The journey from Warsaw to Krakow was slated to be our first train ride of the trip. Having only traveled by train once before, I had little to no expectation. Long and short, the train we tried to book online didn’t even exist once we got to the station. So we ended up shorting ourselves three hours in Warsaw, leaving late morning, and embarking on a much longer train ride than expected.
Have you ever thought about visiting Eastern Europe? Neither had we until about two weeks prior to taking off for our trip. Brittany was captivated by a podcast describing the world’s best European food destinations and we quickly rerouted our trip to bypass Germany and continue in Poland.
We needed to bookend this part of our trip between Gothenburg and Rome, arriving by September 16th to meet grandma. It only made sense to work our way north to south and take advantage of a steal of a flight to Warsaw for $18 a person. We tried to ease our budget by registering to teach English in Warsaw. We were accepted and they ended up not having space for us. So, on to Warsaw, we went with loose plans of Krakow, Slovakia, Budapest, Zagreb, and Ljubljana to follow.
As many of you know, Steve and I are lifelong Midwesterners. One of the special things about living in Bloomington is that within 4 hours you can be just about anywhere in the Midwest. Chicago, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, Nashville, Indianapolis, and Saint Louis. We’d both been to Saint Louis a few times growing up, but hadn’t truly made it past the lens of the Arch, because, well, it’s easy to be tourists. Anyway, we’ve both grown to love the time we’ve spent in Saint Louis and want to share some of our experiences and recommendations.