All Of The Lights

So, yesterday after I had Polish class, I went back to my room to hear that my roommate was not feeling well. I wanted to give her space to sleep, so I decided to go out for lunch instead of making something in the room. Luckily, the weather has been nice yesterday and today with sunshine and only somewhat chilly. Maybe Spring is coming. :)

I went to a place I had on my list of places to see; it's called "Jumbo Salad." It is not the easiest place to find, but worth it. The location is within an apartment complex neighborhood that looked really nice (expensive :-P ). The place itself was very cute inside - very bright with neat photographs of people eating fruits and vegetables. I decided to order (in mixed Polish and English) a salad with crab, lettuce, corn, peaches, red and green peppers, cucumbers, sprouts, and vinaigrette dressing.
http://www.jumbosalad.com/

Jumbo Salad

Outside

The salad was great and the price was, too. I would like to go again and would recommend this place to lovers of salads and smoothies. Even going to see the area is cool. After eating, I decided to do some sightseeing since the sun was shining. I headed towards the center of the city.

Winnie the Pooh Street ;)

Dedicated to Pooh

Street sign

One of the Chopin benches; they play music when you hit a button and have a map of important parts of Warsaw for Chopin

This bench is by the Holy Cross Church - here is the bench inscription in English

Candles - I put in 2 zloty

Closer - I saw 2 candles come on after I put in the coins :)

Chopin's heart

HEART

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from a distance; I have been to it before, but took a picture now since I was nearby

A menu for another salad place I want to try near the Palace of Culture and Science (called Salad House I believe?)

This was at the Church, so I took one

Inside (blurry and in Polish)

I decided to go to the amazing church and did not take too many pictures to avoid being noisy. I put in some money for certain Polish friends and family, such as the ones who had an important day of anniversaries the day before I went. I think it was really neat how much trouble Chopin went through to have his heart smuggled back into Poland by his sister. He is Polish almost the way I am - Polish Mother, non-Polish [in his case French] Father - but he was born and lived a lot in Poland. He is buried in Paris, but his heart is in Warsaw. I see it as a bit romantic how he chose to celebrate the places he loved and his different heritages by having literal pieces of himself in more than one city. He had to be buried in France, but wanted to leave something in his homeland.

I headed back after seeing the church and had two more classes before we students of the Jews in Poland class were dismissed early to join our CIEE group at to the National Opera to see the Mazowsze performance: http://en.mazowsze.waw.pl/ It was great! There were colorful costumes and impressive singing. It was fun. :) Tonight the group is going out to dinner together at Blue Cactus: http://www.bluecactus.pl/cactus-obecnezalozenia.php after I have two more classes this afternoon. The plans for this week include going to some more museums and doing extra sightseeing. The tours will include the zoo, parks, and gardens once it is a bit warmer. :) I have started all five of my classes - the fifth to begin started this morning - and everything is going well. The teachers are nice, well-educated, and have wonderful commands of the English language (my buddy's friend Iga mentioned taking a class at SGH in English where the professor was not so great at speaking English, unfortunately). I am glad to not have a lot of work, which free up my time to explore. The weather is nice, so I will head out again soon since I try to go out a lot in daylight hours if the sun is shining.