Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Then away we go, from the festival

After all that excitement, we needed to get out of the Old Town as there were snakes about, well at least one that I had the chance to observe.
As we strolled, we saw a line up to get an icecream and it included a whole family that had been to a wedding ceremony, I am guessing by their attire.
Then we got to the old square and found a fancy looking granny staring at something. But what is it?
Of course it is a Piano Accordion player, banging out some great tunes in front of the Royal Palace.
The Royal Palace looked like this at the end of WWII, but certainly looks prettier now (thanks to Wikipedia for that pic)
The accordionist was really quite good and Marty went and flicked him a couple of Zloty to keep him playing. Here you see him in front of the Sigismund's Tower, he was the King that moved to Warsaw from Krakow.
Just opposite the tower good old King Ziggy also has a column strangely enough called Kolumna Zygmunta in Polish. It was erected in 1644 so is old in theory. Well, the statue is, but the column has been rebuilt. It has 4 eagles, the national symbol, at its base.

At the small base of the column you can sit and watch the world pass through the square, stroll in from Krakowskie Przedmiescie or popping up from the Aleja Solidarnosci, or of course the colourful balloon lady.
With such sunny weather there were plenty out and about seeing the world.
But we couldn't hang around the Old Town all day tapping our feet to the sounds of the piano accordion, as I had promised heated beverages for Miss Marty, so off to Mariensztat it shall be. As we strolled down the gentle incline to the "Near Vistula" region I took this photo, a view I hadn't actually seen in such nice light before.
So why not check out the performance and surroundings below.

4 comments:

Andrew said...

Great observations G!

Gee Em said...

Thanks AT! I hope all is going smoothly in NZ, hope to get down there soon and catch up.

Erin said...

Nice..Warsaw really does seems like a lovely city. I love the cobble stones. I want to walk on them.

Gee Em said...

Yeah Erin, they actually are better than many I have walked on before. The funniest part is that Polish women have an obsession with high heeled shoes so it certainly makes for interesting viewing at times :D