I was in Poland for the first time in Bydgoszcz, December 2025 so this was my second time, this time for work and in the capital Warsaw. As you can imagine the capital city of a country is going to be a lot bigger and busier than a small provincial town, mostly just known for it’s quaint Christmas markets and so it was. In my latter years I’m finding it increasingly hard to warm to the larger cities. They all seem very similar, taken over by modern high street chains and restaurants, souvenir shops and just mass marketing. Doing something as simple as deciding where to eat is a real chore as there’s so much choice! Too much. I ended up just eating in the hotel restaurant both nights because I couldn’t decide between local Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Polish etc.. The weather was very “Irish” too with heavy showers interspersed with warm sunshine which made going out looking for somewhere to eat even more treacherous! Our hosts assured us the weather wasn’t normally like that in mid to late September. It’s usually much nicer they said.
Unfortunately Ryanair only fly to Modlin airport which is an hour north of the main city centre so it was a bit of an issue figuring out public transport from there but I’m always determined to use public transport if possible rather than taking the easy Uber option. You get a much better feel for a place travelling as the locals do. It took a few busses to get to the Old Town Square, somewhere I wanted to check out while waiting to check in to my hotel. The Old Towns of cities are always the most interesting and picturesque of course and Warsaw is no different. I was lucky enough to witness the Warsaw Bugle Call as soon as I hit the old town square which happens at 11:15 daily from the Royal Castle. The time honors the historical moment the castle clock stopped during the tragic bombing of Warsaw on September 17, 1939. I then checked out a few churches and cathedrals as I always do for some weird reason! Maybe just to get in out of the showers! There was an interesting mix of interior styles and architecture. Before I left the old town for my hotel I had a lovely little breakfast/lunch in a cute little café come book store/library.
The Hotel Metropol was a short bus ride from the old town and well located centrally and they let me check in a little early so I could get cracking on some outstanding work. My view from the room window reminded me of film scenes from large American cities. There was an odd mixture of modern skyscrapers and older buildings with very high tech 3D advertisement screens on top of other buildings. The standout building visually was the Palace of Culture & Science, a very imposing “Eastern European/Cold War” style building which houses multiple different institutions and businesses. Right in front of me was a library and it was nice to see a steady flow of customers! People still love books apparently. At least in Warsaw. I had a nice Italian dinner in the hotel restaurant with Pizza and Tiramasu and of course a pint of Tyskie!
Day two and three were work days and we spent them in Warsaw Medical University, a very impressive and very large combination of high tech medical training facilities and actual working hospitals. It was like a mini city in itself. Highlights for me on the campus included the medical history museum with some quite macabre exhibits, the fabulous external architecture of the Olympic swimming pool and health suite which is clad in rusted metal and flora and then the high tech medical simulation building which houses fully simulated rooms and mannequins for pretty much all medical procedures! It’s CAVE immersive room is the only one in the world of it’s kind currently. Warsaw may be the best place in the world to be ill! We had lunch in a university canteen and I tried 3 kinds of Pierogi; meat, cheese and forest fruits! I like Pierogi. For mains I had Turkey Schnitzel with mashed potatoes and some pretty nasty sauerkraut!
I had to resort to an Uber to get me back to the airport for the return flight as I was a bit short of time to be figuring out 3 busses! Myself and the driver sat in awkward silence for an hour as usual! Incidentally, Modlin airport is a bit like Knock. Small and fairly hassle free but not a lot of choice for food and not a lot of space to sit and wait or queue to get on your plane!
Żegnaj Warszawo..
PS – You can read more about the “AIMS” project I was there to work on below. It’s all about AI in medical training:
