"Outings from Warsaw" a Mazowsze Travel Page by evaanna

Mazowsze or Mazovia is the region of which Warsaw is the centre. But Warsaw will be completely ignored on this page. Instead I will concentrate on what a visitor to Warsaw could see if he/she had a little time to spare and was tired of the hubbub of this enormous city. Even getting out of it can be a problem: whichever way you go, the suburbs are endless and cluttered with happy-go-lucky architecture interspersed with just empty spaces, and masses of billboards by the roadside. Utter chaos. Once you get out, you sigh with relief and try to enjoy the nature and comparative peace, although Mazowsze does not have much of either. Yet, there are some places left that deserve your attention: forests growing on the sandy soil, two wide and powerful rivers running in picturesque valleys right across the region with other rivers joining them on the way, imposing sand dunes often overgrown with forest. And there are man-made wonders - ruins of ancient castles, charming country manors, interesting monasteries and churches, or just tiny godforsaken villages, with geese splashing in the village pond. I will try to describe the places we have visited usually on day outings and will look for more so this page will grow. I would like to include Zieleniec, the place where I used to spend my holidays as a child, 70 km out of Warsaw, which then seemed to me a great distance, an hour and a half by train and then in a horse-drawn cart or on foot across the forest. But I will have to re-visit it first - we passed it two or three years ago in a car and it didn't seem much changed, except for the fantastic high sand dune where my sister and I used to build sandcastles or roll all the way down, laughing and screaming. The dune has shrunk, the imposing pine trees at the top are gone and it has become overgrown with bushes and trees - the result of greed of the local people who would come here for supplies of sand for their own use. But the village still has the remains of a dirt road and the forest has stayed the same, luckily nobody has thought of using it for other purposes.
The places I will describe on this page will all be within no more than 100 km from Warsaw, just the right distance for a day trip. And you will have to be patient - I can't visit them all at once, and I only have photographs of a few.