I was surprised by Warsaw, such a huge and impressive city. But it wasn’t the quaint place I imagined so I saw what I found interesting and moved on to Krakow.
Short Warsaw Visit
Visiting Auschwitz
When you come to Poland it is a good idea to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau. It seems you need to book individual entry up to a month in advance and they probably put you in a group? Most everyone was in a group tour which is advisable since there is a progression of buildings to visit and the details are extremely important. The camp you visit is just one of many built to house and mass murder people. There were more than 900 concentration camps built for the NAZIs to house and kill their victims. You will see the living quarters, execution walls, extermination showers and all other buildings preserved by former victims housed here. You will see collections of clothes and personal things left from those killed there as well as tons of hair shaved off before execution, used to make coats and blankets.
Poznan, Poland in winter
Poznan in winter is still a small town. But it’s almost halfway from the German border to Warsaw so it seemed like a good place to stop over for a few days, see how the trains work and cut the trip to Warsaw in half.
Exploring Segovia
exploring Segovia is easy from Madrid. It’s a very short ride, less than an hour, and after you visit this town you can go back through Madrid to Toledo for a very short train ride there as well. One main feature of Segovia, of course, is the aqueduct where you will start your journey into the old town.
Exploring Toledo
as I mentioned in the previous post on Toledo it is definitely one of the “must see“ cities in Spain. It’s a very short train ride from Madrid which is more expensive so you may want to stay here in a very beautiful old town atmosphere and take a day trips into Madrid. I stayed in Grecco which is right above the gelato shop so on your way back to the very comfortable room you can stop in front and have a delicious gelato.
Toledo Jewish Quarter
there is a very interesting story about the Jewish quarter in Toledo indicating how powerful these people were in the Gothic and Moorish periods of Spanish history before the people took it back from the Moors. It seems the Islamic groups lived peacefully and with tolerance with the different religious groups but that was not to continue after the Christians took the territory from the Moors. The result was the inquisition in which non-Christians were obligated to convert or leave or worse. This area of the city is expensive and an extremely interesting and intricate part of Toledo. Visiting here is an absolute must if you come to the city.
Hello Rod Stewart
last year I bought a ticket for the Rod Stewart concert Köln, Germany on December 2 so I had to plan my travels accordingly. I had originally planned a month in Ireland but my friend was visiting France for a week and asked me to join so I cut my trip to Ireland short. Then I made it down to Spain and then back up to Germany for the concert.
when I first got to Cornell in 1971 I was of course studying in the room when the fellow across the hallway, Steve, had his door open and he was blasting “Maggie May“ which was a new song from the up-and-coming Rod Stewart. I asked Steve to close the door and turn the music down so I could study. He did nothing. So I went out and closed his door after asking him to turn down the music again which he did not do. So for a whole week he opened up his door and blasted “Maggie May“ I came to hate that song and I won’t tell you what I thought of Steve. But over the years the Song did nothing but bring back memories and they became increasingly good memories of my college days back in the middle of Iowa on the hilltop at a small school in a small town where people became something close to family and at least close friends. After 54 years I really needed to see this concert and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done.
““we are sailing” needs an explanation. It was back in about 1998 when we went out on a boat with the famous underwater videographer Prasong who we worked for on the dive boats. He went with one of the TV channel crew to do a special on diving in the Similan islands off the West Coast of Thailand. On the second day we were up at 6 AM, got some breakfast and Marianne, a famous Danish photographer and videographer and one of our diving crew in Bubbles, decided to take a dive far off Christmas point which was a little deep but we had never explored that area. Since we didn’t have diving customers with us we were able to do some experimental dives in areas that were not really suitable for guiding customers. So the boat dropped us off and as we came up we had manta rays all around us. We came to the surface and the current was pulling us slightly away from Christmas point. We waved to the dive boat but since it was about 7:30 we were in between the boat and the rising Sun so the boat couldn’t see us with the sun glare. we were calling to the boat but we were too far away for them to hear. So we just relaxed, inflated our BCD’s and knew they would come and look for us anyway. After having a few discussions and jokes about nothing a Thai squid fishing boat came to us and asked us if we wanted to board the boat which we did. On these fishing boats they have Burmese (Myanmar people) on as crew because they’re cheap but also illegally on the boats as crew so they were hiding in the cabin. As we walked past the cabin these heads popped up with yellow powder on their face (prickly powder is used to reduce the effects of heat from sweat. the Myanmar people use a yellow powder as the Thai people use a white powder. So that’s how you can tell the Myanmar people from the Thai people especially early in the morning when the powder is most used.We told the captain about our dive and where our boat was. he was very happy to take us back to our boat. We asked him how his fishing was and he explained, “we haven’t caught much squid yet but we did catch a few foreigners“. We all broke out laughing. The whole situation was just so hilarious. As we got close to our dive boat Marianne and I stood on the front of the boat and we started singing “we are sailing“. I guess it was so entertaining the TV crew on our dive boat decided to film it and two weeks later we wound up on Thai TV coming back to our boat singing “we are sailing“ and explaining we saw a lot of manta rays, the first of this dive trip. So that’s the story of the song. After that we showed the TV crew where the manta’s were so we did a number of dives with mantas which became an extra episode on the four part TV series “diving in the Similan islands”.
Go to Cuenca
when you go to Spain make sure you go to Cuenca. It is a world heritage site for a reason. You go up by bus to the castle uphill or you can walk though it is quite a distance and could be tiring depending upon your degree of fitness. Walking back down to the town is a piece of cake and a very interesting stroll. There are also a few ways to go down through the narrow streets which you should probably try. By bus by train from Madrid it will take about an hour and a half so if you leave early in the morning you can spend the day there and then come back in the afternoon or evening but it’s a nice little town to stay overnight. I didn’t find a bunch else except for the journey up to the castle and the churches to visit up there. There are quite a few restaurants in coffee shops along the way but they seem to be mostly catering to the tourist crowd so they be judged as tourist restaurants. As you visit this area you will see a beautiful landscape and buildings right on cliff sides that will definitely be worth a few photos.
walk around Madrid
as you walk around Madrid you’ll find some very interesting things so keep your eyes peeled.
More fun in Japan
the more you look around, the more you will find interesting any place especially in Japan where so many things are different but you have to be on the lookout.
