Day 6 and 7

In the morning, we took a walk along the street our hotel is in Kazimierz (Gorna). It winds its way on top of a hill with lovely old and new houses, gardens and fields. The final destination today was Warsaw airport for the flights to Moscow and Irkutsk, but we decided to make a couple of stops along the way. First stop was a small village of Czarnolas where one of the greatest Polish poets Jan Kochanowski (16th century) lived and wrote. His house is no longer there, but there is a nice small museum in a 19th century manor house on the land that belonged to him. We didn’t think there would be anyone there since it’s in the middle of nowhere, but to our great surprise there were two tour buses there and a few cars. Bo enjoyed the museum (Al didn’t go because it was all in Polish). The next stop was a small town on the outskirts of Warsaw called Konstancin. It’s a pre-war summer resort with a beautiful old park, picturesque old mansions, spas, etc. Unfortunately, when we started our walk through the park, it started to rain so we just drove around. Most of the old mansions are hidden behind high walls so we didn’t see much. We had to return our trusty little Toyota at the Warsaw airport so when we got close to it, we started looking for signs “rental car return”. Not a sign anywhere. We drove into the airport and asked a couple of airport workers, but they didn’t know anything.   We had to call the rental place in Krakow where we got the car from, and they gave us the phone number to Enterprise in Warsaw, and finally we got directions to the drop-off place. Once we got there, we complained about lack of signed and they told us that everybody complains and they’ve been trying for 10 years to put up signs, but the airport won’t let them. Totally absurd!

One of the worst travel experiences.  The Aeroflot flight from Warsaw to Moscow was 30 minutes late.  The flight attendant said it was doubtful we would make the connection in Moscow from international arrival to terminal B in time to catch the flight to Irkutsk. We were a little surprised because we still had about an hour to boarding. Arrival at Moscow was laborious and slow through passport control. We exited the international terminal and we saw a man with a “transfer assistance” tag so we asked him how to get to terminal B. He said we’d have to take 2 trains and we would not get there in time.  He said for $50 he would try to get someone to drive us there.  He grabbed our carryon and ran to the street and put us in a van.  The driver said it was 12 km to Terminal B.  He drove like a maniac when he could but there were traffic jams. We got to the Terminal and the driver ran with us through the first of 2 security screenings and to gate entry.  We had to go through a second security and passport control and a 5 minute run to our gate.  We got there 1 minute before start of boarding. Never would have  made it without help.  Best $50 spent.

The flight from Moscow to Irkutsk was good. Warsaw was 50º but Siberia was 70º. We were overdressed and sweaty.  The Marriott hotel is nice but we only booked it for 3 nights (we thought we may want to go out of town for an overnight trip) and could not extend our stay because they were booked.  There must be a convention in town. After checking in and getting into dry clothes we embarked on a walking tour.  It was short since we were both tired from being up for 30 hours.