US Graduation Trip - Part 2

Part 2 begins with our trip to Miami!

Lincoln Road Mall

The first thing that we thought to ourselves upon arrival, was how the Miami airport was so much better than JFK. Surprising in the sense that the buildings are newer, better maintained, and that there are more shops and entertainment stores in general. It's pretty dismal in JFK. Disappointing in the sense that it was the airport that welcomes quite a number of people into America. 

Anyway, we checked in to our hotel to offload our things. We stayed at Crest Hotel Suites. I do recommend this place. The people at the reception are really friendly. Not to mention that when you ask for extra towels to bring to the beach, they'd both give them to you, and give you extra towels upon your return for use in your hotel room. The location is perfect too - It has a CVS pharmacy (which houses ALL your needs available) nearby, and it's located really close to the Lincoln Road Mall, and it's just a stone's throw away from the clubbing scene. The last point is really important I think, because the clubs and pubs can get REALLY noisy at night, and this place is situated just far enough from all the commotion. It's also really near Ocean Drive- the main beach. 

We would then spend the next few days shopping (Lincoln Road Mall is somewhat like an Oxford Street of London), eating ice-cream, sun-bathing and watching movies. 

I loved the colourful umbrellas that people brought. So cheerful. :)

And then there are the cool stations - marking the streets. This is the 13th street station

Miami really is a place to just chill and relax. We didn't do anything other than that. But there are some amazing food stalls that I'm still thinking about up to now. It's really good!

The Meatball Joint

The Meatball joint. It's a new shop that just opened for 2 weeks when we got there. You get a choice between different kinds of meatballs, and what kind of dishes you would like to have it with (pasta, soup, etc). It's brilliant. They have a wide selection of  (alcoholic) drinks too. I ordered a Ginger Ale. Lol. 

The bar at the Meatball Joint

Then there was the 11th Street Diner. And holy moly, they have the best Southern Fried Chicken that I've ever eaten in my life. It's juicy, it's tender, it's tasty... KFC needs to move over. I'm not exaggerating this. 

T standing in front of the 11th Street Diner

How it looks like on the inside

It was a fantastic trip all right. Some would say that there is absolutely nothing to do in Miami. That kind of made me a little fearful about all the time that we would have empty and wasted. BUT, I must say, that it doesn't matter if there are little attractions besides the beach and the clubbing scene. T and I went for 5 days, and it didn't bother us. We went clubbing (or tried to, at least) for a night. But we spent the next few days running along the beach, swimming, sun tanning, reading our books, watching movies every night, eating really good food, talking, shopping... what more can you ask for really? The point of this being our graduation trip was that we were celebrating a few months of being able to forget our busy lives and just do... nothing. And Miami really does that for you. It's great. 5 days of oblivion? 

Perfect.

A pleasant change of events

And so the beginning of my holidays started off with a trip up north with my cousin!

The initial plan was actually to go to the Peak District in the UK... But there were a few things that went wrong with the trip that made us change our plans quite drastically. Not that we minded. It was a good holiday.

So we went up to Halifax to her bf's place on a Saturday evening. This was the Queen's Jubilee weekend. All we wanted to do was to escape the crowds in London.

It's a nice quite little town, though there's nothing much to do there at all (yes, this is where the Halifax bank was established).

So we went to bed, planning the day ahead at the Peak district.. But when we woke up it was raining pretty heavily. There was no way that we were going to be able to enjoy ourselves up high on a peak/hill, so we turned to look at each other, and I said, "Let's go to Manchester for some dim sum!"

And that's what we did. We went to Manchester for dim sum.

Thereafter we went to watch Prometheus - It was a really bad movie I must say.. I was terribly bored all the way through, and at the end of it, I still didn't feel fulfilled at all. But it was a nice change of events I suppose. It's a good thing that we didn't stay in London too - it rained throughout the Queen's jubilee parade down the river Thames. My flatmate says that it was pretty miserable waiting out in the rain to not really even be able to catch a glimpse of the boats that came by.

