Maybe visiting Warsaw next summer - or to choose Bulgaria?

Hi,

I'm thinking to visit either Poland or Bulgaria next summer.

Why should I come to Warsaw instead of going to Sofia ?

I'd go to Bulgaria instead of Warsaw. Esp. in the summer :) If you go to the Baltic coast in PL you'll also have more fun than Warsaw.

Related:

come2warsaw - if you want to visit Warsaw....


Hi - I will be in Warsaw this December 29. I am interested in good cheap places to eat and then meeting people socially etc

Hmm, both are great places to go to. Bulgaria for warm seas and sunbathing, Warsaw for shopping and sightseeing. Good alcohols in both.

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  640pxWarsaw_Old_Tow.jpg
  

^This!

Btw, can anyone show me Polish neighbourhoods that look like Iztok, Izgrev or Lozenets in Sofia? You can Google Street View them or just Google photos from them. Preferably in Krakow, but other cities are also fine.

Zlatko, how about getting down to work and showing us those places? We are a little busy, you know.

The only good activity in Bulgaria is skiing.
The beaches are nothing special.
But the food and alcohol is pretty good.....

Unless they are nudist beaches.....

Ok, I am doing the task for you. Here you are:

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  Iztok, Sofia
  
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  Żerań, Warsaw
  

I post on my phone so hard to show things but I'll try. They're fancy 'hoods with lots of greenery and parks and old posh villas but also lots of new flats.

New:
arteks.net/data/uploads/moxesImages/pe54qlxfzmarvr.png

Old:
m.bazar.bg/obiava-26093100/dava-pod-naem-2-staen-gr-sofiia-lozenets

Various:
This is Iztok with the park:

free-webcambg.com/archive/photo/2014/140929-Sofia-50-street-webcam.jpg

static.luximo.ru/property-images/big_bg/22736_15.jpg

Again Lozenec:
buildingoftheyear.bg/data/uploads/originals/buildings/759/e55e0b48ef056b29f884d1bdbeb04ba8.jpg

You can see why I didn't like the Netherlands, Slovakia and even Prague. They couldn't hold a handle to that. A green quet street near a park very close to city center with fancy new flats.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Izgrev_%28Sofia%291.jpg

Some old flats and houses too:
image.ues.bg/estates/watermark/177/11177/112349.jpg

Another brand new:
static.bulgarianproperties.com/property-images/big/70985_1.jpg

All of them are just 5-15 minute walk from the city centre.

Older buildings in Bulgaria are gray, in Poland it's the old buildings like the ones in Krakow that have the nicer, cheerful colors. When it comes to the new ones like residential flats, we have the more colorful but Poland has gray or plain white ones. They look so sterile!

Someone suggested Kasiemierz in Kraków and Saska kępa in Warsaw.

Unfortunately, you have old data. Some communist-like grey blocks remained, indeed, but many are so colourful architects already started complaining about pastel disease.

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I need to agree with pawian about this. Post communist blocks of flats are getting modernised here. There are also some neglected ones but that's another story.

I went to Bulgaria this spring and there are some gray buildings there as well.

I know old town buildings and commie flats are colorful. I was talking about new (concrete/brick) flats built, most are either white, grey or grey/white. Commie look ugly in any shade. Krakow and Sofia have more colorful residential buildings (built after 1995) than Warsaw and Katowice it seems.

Oh, I see. If you say most, you can be right.

So, if you want to have a nice beach holiday, visit Bulgaria.
If you feel like having an urban break, go to Warsaw.
Just follow your instinct. How simple.

I think his options have been Warsaw vs. Sofia, but not Warsaw vs. Bulgarian beaches.

yeah, Warsaw or Sofia or alternately Baltic Coast vs Bulgarian beaches

For me Baltic Coast is better as you have this pleasantly chilly sea to sink in when it is so hot on the beach.

Yes, you are right, now I can see it.


But fauna is better in Bulgaria - I loved those funny crabs.

I actually like the Bulgarian beaches, a bit saltier than the Baltic which seems almost like a lake... and I like Bulgarian food and wine and rakija, even Bulgarian beer is very good (IIRC some early breweries were set up by Czech monks)

Warsaw is probably more interesting than Sofia (though I haven't been there yet).

I spent a long weekend in each last summer, I would go back to either but I liked Warsaw better. The cyrillic alphabet can be an extra challenge in Bulgaria, but some of the Roman ruins are cool. Warsaw (and Poland in general) just seemed cleaner to me. I'll admit I'm a little biased, Poland was the first place I've been in my life where people wouldn't even hesitate saying my last name, which is Polish.

Why don't you go to Hungary? It's one country removed from both Poland and Bulgaria. Its food and weather is more Southern-like and you can visit both PL and BG easily. They don't have a sea but lake Balaton feels like one and who needs a sea when you have it? Krakow is better than Warsaw.

They also have thermal baths of various kinds... my personal favorites include Rudas in Budapest and the Barlangban Furdo (Bath in a Cave) in Miskolc but there are tons more....

No matter how you feel going into a thermal bath... you feel like a million bucks when you're leaving...

Btw I'm Bulgarian so I'm used to the sea. It takes a lot for a lake to impress me. Tell you what, Balaton and to a lesser extent the Austrian Neusiedler See really felt sea-like to me. It's hard to explain it but their water is lighter-coloured than a typical lake's water like the one at Zlate piesky by Bratislava. I've never seen such sea-like lakes in my life anywhere else!

I could see myself visiting either of them every sumer instead of going to a real sea. If someone has to hate being landlocked that's Slovakia and Czechia, their lakes are not as nice/special. :P Hungarians and Austrians just have the better lakes. Poland too (Morskie Oko and others), but it has a sea coast anyway.

But the Baltic is more like a lake...

Tell it to the captains of seagoing vessels which regularly sail to Baltic harbours.