Last day in Warsaw?

Say it isn't so! It just seems we got settled in Warsaw and now I'm sitting in the hotel lobby waiting to leave for a plane back to Iowa.

Typical Hailley plan, the train ride to Warsaw was too pretty to ignore. I spent most of the three hour ride either admiring the green landscape or catching up on a few journal entries for the class. The weather was lovely on the train; if only it stayed that way when we arrived.

What has been great about this trip is that each city is very different from the others. Berlin was hip and had so many options for public transportation. Krakow was a bit touristy, had the small city feeling (despite the fact the population is 800,000), and was easy to navigate by foot. And then Warsaw. Definitely the most "Western," this city has high skyscrapers to dominate the landscape and a shopping mall right next to our hotel. Our hotel is WONDERFUL and we had numerous options for breakfast today.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. When we arrived in Warsaw, Professor Keenan's friend, Mary, met us at the train station. Mary has been living in Warsaw since September and has a pretty good grasp on the city. She walked us to our hotel (it was just a block away from the train station) and we were able to check out. Another guide named Greg met us in the lobby to take us on a walking tour of Jewish memorials in the city.

That's when it started raining on us. It wasn't horrible, but walking in the rain for four hours does start to grate on you. But nevertheless, there were still interesting memorials to see. Greg was great and knew a lot. Our night ended with dinner in the mall and ice cream.

Today we has our final two museums. First up was the Warsaw Rising Museum. This is dedicated to the city uprising in 1944. It was a fascinating museum and enjoyed by everyone in the group. This was another fairly interactive museum, which is a fan favorite. Since we loved our kebabs on this trip, that was lunch, and we ended our trip with a visit to the recently opened Polish Jewish Museum. The main exhibit isn't quite complete yet, so we were only able to tour the space and hear about what it will look like in a couple of months. We decided a May Term reunion trip was needed next May to go back! This museum details the past 1,000 of Jews living in Poland. The space is great and boy, do they have big plans.

Our final dinner was provided by the college and was made up of very authentic Polish food. It was several courses long and delicious. A great way to remember to the trip and spend time with the nine other students I've gotten to know.

I'll try to write more on the airplane to help fill in some of my gaps. But moral if this post: I've had a good trip and learned so much. The last two days in Warsaw were some of the best! Mother Nature can't keep me down!