The next day we decided to go to the Yorkshire Dales, instead of continuing with our plan of visiting the Peak District. It was for the simple reason that this peak was so much closer to Halifax than the Peak district towns.

The meadows at Yorkshire Dales

We drove up, had a nice picnic up there, and basically walked all through the small little town of Grassington.

We bought stuff to eat from the Spar, and drove to the grassy fields, near the river, and sat there talking and eating and enjoying the sun.

The river

After our nice little picnic we gathered our things,  and walked through the town of Grassington one last time. We walked into the little shops to look at some knick-knacks, bought some sweets and chocolates and the like... It was good. Bought a bottle of jam for my dad. Funny thing about dad. He likes pretty jam bottles but he never really eats the jam inside.

Cute little shops, selling some cute little things

We then went back to Halifax for tea, and then cooked dinner for the night.

I was to go back to London on the very next day (Monday). I must say that I really enjoyed this little excursion.

See ya. :)

Aberdeen, Scotland

Aberdeen - 

Below I have a picture of the University of Aberdeen. It really is quite a pretty university. Well, some buildings anyway. My friend who goes there just showed me 'the nice ones' apparently. Hahaha. 

Aberdeen University

According to her, the city of Aberdeen is a nice place to live in - but only for the company. I didn't get her at first. Not until I arrived in the city and saw it for myself. 

When I arrived, I hailed a taxi to take me to her student accommodation. And on the way there, I could not help but realise that every (I'm not exaggerating here) building was GREY. It was really rather perplexing. I thought I was imagining it at first. But she clarified with me that perpetually every building in this city is made of granite. 

The only saving grace she says - is that sometimes, when the sun actually does shine, it... sort of sparkles. 

Blows your mind doesn't it? ahahhaa. 

But it is a rather gloomy place. Grey cobblestones, grey buildings, grey sky.... EVERYTHING, is grey. And honestly, I think, during winter, it can be a little bit of a depressing city. The sun hardly ever comes out apparently. 

But I don't think that's all that there is to it. They do have a gem in the city:

Aberdeen beach

The beach. It's a fantastic place to hang out, to walk your dog, and the likes. I imagine having wonderful picnics here too. What's good about it, is that it is a sandy beach. My friend didn't really understand why I was so glad to see sand per se, but I basically told her that for most of England, the beaches are just rock beaches. I.e. that it's just pebbles. I don't know how to explain this exactly, but take a trip down to Brighton, and you'll get what I mean. 

Aberdeen.. I agree with her. Not a place to visit unless you have the company. There's nothing much to see in this place at all. 

Lisbon

It's been quite a long time since I posted.. As the previous post suggested, I went to Lisbon as the second part of my Portugal trip.

Lisbon: Shot taken with my Polaroid

This would be the one photo that I took that pretty much sums up my entire experience of Lisbon.

It's a powerful city. The people there are really nice and helpful. There's this intensity that comes with the city though. Reminiscent of the old. Statues and memorials and museums.

The best part of the trip though, was the trip to a small town outside the main city, called Sintra. It's sort of a fairy tale town. Reminds me of Disney. We were lucky to get there on a sunny day.

We stayed at this hostel: The Lisbon Lounge Hostel. By far, this is the best hostel I have ever stayed in. EVER. And I do pretty much like to think that I travel a lot, having been to about 15 cities in the past few months or so. They have excellent service, they do tours... they pretty much have a lot of activities lined up for you, in such a way that you would not have to plan anything for yourself. They have cheap (BUT EXCELLENT!) dinners at night too.

As much as we would like to think of Portugal as the land of Nandos, it also turned out that they don't really eat Piri-piri chicken all that much. But when you do find a restaurant that serves it, it's fantastic.

Oh, and the Portuguese egg tarts in Bellum. There's only one place that's famous there. Hard to miss. Pity I can't remember the name. Heh. But man, I'd fly back to Portugal just for those egg tarts.

