Warsaw

After a long drive from Berlin (370 miles) partly on single carriageway roads with heavy traffic we arrived in Warsaw, with the guidebooks advice of not driving in Poland becoming immediately evident...they're mental here! Artic's overtaking on solid white lines, trams ignoring lights and generally just slightly enthusiastic driving were all examples of the locals idea of driving...makes life interesting either way!
In western Poland on the old roads we noticed many 24h 'motels'...see the attached picture for your own interpretation of what they might have been offering...
We had dinner in the Sphinx restaurant just round the corner from our hostel, the Oki Doki. Despite many jokes about the name before arrival, we were very impressed with the appearance and service here. As for the meal we both had a very good meal and a pint for less than £15 (both of us!)...prices here are very favourable to the customer. Just to finally confirm our thoughts, there was a car embedded in a line of posts on the wrong side of a dual carriageway, in the middle of a busy urban street...
According to my retail geography lecturer (the great Graham Clarke) there are over 160 Tesco's in Poland. We have only seen one, although we have seen quite a few more Tesco trucks on the way here. We decided to buck the trend and shop in Carrefour instead, being something of an experience given our combined knowledge of Polish being nil. However we left with the goods we intended to and managed to pay for them.
Chilled evening planned tonight with another long drive tomorrow (415 miles) to Riga...and apparently they don't get much better than todays trip. Fun.
Jonny will be joining us later, he should currently be mid-air from the UK.