Outrunning My Feet
Outgrowing My Shoes
• Poland •

A travel miss in every sense

Not every stop becomes a favorite, and Warsaw was very much that kind of lesson for us. Maybe the twelve-hour bus ride had already ruined our mood before we even arrived, but this day just never recovered. Everything felt dirty, closed, empty, or frustrating, and by the time we made it to the airport, it mostly felt like a city we had completely failed to experience the right way. I would be open to giving it another chance someday with more research and better travel planning, but this attempt was a total flop.

July 12, 2024
Warsaw
Day trip, Old Town, love bridge
Warsaw had an unfair disadvantage considering the trip started with an argument in Russian between Rose and a bus driver at 1 a.m. in Lithuania. I will admit, I somehow managed to book Aiden a ticket for the 10th and me one for the 11th. Because the bus didn't arrive and start checking people in until 12:30 (scheduled for 20:00), I was unable to fix the ticket mishap. The driver decided the only way to trust that we would pay our debts ($12 USD...come on) was to hold our passports for the ride. Of course we declined and he watched us like a hawk the entire journey. Once we got there, he said that one of us had to stay with him while the other went into the nearby mall to pull money from an ATM. We decided that Aiden would go to the ATM. After about 10 minutes he came back out and admitted that he could not read Polish. I went in and pulled what seemed to be more than enough out, exchanged it, and was given back $7 USD. So, I returned to the ATM, pulled more out, and swiped away the notification from my banking app telling me that I was likely being hacked as someone was stealing 14 of my dollars from an ATM in Warsaw.

The quick snapshot

Dates
July 12, 2024
Where we stayed
Day trip only — no overnight stay
Trip style
Transit-heavy stop, quick exploring, and a lot of learning the hard way
Overall rating
2 / 10
Where we stayed

Stay details

Hotel / Airbnb

Name: Day trip only

Area: Warsaw

What I liked: Since we did not stay overnight, the one positive is that we were not locked into a longer stretch of a trip that already was not going well.

Would I stay here again? Nope!

Getting there

Travel: Ecolines bus from Vilnius

Travel cost: $24.00

Arrival notes: Difficult, dirty, exhausting, and honestly horrible. By the time we got off the bus, we already felt drained, which made everything else hit harder. It was the kind of travel leg that makes you regret your decision before the actual destination even gets a fair chance.

Recommendation: Strangely...yea. I am helplessly loyal to cheap travel, even when it asks a little too much of me. The ride was uncomfortable, late, difficult, and irritating in nearly every possible way, but it was still a bargain. Since sleep wasn't in the cards for me, I spent most of the drive watching the Lithuanian and Polish fields blur past the window. Somewhere in all that quiet, my homesickness softened. The land looked almost like Arkansas, but not quite. Familiar in shape, not in spirit. See my “Piece on Arkansas” for more on how I really feel about my homeland.

Food + drink

Where we ate and what we ordered

Food notes

What we ended up eating: McDonald’s, mostly because it was the only place open near us that early in the morning

Would I do it again? Not like this

Notes: We were already exhausted, the restaurant was crowded, and half our order was missing. It was not exactly the kind of first meal that helps redeem a rough arrival.

What this part of the trip felt like

It never felt like we got to actually enjoy Warsaw. Between the bus ride, the closed businesses, and the general exhaustion, the whole food side of the day just felt like survival mode more than travel.

Daily notes

What we did, day by day

Day 1

Date: July 12, 2024

Main plan: Arrive from Vilnius, get into the city, explore Old Town, put our lock on the love bridge, and then head to the airport.

Best part: Leaving our lock on the bridge was probably the one little bright spot in an otherwise frustrating day.

Worth repeating? Only in a completely different way

What went wrong

Then what happened: The city felt dirty, the public restroom was awful even after paying for it, McDonald’s missed half our order, Old Town was empty and silent, and by the time we reached the airport, it still felt like nothing was open and there was nothing to do.

Worth remembering? Yes — mostly as a travel lesson

Favorites

Best part: Putting our lock on the love bridge

Best little moment: Honestly, just making it through and moving on

Most honest feeling: This one was a fail, and that is okay. Every trip has one.

What I’d recommend

If I were giving advice based on this experience, I would say to do much more research than we did and arrive in a way that does not leave you completely drained. I still think Warsaw deserves a fairer chance than the one we gave it.

Bonus Moment

In an attempt to put an end to a bad day, we decided to head over to the Lotnisko Chopina Warszawa airport 6 hours early. We decided that we would grab some airport food, find a comfy place to charge our phones, and wait for the plane to literally anywhere else. Once inside, we discovered that there was pretty much no real food. A few sandwiches in one store, full of children running around. Whatever, we'll eat later. Let's just go find somewhere to sit and recharge (both literally and metaphorically.) Silly us. Instead of terminals and gates, there was one large room with 5 rows of chairs that were already full. We tried to leave the airport but we were told the only way to leave was to get on a plane (which, fair, but dang it.) Yet another lesson learned. It's laughable now how bad this day was. At the time, we thought we might have been cursed.