As you can guess, no matter how majestic Lisbon/Portugal was, the only thing that really made it worthwhile to me was the food. Yup.

Porto

We started off our trip by going to Porto. Mind you, this isn't the best time to go to Portugal. It's rainy and gloomy - winter was coming after all. Truth be told, we didn't get to see much of anything!  That wasn't because there was nothing to do though. Once quick look at the tourist information for Porto, and you'd find a ton of attractions. It wasn't really because of the weather either.

it was because.. all we wanted to do was eat and drink.

Not terribly exciting, but we just wanted to relax. And so, relax we did. And we did so by doing two things:

i) We went to Cais Da Ribeira.

It's a nice place to chill out at. And well, it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so I do suppose it counts for something. The only problem was that it started raining, so we went off to the other side of the river, to where all the port wine houses were.


ii) Taylor's Port Wine House

The rain was pouring outside, while we stayed indoors sipping on fantastic port wine for free.

Port Wine... for free?

Yes. Free. Take the tour. The guide will explain lots of things about the History and all that, but... at the end of it you do get free white and red ports! There were many glasses leftover.

We helped ourselves.




That very night, we followed a guide from our hostel to watch a Fado performance. It's Portuguese music, played with a  Portuguese guitar and a Spanish guitar, and a singer. The songs are all deeply emotional. A very moving sort of thing. Apparently the good ones are in the little unknown, old Portuguese bars - like the one we went to. That was really good.

The next day we spent walking at the Foz district. We ate roasted chestnuts, walked, and chatted some more. We went to the Casa Da Musica. Architectural wonder? Well, I suppose. Didn't look all that fantastic to me. We were more amazed by how the price of a cup of coffee and a muffin in the cafe was only 2 Euros. Damn. That'll cost me a bloody £6 in London.

And that's it for Porto. Next stop: Lisbon.

Singapore!

Had a whirlwind trip to Singapore!

Was there for an internship at a law firm. Valuable experience, I must add. But definitely not the focus of this post. 

The picture above is at Marina Bay Sands, taken on the Helix bridge. Yeah, it's a really cool bridge which was meant to look like a double helix strand of our DNA (complete with the protein molecules, I must add). I was there with my friend Zhi Wei and her family for her birthday. We were there to catch the light show. Apparently it takes place twice a night during weekdays and three times on the weekends. We went for the 930 show. 

It's pretty cool. Lots of lights, bubbles and music. Instead of using a screen for their show, they use water sprays and lights. Cool concept. And of course, it's to be expected that everything is a Singaporean production, including the singers featured. 

And we had a gathering at her place too. Hehe. 

Had a great time. :) 

More on Singapore in a bit. 

The HighLine

In the last post I was talking about visiting the High Line in New York, and indeed, that's a very nice place to visit (and you should!). The only problem with that place is that there are no actual restaurants at the place itself, so it'd do you some good to eat before you go. There is a coffee stall (which I will talk about later), and an ice cream stall and one mini cafe that just sells cakes and sandwiches, but nothing substantial. 

We went to this Diner which is really close to the HighLine. I do recommend this place. It's really good, the portions are big, and the service is great too. The waiters are really friendly, and it's a A-listed restaurant. 

I promise you that this place, Star on 18, won't let you down. 

Now, the other thing that we did when we walked down the Highline was to stop by at the coffee stall. The name of the stall is Blue Bottle Coffee. Yes, it's the same one brewing at Brooklyn!

Their hot chocolate is really unique. It seems like you can really taste the dark chocolate (so in that manner, it's slightly bitter). It's not exactly very thick, but the consistency is just about right. It has right amount of milk, and just a whole mouthful of sinful melted chocolate. Sounds good no? 

Also, another thing which I find pretty funny about the American coffee places is that you usually have to ask for a double shot of espresso. I guess I'm too used to the ones in the UK. In that same manner, I keep forgetting to order double shots! And thus my coffee has less of a kick. Shame, because I can tell that the coffee is brewed really well. That's my fault. 

