Day 4 - Berlin - Warsaw, Poland

Once again I find myself writing 'Our stay here was all too short!'. You cannot 'do' Berlin in 36 hours, which was all the time we had in this wonderful city. I hear the words, 'we will return', ringing in my ears but today we are heading east to Poland and a return to Warsaw, which we visited for the first time in 2009 and loved.

We rose to another beautiful day and I leant out of the window to take a couple of final photos of the Brandenburg Gate and Unter Den Linden.

As is becoming the norm for this drive, we each 'did our own thing' and left the hotel at different times. We headed out of the city driving more or less due east on the autobahn heading for the border with Poland about 100 kms away.

Just short of the border and our first sign for Warsaw.

In about an hour we reached the border behind a long line of trucks but there was no delay crossing into Poland, as no vehicles were stopped. The problem now was that as they are building a new autostrada from the border to Warsaw, we became stuck in an enormous traffic jam and for the next ten miles we went along at a snail's pace behind hundreds of trucks. We were then directed from the roadworks to a diversion and we decided to leave the traffic jam and take to the back roads. What a great decision it was! We drove for about fifty miles through wonderful country, a mixture of open farmland and forests dotted with small Polish villages and towns. Here are a few photos Wendy took and apologies for the smears in the photos caused by bugs splattered on the windscreen!

We returned to the main road and once again joined a long line of trucks crawling along the final few miles before the start of the completed section of the autostrada, which takes you round the city of Poznan.

As we were about to join the autostrada we saw, parked by the side of the road, Ahmad and his passengers having a picnic. We pulled over and had a chat about the problems we had both had with the roadworks and we saw the damage done to the the front of Ahmad's car in the shipping container.

We met, for the first time, Ahmad's brother, Ali, who had brought across from the States the parts needed for the repair to the Mercedes. Then we took a group photo. From left to right: Ali, Gos, Reza and Ahmad.

We left them to their tea and picnic and headed on. We joined the autostrada and quickly covered the next couple of hundred kilometres when we decided to stop and have a break. Here's Wendy and our car, next to a gleaming orange-coloured Russian tanker..

We saw this multi-coloured bridge in the distance, then as we got near, we came up behind this Tesco truck. However much we might want to, we don't seem to be able to get away from Tesco!!

Shortly afterwards I saw Ahmad coming up behind us. As he sped past, Wendy took this photo and you can see on the door the route sticker that I gave him when we stopped at their picnic site.

More Tesco, this time a store not far from Warsaw.

The remainder of the drive into Warsaw was pretty uneventful, though we did decide to take the back roads again when we came into heavy traffic about 80kms from the capital. It was a good decision as we quickly reached the outskirts of the city. By now we had the first spots of rain and the good weather we have enjoyed so far turned to light rain. Apart from a short traffic jam which took about twenty minutes to get through, we reached the Polonia Palace hotel, in the centre of Warsaw, at about 6pm.

We stayed here on our last visit and really liked the hotel. It is opposite the Palace of Culture and Science (or People's Palace), a gigantic Communist-built structure.

We met up with Eric & Lynn, Ahmad & his group and waited for the others to arrive. We decided to eat in the hotel and booked a table for twelve. By then, Bob & Thelma had turned up, but there was no word from Kenny & DeeAnne. We had our meal, then right at the end they appeared. Disaster had struck them when Kenny filled up his diesel Peugeot with petrol!! He managed to get the car to a garage and after four hours of work, they were back on the road. Plenty of laughs were had at his expense, whilst copious quantities of Polish vodka were consumed!!

Another great day. We drove 625kms, which is the longest day's drive of the entire tour. We have now driven 1,704kms or 1,065mls, which is just over one fifth of the total tour distance. From now on the daily distances will be much less.

We have a free day here in Warsaw and then the next day we drive to Lithuania, the first of the three Baltic States we are visiting.