Last day in Warsaw (Donna)

IT'S SARAH'S BIRTHDAY. WOO.

Today was a leisurely day, and I throughly enjoyed it.

The morning started off a little bit later than yesterday, which was nice, and after breakfast, we headed to the Polish Parliament.
Once we got there, it was a bit confusing to try and figure out where we had to go to, but once we got everything straightened out, we met our tour guide, who surprisingly, spoke very good English.
He gave us a tour of the Parliament, the chamber where the Sejm (kind of like the US House of Representatives) meets, the Senat (just like our Senate) chamber, a media press room and a couple of other rooms. It was really interesting to make comparisons between the US government and the Polish government. Apparently it's not much different because the guide said the Senate basically did nothing (haha) and that the Christian Right had much influence on the government there as well, in fact, the Prime Minister has his own chair in the Sejm chamber.

Then, we got back on the bus and went to the Old Town (which is conveniently located about a mile away from our hotel, well, walking distance anyway). When we got there we had about two hours of free time to wander around before we had to meet at the Royal Castle (where everyone past Sigmund lived, which is why there's a statue of him in front of it). So, we mostly just wandered around. There was a big giant defense wall thing that I forgot the name of, and it was accessible, so we climbed on that for about a half an hour. Then we wandered around the old town and basically covered it all for the next two hours. We ended up feeding some birds and having them swarm all over us before we decided to move in order to avoid being excreted on.

Later, we met the rest of our group and toured the castle. It was amazing. I enjoyed it much more than the palace we visited yesterday. Basically all of the rooms were draped in gold and there were really cool pictures and our guide was really nice. I had two favorite rooms. One was the Ballroom, which was basically all gold and gold marble with really nice chandeliers. The second was the king's room with black marble and portraits of all of the kings of Poland, plus influential Polish people.

Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of any of the rooms in the palace (as my camera was in Jeremy's bag) but several other people did and I am sure that they will be posted.

After the castle, we had a very nice lunch (with so much food I don't want to eat for three days) and this very interesting chocolate mango ice cream combination.

Then we came back to the Hotel and we have the rest of the day to do whatever we like.
Tonight we're celebrating Sarah's birthday.
Tomorrow we get to sleep in even more (Until 9!) and then we pack up and move on to our next location, which I'm not sure of right now because I don't have my itinerary =(.

That's all for now =D

-Donna.