Ahhh.. Food and beverages. Who doesn't live for them? It should only be right that we live to eat and not eat to live. 

New York

And so I was in New York!

Some say that it is the city of...

It can also be a great place to chill out. Take Central Park for example. We also caught Shakespeare in the Park (T'was a bit strange though. We caught "All's Well That End's Well". So British, yet, spoken with the American twang. :S )

And you don't even have to travel all the way to Central Park. You could go to the Highline. Pretty place. It's a suspended park, built where there used to be suspended train tracks. Places to sit and chill, some nice ice-cream shops and a coffee cart and a restaurant (the restaurant is not really worth it though, if you ask me). Flowers blooming, butterflies flying. :)

New York is also the place where immigrants used to arrive with the hopes of a new and fresh start. Arriving in a boat from places far away to cry at the promise of freedom and democracy.

And for the artsy kids too. There's really something for everyone. This picture below is of the MOMA. 

And there are lots of other things to do too! The Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Natural History, the Met.

There's the Meatpacking District. Greenwich Village with all the quaint little coffee shops and some nice bars and pubs around, Washington Square, Flushing. 

And for the shoppers? Macy's, Bloomingdale, 5th Avenue (the list goes on!)

(My favourite place was Greenwich Village). I didn't really get to roam around Brooklyn and Queens though. 

More about some New York shops later. There's a good coffee place and a good diner that I want to talk about. But as this is a post on New York, I'd like to sum it up. 

New York is a great place. Lots of things to do. Lots of sights to see. But when I listen to the song 'Empire State of Mind', where it goes:

"New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of"

And I can't help but think that there definitely is a charm to this big ol' city. 

But it's hardly a place where my dreams are made of. 

For me it's London. I just feel that there is no way that this American city can compare to Little Britain. It's the only place I want to be right now.

Can't wait to get back. 

Speedy

And so, 2 weeks ago we had a whirlwind trip to Washington DC (our hearts go out to those affected by Hurricane Irene).

A friend once told me that the city was one of the highlights of the east coast, the other two basically being Boston and New York. But to be honest, there is nothing much here. 

Well, you have the White House, lots of memorials and museums... but nothing much basically. Just a day trip kinda place. 

Although I do get bored with memorials, I think it's great how they put them all in one area. So you can sort of complete all of them in one sweep, and feel like you've done a lot for the day. 

Some places to go to:

- the memorial area (Jefferson, Lincoln, Vietnam War, Korean War, etc)

- the air and space museum

- ** The NEWSEUM! :D Best highlight of the state if you ask me. 

- Capitol Hill (really pretty)

- The White House (just to take a picture of it to say that you've been there. If it wasn't the administrative building of the country I wouldn't even have bothered visiting!)

Darwin's Ltd.

There are actually two of these places in Cambridge, MA. I happen to go to the one on Cambridge Street (and that's the one I'm posting about!). 

Darwin's Ltd. is a splendid little place. It's pretty spacious, almost always buzzing with life. They serve excellent sandwiches. It's rather cute too, how they name the sandwiches after the local street names around the shop. It would be for that reason that some people might find that their favourite sandwich has different names if they went to the other shop! (note: I took that last sentence and paraphrased it from their website. Just to let you know) I've never tried the daily specials however. Those are pretty interesting because they sell it by weight. You tell the server what you want, and how much you want, and they'll cut it up, pack it, and weigh it. 

They also have a wide variety of salads for those who are of the healthier sort. And if you're one for pastries, they sell some cookies, muffins and (i think they're called) whoopie pies!

Anyway, although the lines are always long, it doesn't actually take forever to get your food. You'd be quite certain, actually, to get your food within a maximum 20 minutes (unless there's some monster at the front of the line making it hell for the server of course).

