Warsaw

Climate and weather

Summer.

Warsaw can become swelteringly hot during the summer, with plenty of sun and quite high levels of humidity. The only thing to do in this weather is to grab a punnet of strawberries from one of the dozens of street stalls and stuff yourself.

Winter.

As it is at the centre of a massive plain at the heart of central Europe, Warsaw can sometimes be even colder than the mountainous regions to the south, and is certainly cooler than the coast. You might be lucky in December and find that Warsaw is quite comfortable, but the chances are that if you turn up in the middle of winter you will need a decent coat and won't want to spend too much time outside. Since the public transport system is mostly trams and buses operating from open stops, you are going to get cold.

Landscape and scenery

As was noted earlier, Warsaw is not famous for its mass of historic buildings. This does ignore how ugly the remainder of the buildings in the city are however. The whole of the central area is a mass of hideous grey soviet-era blocks, interspersed with the odd modern skyscraper (none of which have much to recommend them). A few interesting developments such as the bizarre glass building by the Centralna station suggest that things are very slowly starting to improve.

In terms of actual scenery, once you get out of town (which is a long way in any direction) the surrounding countryside is quite pleasant, composed of huge evergreen forests and national parks. The Wistula river meanwhile, which runs along the edge of the city centre, may be rather brown but at least it provides a break from the endless grey concrete of the city.