booking on the same day, which don’t require you to book three weeks in advance and go via their equivalent of Crewe (I’m not sure where that would be actually, maybe Kutno) with six split tickets. I do like the Polish network, it wasn’t quite as decadent as the train that took me from Vilnius to Kaunas, but it was still a very positive experience. Also, people on Polish trains don’t seem to feel the need to play music loudly from their phones or put their feet on seats…..

  • Wizz Air (Warsaw to London Luton)

    Wizz Air (Warsaw to London Luton)

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    A quick breakfast in the lounge and I’m always delighted to have a Greek salad. I had two as I was so delighted. This is the Etiuda Lounge which is in the non-Schengen one, although I usually go to the Preludium Lounge which is in the Schengen area. My logic is that I’ve been caught at border control for quite some time on a few occasions and I now prefer to clear that bureaucratic gauntlet first, lest I be detained indefinitely while someone scrutinises my passport like a cursed manuscript. I noticed that the border control agent was being very assiduous with the stamps of the passenger in front, indeed, the English traveller said “I’ve got too many stamps” which didn’t bode well for me. Anyway, the border agent looked through my passport and looked like he didn’t have the energy to deal with it, so just stamped it.

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    After my starter and main course of Greek salad, along with mochas and Fanta, I had a dessert of chocolate and beer. I think there are some healthy elements to that meal.

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    Anyway, after a peaceful time in the lounge, it was time to board. Yet again, the process was well managed, clearly signed and efficient. They were doing numerous bag checks but they didn’t look very long at mine, the benefit of having a soft bag. It’s the firmer type bags they stop, with a few customers charged £80 or so for having bags that are too big. The moral of this story really is pack like you’re going on a short hike and not moving house.

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    I had a middle seat, but when I boarded there was someone in my seat and I queried it in my perfect English. The Polish guy pointed at the lady in the window seat and said “wife here, I sit here, you sit there?” pointing at the aisle seat. This to me was a win, I like an aisle seat. He did proceed to spill slightly into my seat space like an enthusiastic houseplant, but I forgave him. The aisle seat was mine, and that was victory enough. The seating Gods work in a mysterious way.

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    The aircraft was 9H-WDX, an Airbus A321 which has been in the Wizz Air fleet since December 2023 and yet another aircraft that I don’t think I’ve been on (this exact one, I’ve been on rather too many A321s….).

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    And back at London Luton. The whole process was efficient again, nothing of note to write about as the crew were friendly, the pilots were informative and the aircraft was clean. The border at Luton Airport was busy, but I was through within twenty minutes. That now means I have two hours in McDonald’s by the railway station before my train back home, but I’m sure it’ll speed on by.

  • Wizz Air (Warsaw Chopin to Dortmund)

    Wizz Air (Warsaw Chopin to Dortmund)

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    Today’s early morning flight was from Warsaw Chopin to Dortmund and since I was at the airport soon after the security area opened, it was certainly a quiet airside. Although I accept that’s because normal people don’t arrive at airports as early as I do……

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    The corridors weren’t yet bustling.

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    The restaurants not yet packed.

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    I went to inspect the gate for my flight, which was scheduled to leave at 06:05. I realised that this meant I had time for a flying lounge visit, although it only opened at 05:00 so it wasn’t going to be a lingering one.

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    A little queue had formed for the lounge.

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    The excitement of it all….

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    As usual, I was eyeing up the chocolates (in that basket on the right of the photo).

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    And a breakfast of a Greek salad, blackcurrant juice, Fanta and a hot chocolate. I soon added chocolate, a banana and two shots of espresso. It transpired that I had twenty minutes in the lounge until they called customers to go to the gate, but that was sufficient time to get enough food and drink. Fortunately, my lounge pass is unlimited as I wouldn’t have paid for such a short visit.

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    The boarding process was efficient, although it was a bus gate which is never entirely ideal. The seating Gods had given me a middle seat, but it’s only a short flight and I was asleep for nearly all of it anyway. The route from Warsaw to Dortmund (and back again) has only just been launched but it was a nearly full flight. This is the exciting thing for airlines such as Wizz Air and Ryanair, they can open new routes and have a near guarantee that people will want to travel between the two locations.

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    The aircraft was 9H-WBZ, an Airbus A321 which has been in the fleet since October 2022, which I don’t think that I’ve been on before.

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    Safely into Dortmund and it was a little warmer than Warsaw.

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    Dortmund Airport is, if I’m being honest, bloody awful. The terminal was built in 2000 and designed for many fewer passengers, so it’s struggling to cope with the current higher volumes. There aren’t enough toilets, it’s not clean and it didn’t feel very well maintained. There was limited seating, the signage was confused and the on-line reviews are appalling, they desperately need an entirely new terminal. I can’t say that I’m looking forward to flying out of the airport in a couple of days.

    Anyway, it was in my eyes a successful flight as it cost me under £9, it was on time and everything seemed well managed and organised.

  • Warsaw – Metro System : C05 Ulrychów (Visiting Every Station)

    Warsaw – Metro System : C05 Ulrychów (Visiting Every Station)

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    And the next in my series of visiting every metro station on the Warsaw network. I have a backlog of these, but then again, I have a backlog of lots of many things I’m meant to be writing up.