Their coffee is nothing really to shout about. Their cafe latte is just so-so. BUT, for some reason, their iced latte is quite good! Funny. And if you come in the evening, where there's less of a crowd, you'd actually be able to see the staff joking around and having a great time. I shouldn't be eaves-dropping, but sometimes the conversations are pretty funny (and they talk quite loudly too!).

There are plenty of seats and chairs, and a good large sofa for customers to sit on. Wifi is free and they don't really chase you out of there. 

I suppose that can be a good or a bad thing. 

Good because you can sit there and do your work and get all comfy and... well, you get the gist. 

But well, if everyone is gonna do that, then pretty much.. You won't be able to find a seat sometimes. And that's possibly the only downer. It does tend to get overrun by people interacting only with their computer screens. 

But otherwise, I really like this place. It's my escape from the over-populated and gimick-y Harvard Square area. It has more of a local flavour, and the neighbourhood is just lovely. 

I'd give this place a B+. :)

(On a random note, I've noticed that I only write about places I like. I never have the urge to talk about bad places that I've been to. *shrugs* I don't see myself changing)

On this journey

Waiting. 

It'll be a while until I next find a place to talk about. I won't be going anywhere this weekend, nor will I go anywhere next weekend. I've got quite a bit of work to do. But in any case, all I can say is that life.. is a wait. In this journey, that's always a part of it. You wait for the train. You hop on the train. You wait until you reach your destination.  It's not rocket science. 

And so I'm waiting. 

On the train that is. 

I'm sorry for being cryptic, but maybe I'll let on next time. 

I'm Jet-lagged.

When I think about my life, from last July to this July, I have been to the following places:

Melbourne, Petaling Jaya/ Kuala Lumpur, London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol, Rome, Warsaw, Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Boston, New York (and soon Washington DC). 

Sometimes, after being away from home for so long, you can't help but listen to songs like these. 

Well, I don't really have anyone waiting for me, but in terms friends at least, we've been all been having those moments where it's been really difficult for us to talk and stuff like that because of the time zones. 

So in a non-romantic way, I dedicate this to some of my best friends and my family. I don't need to list them down. 

"I want to share your horizon and see the same sun rising". 

Wien

Wien, Austria. Or, should I say, Vienna, as it is more commonly known. This was our last stop during our epic Central Europe trip.

It would seem a little unkind to summarise all that we did in this place down to a few paragraphs, especially when I've elaborated quite a little on the previous places. The main reason for this was just simply because it happened quite some time ago and I've been busy doing things.. and thus not really having the time to come back here.

But in any case, I'll just make a list of the places I really enjoyed.

Haus der Musik:

House of Music. It has some really cool things in there, and there are free concerts too. You can even pretend to be a conductor (and there is a simulated orchestra that will actually move in tune with your conducting. hehe). Some floors were just weird. You'd have to go there and see what I mean. But it's a very nice experience nonetheless. :)

The Opera House:

Well, we didn't exactly watch the opera. It was a play. I'm not exactly sure why this was so, but we got to see it for free. Basically we think that it was because we happened to be there on a Friday. The Opera House would have a wide screen on the outside by the courtyard, and they'd lay mats out for people to sit on and some chairs as well. What we did was that we bought some Chicken Schnitzel, some crisps and some drinks and had a nice meal while watching it! Sure, it was all in German, but heck, we couldn't care anyway. We had fun. :)

Food!!!!!

Who doesn't love food?

When in Wien, go try some coffee. But the place you should go to for that (and some good cakes and some AWESOME asparagus soup!) would be DEMEL. :)

For the Chicken Schnitzel, go to this place called Figlmuller. It is cheap, and tastes fantastic. Reputed to be the best in Vienna, and I agree!

And last but not least, Cafe Sacher, for some brilliant Sacher Tots. :D

Some places to go, which might be a nice experience but I wasn't that fascinated by, was Mozarthaus (Mozart Museum) and the Imperial Guards Horse Practice.

Also, there is this really cool church. Now, most churches have stained glass. This church is a little different. It has coloured glass panels, and thus when the light shines it, it gives the church a trippy kind of feel. It becomes colourful! Weird, but cool.

