May Day and other times around town

Art of the Polish landscape is upon you......

Well now that Spring is in full swing,
I will get to see the blossomy trees,
Feeling the sun is out and mosquitoes about,
The birds sing causing a pleasant din,
But where is the rain on the Warsaw plain?
Away I hope as without it I can cope,
But how and why does that pig over there fly?

Yes, that was an ode to a painting I discovered and attached with the blog. It is certainly interesting. I am not sure how old it actually is and not sure where from, that said, I do like it. I think it can be associated with many things in Poland. Many things will happen when pigs fly! Let\s hope that they don't with the swine flu going round!

However, one thing that has happened of recent times in Poland is that it is officially in drought! Well Warsaw is anyway, and on the last weekend, the long weekend for labour day, the forests were closed for fear of bushfire! It is certainly the last thing I expected in Poland, let alone in Spring in Poland. I think they must be using all the rain water to water the vodka crops instead of using it for normal rain, well maybe.

The weekends weather has been amazing, we were able to go for a long stroll on Friday from where we live over to an area called Wilanow, it is now mostly a new subdivision. It is miles and miles of apartments that, at this stage, are yet to be sold. There are few if any shops, restaurants and cafes. Also no public transport can be found in the new allotment, so it is quite a long walk to the main road to find a way into town. Luckily for all the people on holidays for Labour Day on this main road, there is also the Palace Wilanow. This was absolutely crammed with people! They were all over the place, eating icecreams, parading their fanciest shoes, highest socks and displaying only their happiest of grannies.

The weekend before we took the chance to tour around the town centre again, where we went to some nice areas. There are so many random things to find in a town centre like Warsaw. We went to the Praga side of the river, where we walked around some nice parks, we also went past the most famous Chocolate factory/company in Poland, E.Wedel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.Wedel This is on the shore of a small lake and is certainly not the most attractive factory ever (not many factories look good though), but I had hoped for something prettier from a chocolate factory. Alas, there was no Willy Wedel singing and dancing. They also have a little shop at the front of the factory which is in a Romanesque (and Grotesque) style. It really stands out in its white form in front of a very drab dark grey factory, but unfortunately the shop only sells what is able to be bought in Supermarkets. This is a huge disappointment, as we had hoped that it would have something really different and nice. This emotion caused us to go to the city centre and go to the Wedel café/bar/restaurant thing (see photos). It is a place of opulence, lots of polished bits, old wooden and velvet chairs along with delicate truffles and THE most rich hot chocolates you have ever had. We ordered two, a mint and a cherry flavoured one. They came out with the appearance of mud or something equally unattractive, they had tacky glace cherries on it, to indicate which was the mint and which was cherry (photo above). We then proceeded to consume these rich delicacies, especially with the excitement of the sugar rush that would surely follow. I thoroughly recommend to anyone visiting Warsaw to go and try one of these, they are simply divine.