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    The station is on M2, located in the Wola district along Górczewska Street and next to the Wola Park shopping centre. It was officially opened on 30 June 2022 as part of the extension of Line M2 westward from Rondo Daszyńskiego towards Bemowo. It takes its name from the Ulrich family, who established one of Warsaw’s first commercial gardening enterprises in the 19th century on this very land, with quite extensive greenhouses and nurseries. Work on the construction started in 2019, although groundbreaking work started in late 2018. Despite Covid, the project remained on schedule (this is Poland) and it officially opened on 30 June 2022.

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    And here’s the aforementioned Wola Park shopping centre. During the planning stage of the extension, the station was going to take the name Wola Park but perhaps they didn’t pay enough for sponsorship as in October 2018 the name was changed to Ulrychów.

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    Inside the shopping centre as I had to pop in. I might have accidentally tripped into the McDonald’s self-service machine and ordered myself a Jalapeño Burger as well by accident as well. At just £1, they continue to surprise and delight me.

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    This is Osiedle Przyjaźń, a hastily erected housing estate built in 1952 which was designed to house the thousands of Soviet workers who were building the Palace of Culture and Science in the city centre. It was composed almost entirely of prefabricated wooden dormitory pavilions for the labourers and some smaller bungalows for the more senior staff. At its peak, it could house 4,500 people and the structures were painted in either blue and white or red and white colour schemes to make them look colourful and exciting. There was a residential area here before, but that was quickly demolished although alternative accommodation was offered to those living in the area.

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    After the Palace was completed in May 1955, the Soviets cleared off and that left a handy campus area already constructed, which was given to the Ministry of Higher Education. The dormitories were used as student halls and the bungalows were given to academics and their families.

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    It’s a slightly odd area today, there are quite a few buildings which are boarded up, but evidently there are plenty of people who live here.

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    No-one paid much attention to my meandering around, it’s quite a peaceful area.

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    Some of the colourful buildings probably need a little painting.

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    This exploration is tiring, so I popped into the Auchan supermarket for a yoghurt based drink. I got a Mullermilch as well, but that’s getting its own post as usual.

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    Back to the metro station. Incidentally, the shopping centre were going to build an underground tunnel to the station, but they didn’t bother, but that’s perhaps because they were annoyed that the station wasn’t named after them.

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    Another packed platform, but it’s functional and clean. It was designed by a consortium of Metroprojekt and AMC Andrzej M. Chołdzyński, the same architectural team behind many other Line M2 stations, and it was designed with the expectation that the copper walls will oxidise over time, gradually changing colour and developing a natural verdigris patina. Very decadent. For anyone interested, and this is stretching the engagement of even my two loyal blog readers, the station is 120 metres long and was constructed in a 160 metres station box, all constructed using the ‘cut and cover’ method of making a big hole, putting in the station box and then resurfacing it.

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    The station sign and the architects noted that:

    “The ceiling of the platform level is covered with coffered acoustic panels also finished in a warm copper tone. In combination with the green walls and pillars, the copper ceiling creates a feeling reminiscent of an autumnal palette.”

    Nice. To be honest, this extension is a little uniform in its design, it could probably do with some exciting art installations going on to make the stations feel a little more individual. There was some controversy that the planned nearby Warszawa Górczewska rail station wasn’t constructed as an interchange with this metro station, but the designers said if they had moved it then it was no longer near where people lived, nor the shopping centre. They have a good point there and they’ve likely ignored the mocking ‘węzeł spacerowy’ or ‘walking interchange’ that some have nicknamed it.

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    And here comes the train, taking me back to the city centre. The network considers this to be the most copper filled of any of their stations, a fun fact I’ll try and remember although I doubt it’ll come up in any quizzes.

  • Warsaw – Thai Me Up

    Warsaw – Thai Me Up

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    It’s an interesting name for a Thai restaurant, but I needed somewhere suitably exotic to celebrate the end of this wave of dental treatment and I also hadn’t been here before so that seemed reason enough to visit.

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    The food menu and for those from the UK, divide by five to get the equivalent amount in pounds.

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    The drinks menu which seemed suitably broad in size.

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    I was greeted promptly at the door and offered a choice of seats, but I liked the window seat as it meant I had a view over the restaurant and also the kitchen. I could see from my viewpoint that everything was being cooked fresh in the kitchen, it certainly seemed authentic with the woks being flung about excitedly and flames coming from pans. The aroma of the restaurant was also enticing, the open kitchen meant that the Thai flavours lingered across the interior.

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    The starter was the chicken satay and this is the best presented version of that meal that I’ve ever seen. The chicken was tender and generous in portion size, with what I think is called Achar which is a diced fruit and vegetable arrangement, alongside prawn crackers, the satay sauce, along with what might be mung bean sprouts but I’m unsure. I haven’t been to Thailand, but I will work out a trip there at some point.