I'm sorry to reduce Vienna to this, but my memory isn't that fantastic. All this is just based on pictures though.

Oh, and you should definitely pay for the walking tours to get a good overall view on Vienna.

Wien.. I love this city. Definitely one of my more favourite places in the world.

Summer Continued in Budapest and in Slovakia!

And so, after Warsaw we flew in to Budapest. I can't say that I can tell you much about it though. We honestly didn't have that much time, and we spent most of it just taking the tours around the city. They're free, and quite worth taking.

The morning tour, would be the Peace, Democracy (and something) walk. Basically taking you through history in terms of Hungary being ruled by the Soviet Union, the Nazis.. etc. The afternoon tour is about Budapest in general.

I would say that I did enjoy learning about the history of Budapest. And this is one society, I realised, that draws a lot upon the symbolism of things. Each statue is symbolic, and each act is too.

Take this fountain for example. It symbolises the democracy of the country. If you're far away from it, the fountain is up high (see the water level on the right of the picture). Come near it, the fountain disappears and you can walk inside it. Once inside, it will rise again, and it represents bars (like a prison cell).

But then the beauty of it is that, in a democratic society, people are free to come and go as they see fit, unchained by the political realities of the day, because the people ARE the backbone of society. So as easily as you can imprison yourself, you can also walk out of the prison by walking near it (the level will go down) and step out.

Another (cheesy) example. The locals here believe that if you take a lock, and lock it to the bridge (they have multiple) and throw the key into the river, your love will last forever. And so they write their names on the locks as well. It's rather sweet, if you think about it.

Those, among other things. It's really a beautiful city. A must go. Would have loved to spend more time there. Go to the hot baths and all. But there was no time!

However, a VERY good eat was at this restaurant called Ruben. Do go there if you're in Budapest.

And as for Slovakia (we went to Bratislava).. I must say that there is nothing much to see there. It's pretty though! Some historical sights here and there... But yeap. The interesting place was this church. It's really different and it looks like a place out of Alice in Wonderland.

Yeah. It's a marshmallow blue. Kids were playing Hogwarts outside it! And as for the good eats (and trust me, they're REALLY good)

The Slovak Pub

Verne

So well, for Slovakia, it's a slow-paced place. Nothing much to see (it's so tiny!) but the food is good. Budapest though, is a place to go. Slovakia? 5 out of 10. Budapest, 8. :)

P.s. I don't know why the pictures turned out weird (for the marshmallow church).

Summer Begins, with a little bit of Warsaw

The first installation of my travelling begins in Warsaw, Poland! I didn't have much time to do anything else but pack after my exams before I got on a plane with my travel buddies and jet-set off to holiday fun. We got there rather early and began to explore the place. If you happen to be a traveller in Europe, do check out this site: http://www.use-it.be/europe/ . It has the locals' input on things to see and to explore in a particular place. With that map in hand, we began to walk the old town. 

It looks a little small, but actually, it really is quite small. You can probably walk and see almost everything in the old town within a day as everything is actually quite close to one another.

Another curious thing was the number of churches that were there. What's so special about churches you say? Well, maybe it was the fact that we passed by so many, and in every single one of them, a wedding procession was taking place. One in the morning/afternoon when we walk past it, and another in the evening when we return to the place we had rented out.

After a bit of walking, we happened to chance upon the filming of a movie. It should be a local film, and a rather small production, but it was exciting to see nonetheless. The 'shooting of guns' and 'dying people' and all the old vehicles. We stood on top of a short wall to see what was going on. 

I must say that while the old town is rather beautiful and easily covered within a day, the other attractions in this city aren't exactly very near one another. Once you move out of the old town, the exciting bits are far away from one another, and it can be quite a hassle to walk there. We took half an hour to walk to the Chopin museum (we stayed in the old town), and an hour to walk to the Warsaw Uprising Museum. Not very pleasant if you happen to be unfit.

