And back to Warsaw ...

We spent one more day in lovely Ruciane Nida.  The weather was always cloudy in the morning but brilliantly sunny by the afternoon.  By the weekend, our hotel was really filling up with families and groups of friends on vacation.  Trying to make conversation with the grumpy man at the reception desk, I said "It seems like you're very busy!"  "Yes," he said, "it's because we have a lot of guests."

No beer for us!

Mikolajki

On Saturday we went for a longer ferry ride, all the way up to the town of Mikolajki.  The ride started at 10:25, but just about everyone other than us was already drinking beer.  Yep, it was sort of a mellow booze cruise.


And then in the afternoon, we went on a longer kayak trip.  We made a little circuit of our part of the lake, but mostly it was a great way just to relax:  sitting in the water, in the shade, playing with the paddles, seeing how still the water could get . . .

(More pictures of Masuria here.)

On Sunday, the big challenge:  How to get from Ruciane Nida to Warsaw.  I knew that we could do it by train, but that would take about 9 or 10 hours--IF the trains actually ran on time.  So, we checked with tourist information and found we could make the trip by bus in about 5 hours.  We got a cab to the bus stop ... and the enterprising driver offered to drive us himself, for a fairly reasonable fee.  So we got to Warsaw in even less time, in complete comfort.  It was just a teensy bit dodgy because he was obviously breaking the rules:  so he had to take all the phone numbers and seals and stuff off the car and tuck them away before he got too far from his designated area.  Capitalism in action!

When we got to Warsaw, Emma and I both collapsed.  Emma's been fighting a cold the whole time we've been here, and it finally got to me, too.  So, we just settled in and watched the U.S. vs. Brazil soccer game--what a game!!!  I'm so glad the U.S. won, and I'm so glad that Abby Wambach's head finally did what it's meant for and popped a ball into Brazil's goal.

Our tour guide, lecturing the Brazilians.

Today we rallied early on, because we wanted to take advantage of the tour of Warsaw that we had booked.  Our guide was a real character, marching everyone along quickly. "No, don't take pictures now, I'll let you take pictures in a minute!"  "Ok, now you have 4, no, 3 minutes to walk around."  There was a family from Brazil that was always straggling, and he made fun of them.  Not to mention the Asian family who didn't understand English who kept getting lost.  Emma and I and two women from Australia were the "good students" who kept up with him and answered many of his trivia questions correctly.  "Who is the smartest woman in history?"  "Marie Curie." Of course, it didn't hurt that Emma and I had already seen the house where Marie Curie was born and knew that was next on the tour . . .

Emma by the statue of Chopin, in the Royal Lazienki Park.

After the tour, Emma and I saw the opulent Royal Castle.  Once again, this was totally demolished by the Nazis in WWII, but was completely rebuilt in the 1950s-1970s.  Many of the art works and treasures were saved during the war and are back in their places in the rebuilt castle.  

Don't we just look spiffy now, in our headphones?

Mirrors . . . 

Kosiuszko's heart is in this box.  If you don't know who that is and you've been celebrating the 4th of July lately, you might want to check out Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Ko%C5%9Bciuszko

(More pictures of Warsaw here.)

And now Emma is collapsed on the bed again, sleeping, and I feel like I'm about ready to do the same. After all, it's 7pm!