Well here I am in sunny Warsaw on the first part of my trip round Eastern Europe, sitting 'enjoying' the sun and heat eating foods and stealing internet from the people next door.

Basically I started on Thursday getting an rather unwelcome wake up from mum telling me that she wanted to get out of the house and down to Cheshire by 11 am.. ignoring this I promptly went back to sleep. A second kick came a little bit later, so unhappily dragging my ass out of bed got ready to go.. ish. It wasn't until I remembered that I needed to shove a few more things in my bag.. things that there was no way in hell were going to fit, so after 3 repackings and a lots of indecision I was ready to go.. at around half 12 ish. Got down to my aunts where I was spending the night so I could get a flight the next morning without too much trouble.

Next morning another kicking came .. this time at half 6, bearing in mind that my plane to Heathrow wasn't until 11 wasn't cool. Needless to say we got to the airport with 2 hours to spare :/ it could have been worse to be honest, but still. When I got into Heathrow went straight to find food which came in the form of descending on Gordon Ramsay's place which sprang up since I was last there, as always good food ad wasn't actually as small a portion as I thought they would be ^^. At 2 though I had to leave to get on the plane to get over to Poland

When I got there I actually managed to find my bag again.. Something I wasn't expecting to see until 3 months later due to the people losing it.. but no there it was not lost, but going on past experience I really wasn't planning on seeing it again. Got over to the hotel finding I was on the 31st floor, the view from there isn't any where near as good as the view from the gym on the 41st! It is slightly disconcerting however to get on a running machine which is right up against a window and start running, every now and again I'd get this feeling that I was about to go straight through the glass and keep going.. always a great experience.

Anyway this morning I thought I'd treat myself to some breakfast at the hotel since I had no clue of any places around Warsaw that would be open at that time to feed me, it's always nice I be waited on given food and have someone play the harp for you at 9 in the morning Now I've just been wandering around trying to find places to go to tonight and tomorrow morning, which is actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. Although when I first started I managed to get myself lost and ended up about 1km away from where I thought I was :s score for my awesome map reading skills! Haven't been up to Old Town yet but will probably go over tomorrow, along with a few other places I was thinking of. I managed to find the tomb of the unknown solider again and saw the park behind that, I always love going there, almost forgot that they have a show(ish) when changing the guard, will have to come back tomorrow and take photos though since I didn't manage to get my camera out in time to get anything worthwhile.

A few photos have been taken already but haven't really gotten round to doing anything about them just yet, might have a look at them later tonight if I get time. Any updates I do while in Poland will be just put on here, not sure how many I do depends how often I feel like coming back here to steal the internets since I refuse to pay for the hotel one.

EDIT [14:02 5/7/09]: I know that isn't the time I'm actually uploading this but its the time I wrote it and really the only thing that has changed is that I'm now warm and outside drinking a bit of beer before heading out to find dinner somewhere, so here goes...

Well at least today started off well enough, sunshine no clouds and what not. But lucky for me I managed to get caught out in a huge downpour while getting back to the hotel, so now I'm soaked and trying desperately to keep warm which would be happening if it wasn't for the stubborn AC not wanting to turn of

But yeah really the day consisted of going up to the Old Town to have a look around and see if much has changed since I was last there. But on the way I saw another changing of the guard which was much more ceremonial than it was yesterday I'm not entirely sure if this was a Sunday thing or if there was a special occasion - I would have found out but the speaker was speaking waaay too fast for me to be able to understand but either way I got a few good pictures some of which I'm putting up today but the rest will have to wait until I get a reliable internet connection.

After a while wandering round the streets of old town it seems as though not too much has changed in comparison to the new town, hell even the old pizza shop where I used to get meals from every time I was in Warsaw since I was 4 is still here ^^ ahh good times.

I think the plan tomorrow is to get down to the lazenki gardens since I don't even remember going there when I was younger so will be interesting to see if I can remember any of it at all, should also make for some good photos.. providing the weather is on my side *hopes* Here are a few pictures of my wanderings round warsaw so far and will try to get some more up.. although I think they may just be saved for facebook instead.

I never really anticipated just how much walking around a city for two days would take it out of me, but right now I can barely keep my eyes open from tiredness and I really should go have a hot shower before my fingers decide to turn black and abandon me for the floor Ahh well another day and a bit to go before I can take a 24 hour nap on a train to Kiev ^^ although it is slightly worrying that I'm having a little trouble after only two day when I have another 2.5 weeks of this.. ahh well I'll live

EDIT [20:12 5/7/09] Just as a quick after thought if anyone reading this fancies meeting up just let me know and I'm sure we can arrange something, the dates of when I'll be in places can be found here

EDIT [10:30 7/7/09]: This is just going to be a small final update from Poland before I start another page for Kiev.

My train out of here leaves at 16:45. Although I very nearly stayed another night here. Last night I was feeling unbelievably ill, I slept from 2 till 6 waking up only to drink more water and finally force some food down me (in the form of ice cream) then slept again from 9 until 9 this morning. I was very light headed had a fair amount of trouble walking anywhere, alternating between boiling hot and freezing cold and whenever I closed my eyes my hands felt as though they were 3’ wide I’m putting it down to exhaustion and dehydration from all the walking in high heat. But I’m feeling much better now and have decided to carry on with the planned trip and use Kiev as a rest since I’m spending the most time there.

The beginning of yesterday however was spent walking over to the Botanical Gardens and lazenki park both of which were stunning to see and walk round. I kinda ended up spending a lot of time sitting on a bench and watching everyone walk past, it’s a surprisingly feeling sitting with a litre of sprite on a park bench watching the world go by… and not being a chav sitting with a 2 litre bottle of knock off white lightning (yes it does exist) throwing abuse at people.

As I’ve already said I got back to the hotel and spent the rest of the day asleep with the bloody news on repeat since that was all that was bloody on Ever so slightly apprehensive about Kiev since now I won’t know the language and very few people actually speak English, £10 says I get lost on the way to the hostel