This is the picture of the Jewish Ghetto. When they were still prosecuting the Jews, the idea was that they should cram thousands of Jews into just two building blocks, so as to isolate them from the rest of the community before transporting them to Auschwitz. Many died, and the pictures that you can see are of some of the people who had lived and died there.

Here are some of the places that we visited that were definitely worth going/doing:

- The Jewish Ghetto

It is a part of history that we should never forget. I wish we had a guide with us to explain a little about the history of the place, butttttttttttttt, fortunately, we had our history buff (she happens to do International History at my University, and she does particularly take an interest in Jewish history) there to tell us a bit of what she knew and to explain the time line and other things.

- The old town

Walk around, take in the sites. There happened to be a little flea market sort of thing going on at the main square when we were there

- The Chopin Museum

It has a certain charm to it. This is one place which I feel only people who appreciate classical music should go to, or, if you are one of those people who takes a particular interest in Chopin himself. It really is a story about his life, his friends, his music... everything. You can sit there and listen to his music and not budge for a really long time at certain stations in the museum. Well worth the visit. And here's a little spoiler: Bet you didn't know that Chopin was a bit of a ladies' man. He had lots of lovers, but was passionate and torn inside, not being able to feel like he could live after a woman has left him. 

- The Warsaw Uprising Museum

Historical, interesting. I don't know how to describe this place, but it is a must go. I suppose it's not a place you would take young children to. I just don't think that young children can appreciate this sort of thing, and it's not very interactive to stimulate their minds. Lots of facts and artefacts and short films to see, but I can hardly imagine how it would keep a young child entertained. 

- FOOD

You absolutely HAVE to go to this place called Podwale Restaurant. The food there is fantastic, and value for money. My pork knuckles didn't even cost me 10 Euros! Everything that my friends and I ordered came out absolutely delicious, and we liked it so much that we came back the next night to have dinner there again! It's great how the waiter understood English and everything. 

If you want to take a trip down history, you could also visit one of the few milkbars (I have no idea why they call it that) too. They are communist canteens. Well, I meant it in a way that they used to be canteens where people could come and buy food while Poland was still under the communist regime. Can't say that I like the food very much in those milkbars, but it's worth a try!

OH, and for some reason, there seems to be a national love for ice-cream. Everyone is practically walking around with a cone in hand. Ice-cream shops at every turn and corner!

Here are some things you either don't want to do, or would want to spend very little time doing:

- Stalin's Empire State Building

It's just a landmark. Nothing special here. Just take a picture of the place and go. It's quite pretty though, but rather underwhelming. 

- FOOD

DO NOT go to this restaurant called Restaurant Boruta. Service is horrible, and we waited a good hour to get our food. Let's not mention that it took half an hour for my drink to come. The food wasn't even good. Measley portions (I could feed a goldfish with that). And it was expensive. Tourist trap for sure. 

That pretty much sums up our trip at Warsaw. We also visited 3 other cities; Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna. More about those later. 

If you're travelling and looking for a place to stay in Warsaw, I really recommend this place that we stayed at. It's called Design City Apartments (you can google this online to check it out). 50/5 Freta. Comfortable, pretty, well-furnished.. the works. The couple who owns the apartment is really friendly. There is a kitchen, fully equipped with the stove and cooking appliances.. They even give you coffee and tea! Bargain? Yup. Definitely. 

Warsaw as a destination?

Well, we were only there for 2 days. It didn't impress me much on the first day, but on the second day it kind of grew on me. I do like this place, but it wouldn't occur to me to come back a second time. If this is your travel destination then I'd say that a traveller should only spend about 2 days at this place.

P.s. Taking cabs are kind of pricey (they know you're a tourist who can't speak their language and they can't speak English either, and hence.. you get the idea). Be prepared to walk, and be prepared to walk far. 

On a scale of 10 (1 being bad and 10 being great), I'd rate Warsaw as a 6.5