Wroclaw was very picturesque, but I have forgotten it already. A year from now we may distinguish the cities by whether it was windy or snowy, or maybe it will all meld together in the fuzzy, happy memory of Poland. I really like each of these cities and they seem like great places to live, but one Polish city feels much like another, so we cut Gdansk from the itinerary and booked onward travel to Lithuania. It took extra effort to find a train or bus that did not swing through Minsk on the way. We don’t have visas for Belarus.

Many of Wroclaw’s buildings are enormous and grand, and a few of them have a river or square in front that allow enough distance to get a photo.

Wroclaw had little gnomes scattered throughout the old town.

Warsaw had old town charm and impressive skyscrapers. It is also FREEZING cold, but we know the solution for that: Decathlon. Decathlon is a low-cost sporting store where we have bought base layers, fleece, jackets, beanies, gloves, hiking poles and backpacks. We bought enough to keep us warm and dry for the rest of winter and spring. We love that store and have shopped there in four countries.

Warsaw had 85% of its buildings destroyed in WWII, and many were reconstructed in the same style beginning in the 1950s.

We found two separate mermaid statues.

Parks are usually our favorite place to visit in a city, but winter doesn’t cooperate well with stationary outdoor time. We did meet some beautiful Mandarin ducks.

Much of Poland is quite English friendly, and that includes the movie theaters. We saw Captain Marvel with English audio and Polish subtitles. We noticed that “damn!” is translated as “cholera!” I find it very amusing that they use a disease as a curse.

Poland was country number 30 for this trip, and now we begin the Baltic circuit.