Poznań

I can’t believe I haven’t written this blog since we got back from Crete. Although record heat waves, the continuing debacle in Ukraine and various other topics deserve to be written about, I have become lazy. Anyway, here we are on vacation again, although a short one, just a 3 day weekend but, living in the heart of Europe, we are absolutely surrounded with beautiful, interesting, and convenient tourist destinations. This time we chose Poznan, Poland, just a 6 hour drive, with a couple of short stops.

I thought ‘What a dull choice, there is nothing to see of importance in Poznan.’ I couldn’t have been more mistaken. Last night, after we got here, we walked around Old Town (under construction), saw a couple of fountains, a couple of castles, a whole bunch of interesting old buildings and some parks.
This morning, we decided to try the hotel breakfast. At first, it seemed a bit sparse, and there were problems with the coffee maker, but there were many little oddities (pickled mushrooms), and we did not go away hungry, for sure. Then we went back into town and toured Tumski Island, with an ancient Cathedral (I hesitate about entering Cathedrals when they actually have a service going on, as they did, but my wife is not so bothered), a museum which we did not visit, a cafe where we had lemonade and a blueberry cream cup (similar to one we’d had at breakfast), and an old chapel which actually served as a very cool museum, they had a 5 minute film on a loop in the floor. I had not realized that Poznan was at one point the capital of Poland, a critically important European city back in about 900. We then found the building with a very cool mural painted on one wall, and one which makes music when it rains, both of which looked much cooler when I saw them posted on Facebook but still, it was a very interesting, artsy neighborhood. Then we went to the botanical gardens and I was knocked out. It was larger than Prague’s, I think, with a lot more ponds and fountains, and it was free, which Prague’s is not. We followed that with a trip to the Palmiarnia, a series of greenhouses with thick, tropical foliage. It had really started raining by this point, so it was good to be inside for a while. Then, we started looking for some place to have dinner. Our first choice was a place we noticed last night, very good prices for a large plate of spaghetti, but they didn’t have a toilet which, by that point in our travels, was an absolute necessity for at least two of us. So, after a bit more trudging about the under construction old town square we wound up at a pizzeria where the prices were O.K. and they had normal facilities.
Tomorrow will depend on the weather a bit. If it’s sunny, we want to go swimming, if it’s cloudy, we’ll go hiking in a nearby national park, if it’s raining we may have to think of something else.

In any event, I highly recommend Poznan. If you’ve never been there, you should go.