Day 74, Warsaw – Torun, March 23rd 2012

Tea 74, Green Tea (not pictured), Torun

Today I travelled with Marta and her Mum to Torun, a town on the Unesco World Heritage list, founded by the German Teutonic Knights and the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus.  The day started with Marta rushing across the city to pass on a birthday present to a friend before we left.  She got this cool bracelet in the style of an Octopus arm from an online store run by her friend called oohandy.com.

I then met her at Dworzec Centralny at about 11 and we got a train at 1130 that took us to Zyradow, a station on the outskirts of Warsaw where Marta’s mum, Hanna, met us with the car.  We all piled in and off we went.  The journey to Torun took about 3 hours, the views are very nice, a part of it tracks a very pretty part of the Vistula river.  Though lots of the road surfaces aren’t exactly friendly!  They are building a whole new motorway infrastructure along this part though, that was intended to be ready for the Euro 2012 competition: take this as fact… it won’t be!

We made it to Torun at around 4, and were dropped off in the city centre.  We then wandered around the town a little, soaking up the sunshine and then we went to this pancake place called Manekin, where we met Carolina and Mike, who had also come to Torun for a couple of days, though they were there waiting for the bus back to Warsaw.

I ordered a pancake with Feta cheese, olives, basil and tomatoes, which was very good, though both mine and Marta’s pancake ended up with us after a short stop at the wrong table…

After the pancake and a pint to drink Carolina and Mike had to leave to catch the bus, so we all left and Marta and I took in a bit more sightseeing, with the light failing and the stars appearing in the sky.  Eventually we too decided it was time to leave so we headed to the bus stop, got on a bus and went to Marta’s uncle’s house somewhere in the Torun suburbs.  We spent the evening chatting and eating, another huge weekend of food was ahead of me!  And then Marta’s uncle got out a few of his spirits and we drank a little too, cherry liquor, quince liquor, and one make from aronia, or chokeberries.  All of them very tasty, if I had to pick my favourite, I’d go for the quince!