20 east

A couple of Saturdays ago, we got ourselves some sushi at the place with the floating boats of yumminess close to Plac Teatralny. After the meal we walked off the slippery morsels by going once slowly around the block. It was nearly six in the evening and it was getting a bit dark but I had my camera so…..

I used ‘calculations’ in photoshop to turn a couple taken from the Piłsudski side into black & white. The second one I also clicked a few ‘invert’ buttons as well! The first is of the Hotel Victoria, ugly as sin but you don’t need to read the sign to know what it is. The second one is looking over the Saski Palace excavations, the tomb of the unknown soldiers and Saski park towards the Palace of Culture.

Finally, Zosia enjoying the fact that we don’t have to pay for parking on Saturday!

A while ago I talked about the newly opened Terminal 2 at Warsaw’s Okęcie (Frederyk Chopin) airport. On the recent Moscow trip I was lucky enough to go through its departures side for the first time.

The obvious differences are that it is a much more open, modern and clean space with happy check-in staff. I asked what the check-in ladies thought of it and they were unanimously positive, the main comment being that they have “some air” now.

The check-in worked very well. After that you move over to the security which has a reasonably small area for queuing before backing up into the main hall. It was backing up on both entrances when I arrived and people were being directed back into terminal 1 where there was “no queue”. I decided to follow the T2 experience through and queued. It didn’t take too long and the problem was obvious. They have plenty of machines but less than half were being used, presumably lack of staff?

Security done, I moved airside. This is also much bigger and more open than T1 with a reasonable range of shops and cafes, not all open yet. I was in a hurry so didn’t have much time for exploring. My gate was “A something”, which was in the new section. It looks like the “B” gates are either close to T1 or actually are the old T1 gates? As you can see from this shot, it wasn’t exactly busy heading for the gate!

There are a few cafes dotted around on the way to the gates in case you want to escape from the jungle of the main shopping area.

Of course, we couldn’t walk onto the plane and had to be bussed to it. Judging by how long it took, I think the plane was actually parked in Łodż. Some things don’t change!