I accept that this will be another mundane post, although I rarely set the bar that high. There is a certain freedom in operating at this level of expectation. Nobody arrives here demanding drama, revelation or moral transformation, not even my two loyal blog readers. This was essentially the reverse of the journey I had made the previous evening, but I like to document things. One day someone may need to know precisely how I got from a budget hotel in Warsaw to the airport, and I intend to be ready for that moment.
This photo was taken just outside of the hotel and I resisted popping into the McDonald’s, which isn’t something that I’ve always managed to achieve. Still, I resisted, which I think shows character. Not a lot of character, obviously, but enough to get me across the pavement.
I had initially planned to visit some more metro stations before going back to the airport, to complete another half-finished project of mine. But the temperature was just too hot and so I decided that I’d walk to the tram stop and take one of the longer routes into the city centre and use it as a tourist experience.
The tram was air conditioned so I was all set and this immediately improved the mood of the entire arrangement.
Pootling along over the River Vistula.
And back into the city centre.
There’s Warszawa Centralna railway station in the background and I was already getting quite sad to be leaving Warsaw.
There we go, the 12:24 from Platform 3.
It’s the next Warsaw Beer Festival in October and I’ve decided I want to go to that, but the dates haven’t yet been released. I hope I’ll be back in Warsaw before that though.
The airport train looked like it would be on time.
And it was. There is something about standing on a platform with an airport train due that makes the trip feel suddenly over, even if technically there is still quite a lot of travel bureaucracy ahead.
And that was that, my short trip to Warsaw was over. It had been a slightly ridiculous routing, a brief overnight stay and probably not the most sensible use of geography, but it had worked. I had slept, eaten breakfast, ridden trams, resisted McDonald’s, crossed the Vistula and reached the airport without incident. That may not trouble the great travel writers of history, but it was all rather pleasing