Half of Poland Is a Forest. The Other Half Is Warsaw.

Nobody Told Me Warsaw Was This Good. Now I’m Telling You.

We didn’t fly. We drove.

That decision alone changed everything. Leaving Zurich and cutting through Germany, we crossed into Poland and were immediately surprised — not by what we found, but by what we didn’t. No motorways lined with concrete. No billboards every hundred meters. Just forests. Green, endless, quiet forests, rolling on and on until the landscape felt like a secret the rest of Europe had been keeping.

And then Warsaw appeared.

Checking into Hotel Verte — a restored 18th-century baroque palace right in the Old Town, now part of the Marriott Autograph Collection — felt like stepping through a painting. Rococo interiors, high ceilings, art installations hidden around every corner, and two minutes on foot to the Royal Castle. A palace that was destroyed in World War II and rebuilt stone by stone, now full of people eating good breakfasts in a glass pavilion overlooking the medieval walls. Warsaw doesn’t just carry its history — it wears it like something alive.

The Old Town itself was a genuine surprise. Beautifully kept, full of color, the architecture sitting somewhere between Paris and a medieval village — elegant but not precious, lively but not loud. What I didn’t expect was the music. It just appears, spontaneously, from courtyards and open windows and street corners. At one point I heard Chopin, and I stopped walking. I always stop for Chopin. He is my absolute favorite, and hearing him there, in the city where he was born, in a square that shouldn’t even exist anymore — it was one of those moments that quietly rearranges something inside you. Warsaw does that.

We had to leave the city for the day before the race. The Ironman 70.3 Warsaw swim starts at Lake Zegrzyński , about half an hour north, where athletes also drop off their bikes the evening before. What we expected to be a logistics errand turned into one of the best moments of the trip. A small harbor, a glassy lake at golden hour, families walking dogs, kayaks drifting in the distance, the sky turning colors. The kind of accidental beauty that only happens when you’re going somewhere else.

Driving through the surrounding villages, I couldn’t stop looking at the houses. No flat roofs anywhere — every building pitched, solid, built to last through real winters. There was something deeply satisfying about the consistency of it, the sense that people here still build things with permanence in mind.

Back in Warsaw, here are ten things I didn’t expect to learn about this city:

1. Pre-war Warsaw was known as the “Paris of the North.”  That nickname didn’t come from nowhere — standing in the Old Town, you feel exactly why.
2. Over 14% of Warsaw is woodlands , and the city has 88 parks in total, including the 188-acre Łazienki Park.
3. Around 40% of Warsaw is covered by greenery  — the most unexpectedly green capital in Europe.
4. Keret House is the narrowest building in the world , squeezed between two buildings at just 92 cm at its slimmest point.
5. The city’s symbol is a mermaid , which appears on the coat of arms and in statues throughout the city.
6. Warsaw is known as the “Phoenix City”  — almost entirely destroyed in World War II and rebuilt from the rubble, it became a symbol of resilience unlike any other in Europe.
7. Marie Curie was born here  — winner of two Nobel Prizes in two different fields, and still the most famous person to ever call Warsaw home.
8. Warsaw has the highest number of public libraries per capita in the world. 
9. The Palace of Culture and Science once had the tallest clock tower in the world  — a Soviet-era giant that now houses cinemas, theatres, and the Polish Academy of Sciences.
10. Warsaw is the only city in Poland with a metro system  — and Chopin’s heart is literally buried here, in the Holy Cross Church, per his own dying wish.

We came to Warsaw for a triathlon. We left thinking about when we could come back. That’s the best kind of surprise a city can give you — the feeling, on the way out, that you’ve only just begun.

Ironman 70.3 Warsaw is the biggest triathlon event in Poland. The race covers 1.9 km in Lake Zegrzyński, 90 km on the bike through the Polish countryside, and a 21 km run through the city center.