After the amazing Christmas market at Wroclaw, we were looking forward to exploring more Polish Christmas markets. We took the direct train from Wroclaw to Warsaw which took 4.5 hours and cost $49.27 per person. The train was clean and comfortable but my only complaint was the seat map when booking online, the direction of travel was super confusing so I ended up with seats facing backward 🙁 No big deals to others but for me who gets motion sickness easily, I had to take Dramamine (luckily, I carry the medicine with me when traveling).
We arrived at Warsaw Central Station which was a short walk from our hotel, the Intercontinental Warsaw. We redeemed with our IHG free night certificate and got upgraded to a corner premium room, sweet! After we put the luggage in our room, we took an Uber to Oh My Pho. Hot noodle soup sounded great when it was freezing out! Warsaw felt so much colder than Wroclaw!
So far I haven’t found any pho that tastes better than the ones in Boston, of course except in Vietnam (that’s still on my list to go). 4 bowls of pho noodles for $33.07 was a good deal!
After lunch, we took an Uber to The Royal Castle and there was a long line of people so we changed our plan. We walked around the Castle Square and there were lots of Christmas displays like this one.
This square would be a great backdrop for Christmas markets but instead Warsaw’s Christmas market (one of the markets) was located along the old town’s wall near Castle Square. It was only one long street of wooden stalls on both side mostly selling food and ornaments.
The wooden stalls along its old town wall:
We were done walking from the beginning to the end of the street within 10 minutes and we were moving very slowly due to the crowds. After Wroclaw’s Christmas market, Warsaw’s Christmas market was a big disappointment! We walked back to the Castle Square, at this angle, you can see the huge Christmas tree in front of the Royal Castle.
We continued our walk to the old town square, Rynek Starego Miasta. My son is crazy with cars, he can spot anything that is a car!
The colorful houses looked like the ones in Wroclaw’s old town but this square is much smaller in size. There were a few stalls here and there and an ice skating rank.
There was also a Christmas tree at the square.
Surrounding the square were restaurants and souvenir shops. Look at this bike! The kids had a good laugh at its monster-size wheel.
We continued our walk to the end of the road which led us to Warsaw Barbican.
There wasn’t much more to see so we took an Uber back to the hotel. Our corner premium room had a great view of the Palace of Culture and Science across from our hotel. That kept our kids entertained for a while 😀
Our room was spacious, luxurious, and comfortable so we decided to order pickup to bring back to our room for dinner. It was easier to feed our kids in our room than at the restaurant, my daughter ate super slow! Warsaw has a lot of great Korean restaurants; I read that they have a good population of Koreans in Warsaw because many South Korean electronic factories are in Warsaw.
I picked Arirang after reading great reviews of their bulgogi. The walk to Arirang was around 15 minutes across the park. The waitress was a Korean grandma, she didn’t speak English at all but they had English menu so I was able to point to the items on the menu and order the food with some body language like how many bowls of rice. We ordered bulgogi, spicy squid, stir-fried noodles, and soon dubu (soft tofu) only for $53.79. We were freezingly cold after we got back to the hotel and finished the food in no time that we didn’t take a photo :O The reviews were so right, their bulgogi was the best that I ever had! The tenderness of the beef and the flavor, we were surprised how good bulgogi can be! The soon dubu wasn’t as soft as I hoped for, I guess they don’t have the silky tofu there. We really enjoyed our meal and had a great night’s sleep on our comfortable bed.
The next morning, we took an Uber to Wilanów Palace, it was an expensive ride (around $25) since it was outside the city – 25 minutes away. We were the first ones to arrive at the palace just before it opens at 9 AM. The weather was gloomy that day but that didn’t cover its bright yellow-colored palace.
There were lots of Christmas displays at the palace’s ground, it has a Christmas lighting show at night there. The kids had a lot of fun checking out at each display and figuring out what they represent.
The exterior facade of the palace:
It was 9 AM so we walked to the entrance and purchased our ticket, the admission ticket was very cheap for less than $3.
The palace was heated so we stored our jackets in the cloakroom and explored the palace.
The porcelain vases are colorful.
We walked from rooms to rooms.
The king’s bedroom, my daughter asked why the bed was so small looked like a kid’s bed haha.
The empty picture frames surround the staircase.
A bright-lit hallway of portraits and armor and weaponry.
The scepters:
This was my favorite room with an unusual ceiling shape and covered with porcelain vase wall tiles.
More beautiful porcelain vases.
The next display room was all silverware.
Woah a silver table!!!
They had a plate placement setup for kids and they loved it.
More silverware.
More royal bedrooms.
It took us around 1.5 hours to get through all the rooms, the kids enjoyed their palace visit.
Afterward, we checked out the royal garden.
They started to make funny faces; my kids don’t like to take photos, how ironic!
The backside of the palace.
The rose light displays in one of the gardens, too bad the palace is far away so we didn’t have a chance to visit it during the night time.
Once we came out of the palace, we saw a lady selling fresh produce! We bought blueberries, persimmons, mandarin oranges, yum yum yum!
For lunch, we walked to the town center to Modern China. The restaurant looked high-end with Chinese decors and furniture. I was wondering why they opened such a nice restaurant in this small outskirt town than inside the capital? We saw the tofu pudding dish from the online review photos but it was not on the menu so we asked the waiter if they still had this. He said yes and we ordered it without asking the price xD It couldn’t be that expensive in Poland right?
It turned out the tofu pudding was burned, we could taste the burned taste. We asked the waiter if the taste was normal so he has the manager/owner checked it out. He didn’t admit it was burned and instead made up excuses. Anyways, he was willing to cancel the order and replace with something else.
The sizzling beef was good and the meat was high quality.
The shrimp with nuts.
The manager/owner replaced it with a wonton soup, I never seen wonton soup with this much wonton. It was enough to feed the whole family and we were already full! We managed to finish most of it, the wonton tasted good nevertheless. The wonton soup cost over $20 but that could be explained by its portion.
This was the most expensive meal we had in Poland but the quality was great for $91.30. Once we Uber back to the hotel, we didn’t have more place to check out and it was freezingly cold so we decided to stay in the hotel and enjoy our fruits. For dinner, we ordered takeout again at Arirang!
Warsaw’s Christmas market was a huge disappointment after we visited Wroclaw’s. We
