Touring Warsaw

We had a wonderful buffet breakfast this morning.  Great selection.  This is a very nice hotel.  We then board our bus at 8:30 to have a tour of the city of Warsaw.  Our tour guide for the city is a young man who is very knowledgable.  He uses humour and sarcasm and is quite funny.  The history we are learning is a tragedy as Warsaw was pretty well completely destroyed during the Second World War.  The Jewish population was almost completely eradicated.  Tragic.

This man, Jan Karski, (the statue not the guide) tried to alert leaders to what was going on in Poland after he disguised himself and was able to infiltrate the Germans.  He learned first hand what the plans the Germans had for the Jews but no one would listen or believe him.  If they had the holocaust might have been prevented.

Lots of statues of famous leaders too numerous to name them all.  Don't want to bore you either!

Chopin!  Apparently was quite a character and died in Paris at the age of 39.

This is the large square at the entrance to the old town.  This area was completely demolished and there were huge casualties as the underground tried to resist but lost the battle.  They rebuilt the 'old town' back to the way it had been to keep the history.

Beautiful horse.  They actually wear a special horse shoe which pads their hoof and gives them a cushion.  This way they prevent damaging their legs from trotting on the cobblestones.

Beautiful buildings...

Perogies for lunch.  Mmmm....good!

And so ends our day in Warsaw....now for a dip in the hotel pool.  

We'll be up early and on the way to Kraków in the morning!