Planning for Poland, and the cost of a haircut

Monday was a nice relaxing day! It was a bit overcast all day, and there were a few scattered showers. We didn't even leave the apartment until about noon. But that's okay, I had lots of planning to do for our upcoming trip to Poland.

First thing was to find suitable accommodation. There was lots of availability on Airbnb, but not much suitable at a half decent price. Warsaw is a big capital city, and even though Poland is one of the cheaper European countries, the big cities can still be expensive. So I started looking at shared accommodation, which we've been trying to avoid due to Covid. But sometimes economics comes into play. Anyhow, we got lucky!

I found a two bedroom apartment under the shared listings. It had a few reviews, all five stars, but none of them were recent. So I sent the host a contact message, and it turns out he's been in Bali for the past year. But now he's got someone looking after renting out his apartment, and he's not going to be there. So essentially, we get the "shared" price, but we will have the place to ourselves. It works out to $30.85 CAD per night, for a one week stay so we're really happy with that.

That one week will give us enough time to see the highlights of the big city, and plan the details of our onward travels into Germany.

As I said earlier, we left the apartment just after 12 noon to go out and pick up some bread. We knew of a store only 2 kms walk from us that sells gluten free bread, so we set off to get some exercise. Most of the route leads along what used to be an old airplane runway, but now has cafes and park space along the whole stretch. 

So we're walking along, and we hear a dog barking up ahead. Non stop. As we get closer, we see what he's barking at.

There's a cow sitting in this green space.

Now remember, we're right in the city, maybe 2 kms from the center. And there are no fields, or anywhere you would expect a cow to be. And the cow is not tied up, and there's nobody around. From there, we went and bought our bread, and when we came back about 20 minutes later, the cow was gone. Nowhere to be seen.

Ruth stopped to look at this interesting flower. Apparently it is a Blue Bouquet Passion Flower.

Can you see how many buds there are?

Imagine what this wall will look like when they all open up!

After lunch, we set off to get haircuts. But we opened the door and it was spitting with rain, so we turned around and went back inside. Great opportunity for my afternoon nap!

We tried again at about 4pm, and walked to the same barbershop that had done my hair when we arrived here back in March. There was a different guy there, and he already had someone in the chair. By the time my turn came around, there were two other guys waiting as well. Despite that, he seemed to take his time and did a detailed job. I am now all cleaned up for a total cost of 500 lek ($6.00 CAD, $5.00 USD), tip included.

So then it was Ruth's turn. We hadn't seen a women's stylist place during our walk there, so we went wandering around and eventually came across a place. There were two girls in there, and no customers so Ruth was taken right away. 

She had a wash, cut, blow dry and eyebrows done and I swear she wasn't in the chair any longer than I was at the barber. Yet the bill was 1,500 lek ($18.00 CAD, $15.00 USD). Now admittedly we didn't ask the price ahead of time, but we thought it was a bit expensive by Albania standards. 

Speaking of which, that got us thinking about what the cost might be in Canada for the same thing so I asked some of my facebook friends and they got back to me with prices ranging from $24 to $40 CAD. Yikes. We are so out of touch with prices in Canada.

Today is also calling for some showers, so we're not sure yet what's on the agenda.

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