    They had some Polish beers, but adding to the Thai authenticity I went for a Singha beer. It’s a pale lager, but it seemed light and appropriate for the meal, although I suppose in that sense it’s both exotic and banal. It came in a bottle, but the team member poured it into the glass and took the bottle, which doesn’t help for Untappd photos if I’m being honest but I was there for the food rather than my Untappd feed.

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    The main was the chicken green curry with rice, which was mentioned to be spicy hot. It was hot in terms of the spice, although not overly so, but was certainly piping hot in the temperature sense. The chicken was tender, the curry was rich in flavour and it had all those vegetable things that I think are meant to be good for you. The jasmine rice was light, although in an ideal world I would have rather have had a bit more of that because of how large the green curry sauce portion was.

    The atmosphere in the restaurant was laid-back and informal with an authentic feel only diminished slightly by the customer with a loud Glaswegian accent. It does get rather confusing at times, planning a trip to another country whilst being Poland, eating a Thai cuisine and listening to customers speaking in English (well, Glaswegian, but they have similar roots). They had a side room and downstairs area, so they could cope with very large numbers here, but it was still moderately busy for a Wednesday evening.

    The pricing was reasonable, especially for an on-trend city centre restaurant in the capital, with the service being polite and attentive. The food and drink all met or exceeded my expectations in terms of the taste, temperature and presentation, with the portion size being larger than I had expected. At the end of the meal, it wasn’t quite as easy as I would have liked to get the bill, but I wasn’t in a rush and I could have forced the issue if I had wanted with my passive aggressive look. And it just gave more time for people watching, so I remained happy and would merrily recommend this restaurant to others.

  • Wizz Air (London Luton to Warsaw Chopin)

    Wizz Air (London Luton to Warsaw Chopin)

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    And a flight to Warsaw for my last week of dental work and I’ve been very brave by all accounts. For completeness, I thought I’d include the photos of the lounge visits from my Priority Pass card before the flight, as I’m like that….. I received a notification that the aircraft was running around thirty minutes late, which allowed a little extra time for these visits. This is Big Smoke and the chicken tenders and Electric Eye beer which was hazy, hoppy and a bit tropical.

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    The Calamari and pineapple juice at Nolito, primarily as they’d run out of orange juice.

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    And the My Lounge, which was full when I first went but I joined the on-line queue and headed to Nolito instead. Thirty minutes later I received a message saying that I could check-in. The cutlery here was filthy as usual, but everything else felt clean and organised. The staff were friendly and the beer, Birra Moretti, was generic and dull.

    Anyway, I digress.

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    This is the first Wizz Air flight that I can remember where the boarding process was unclear. The priority (not me) and non-priority (me) queues weren’t very clear and a staff member came down after some time to try and resolve the confusion. The gates are poorly marked here rather than it being a Wizz Air issue, but fortunately I arrived early enough to work the whole arrangement out, but I noticed some stressed customers after me.

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    There we go, confirmation that I was in the right queue…..

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    It felt a longer wait than usual to board the aircraft, but nothing unreasonable, and all of the staff seemed helpful if not one that seemed a little frazzled by customers. The aircraft was HA-LVE, which I don’t think that I’ve been on before, an Airbus A321 which has been in the Wizz Air fleet since July 2019.

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    The seating Gods had given me an aisle seat towards the rear of the aircraft, which I felt was very agreeable. Two other customers had been barging past other customers and I just let them past me, they seemed to have an issue with personal space and numerous other customers just let them go by. It transpired that they were sitting next to me on the aircraft, so it was efficient that they had gone ahead of me given that I had the aisle seat. The flight was without issue once again, with the pilot making regular announcements. I think I was asleep for most of the flight, I get easily tired now that I’m 30.

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    And safely into a rainy Warsaw around an hour after the original expected arrival time. As the flight had cost me under £9 with Multi Pass, I was happy with the whole arrangement. The border control was efficient and more personable than I’ve experienced recently, some others ahead me in the queue were being asked the purpose of their visit, but I just got “welcome back to Poland” so perhaps they’ve got fed up with asking.

  • Warsaw – Metro System : A2 Natolin (Visiting Every Station)

    Warsaw – Metro System : A2 Natolin (Visiting Every Station)

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    Next in my series of visiting every metro station on the Warsaw network was Natolin and, I have to admit, I did struggle to find a great deal of interest around here as it was so residential. It’s relatively near to two other stops, limiting the option to walk a little further in search of excitement.

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    The sun was shining and it was too hot. Not that I moan about the heat…. The metro station takes its name from the district that it’s located in, Natolin.

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    I found a small park nearby, Park Lasek Brzozowy, or ‘Birch Wood Park’. It’s nice, but I wouldn’t recommend that people come from other countries just to visit.

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    I went to walk around a housing estate, trying desperately to find anything old.

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    A little shopping centre.

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    Going back into the metro station. The metro station was on the first stretch of the network that opened, on 7 April 1995.

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    The decoration on the platform.

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    It wasn’t overly busy.

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    The plan of the metro station.

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    And leaving…. I must admit, this is likely to be one of the dullest metro station reports and I likely set the bar quite low with the whole concept. But, I don’t rule out going back and trying to find something which will surprise and delight my two loyal blog readers.