Day eight and it was time to explore Lodz, which I should have started last night. And from now on, it’s Lodz without any of the Polish characters because although I know how to produce them on the tablet’s virtual keyboard, I don’t know how to do it on my real keyboard, and it’s so much quicker, easier and more natural to write these on the real keyboard.

Lodz. Lodz, until recently, was the third biggest city in Poland but people are moving out and this has allowed Wroclaw to creep in and steal that third place. Lodz is a former industrial town – at its height, it apparently had 850 factories, mostly textiles, and almost all glorious red brick things. However, the result is that among Polish people, Lodz is a bit of a joke – it’s not “pretty”, it doesn’t have a medieval merchant square, and it doesn’t have a whole lot of history before about the 1820s. But both yesterday’s buggy driver tour guide and someone on Instagram told me I couldn’t miss Rose Passage and so that was my first port of call.

Actually, my first was Piotrkowska, the main street of Lodz. Apparently it’s 3km long, which explains why pretty much everything in the city is either on it or just a couple of steps off it. And it’s where I stayed last night. Arriving in the city (via a second train because the big shiny purpose-built city centre station apparently doesn’t serve long distance trains??), it seemed a really long way – well, a kilometre is a long way when you’re carrying luggage and have been all day. My first impressions of Lodz were pretty much as Buggy Boy and the guidebook suggested, that is indeed the least pretty and most functional of all Polish cities. But then I turned right onto Piotrkowska and went “Ah, here’s the nice bit!” It’s one of these streets that should be pedestrianised, except it’s a major thoroughfare. It doesn’t have many cars up it and there are sections and crossed-roads that are one-way but every now and then, a police car or ambulance will go zooming up it with sirens and lights and it just feels like if you’re going to drive on Piotrkowska, maybe you should do it slowly and gently or find a safer way round.

Anyway, I strolled up Piotrkowska, taking in the pretty buildings, some restored, some looked after, some… not. In Wroclaw, this would be lined with the sort of shops that attract tourists, full of magnets (getting badges for my blanket has been a challenge this last week!) but there seems to be very little in the way of tourism in Lodz. I found Rose Passage. It’s an art installation. It’s just a little alleyway that leads to the back of some of the buildings but the whole thing has been covered in a mosaic of tiny mirrors that swirl into the shape of roses. The fractured mirrors distorting what they reflect represent the eye disease and blindness of the artist’s daughter but mostly it’s a place to take fun photos. I’m told it’s spectacular at sunset and I kind of wish I’d made the effort to go there last night – it’s only a couple of hundred metres up the road from my hotel.

Next was up to Manufaktura, a huge shopping and leisure centre built in and around one of the old factories. It was an enormous place, a textile factory with its own church and fire brigade and orchestra and whatnot. It finally shut down somewhere around 1990 when the fall of communism took large-scale factories like this down with it. Since then it’s been converted into this huge place, with a big glass shopping centre at one end, 50+ restaurants either inside or out in the smaller buildings. The old fire station is now a very decorative Starbucks and there’s a Primark in the old workshops. The spinning mill is now a very expensive hotel. Anyway, I needed to do a bit of shopping and a spectacular converted red brick factory is a great place to do it. First, I’ve been wearing the same clothes for a week and I’m spending a lot of time jumping on trains while carrying a bag that has no right to be as heavy as it is. I’m tired of being sweaty. So I went into the Primark in the hope of finding a dress I could wear in Warsaw to not feel so hot and sweaty and to smell reasonably clean. No success with a dress but I did find a very long t-shirt which I can wear over my black shorts. Next, into Intersport in the big glass building. My sandals have fallen apart again and have not been holding onto my foot properly. They’ve been glued back together twice but I didn’t bring the glue with me and I’m getting really tired of mountain sandals having virtually no shelf life. Intersport didn’t have what I wanted but there was an unexpected Decathlon out in the weaving mill. They had some sandals of the kind I’m looking for, but I didn’t like the shape of the toe. Further searching revealed some I liked better in the kids’ section – and there was a size 38/39! I’d rather have had the pink ones than the bright blue ones but beggars can’t be choosers and the pink ones didn’t fit.

Next, I went wandering back across the road to the little park where it occurred to me that I was hungry. So back to Manufaktura and I wandered up the restaurants until I found a pancake place. I had no idea that pancakes came in so many varieties! There were 30-odd savoury options, 20-odd sweet ones and you could add assorted sauces and even change the dough. I was boring. I went for plain sugar. I was a bit surprised when it arrived and it was a square but that was easily fixed. I rolled it up. Then I had to tackle it with a knife and fork, even though it would have been so much easier to just pick it up. I had a ride on the carousel opposite – another clause for my Big Kid Summer badge – and I went in the museum, which I’d been recommended as a quick introduction to the history of Lodz. The history of Manufaktura, maybe. A lot of it was in Polish but the basics were in English and more excitingly, I was offered a ticket to “the viewpoint”. The instructions for getting up there didn’t make sense at first but once I was up the stairs, I discovered the intercom which I had to press and discovered that the “Tyrolka?” is actually a massive zipline that goes right across to the other side of Manufaktura. I’d have been tempted if it had been open. Anyway, the viewpoint is on the top of the – actually, I don’t know what this bit of building was because it wasn’t in the panorama and therefore wasn’t labelled. Big two-storey thing that takes up that entire side of the square.

After that, I finally did head down Piotrkowska again. I needed to get some postcards and hopefully a badge – and something else. I didn’t bring my Gaviscon with me and at 4am, I found I needed it urgently. Back home, I’d just grab some in a supermarket while I was getting more juice but not here. Here, you have to go into an apteka, a chemist, where there’s a full-height dark wood divider between the customer and the entire shop and ask for what you want, like the apothecary it maybe used to be. Are you allowed to just buy it or do you need to provide some kind of medical evidence for it? Well, we’ll find out. No, you have a little conversation about how the packaging doesn’t look like you expect but it looks like it’s exactly the same product inside and then you pay and leave with it in your bag.

I was headed for OFF, the next place on my personal recommendations list. This is off Piotrkowska but it’s a 35 minute walk from Manufaktura, which is also pretty much off Piotrkowska, to give you an idea of how long this street is. I got there eventually, via most of the other attractions in Lodz – statues, fame stars in the ground, a so-called superhero I initially took to be a missionary who’s walking around with a little acyrilic box collecting money for Ukrainian children – all currencies except Russian roubles please. No, I didn’t hand any money over to the stranger with no credentials beside a red tie and a smart white shirt. The best way to get money to Ukrainian children is via organisations like the Red Cross or the DEC, not random men in the street who start their pitch with “Is it true all English women use fake tan on their face? I think it is ugly”.

Anyway. A feature of all Polish cities seems to be fountains coming straight out of the ground – rather than the kind in their own basins, so you can walk among them and get your feet wet. I did that in every fountain I found. Lodz was hot but overcast, so it was miserable in the way Berlin was on Saturday. My phone said it was due to rain between about 6pm and 6am and it felt like it.

As I was saying, I got to OFF. It’s another converted factory, only a lot less shiny. The word “hipster” came to mind and stayed there. This is apparently a good place to eat and drink and spent your evenings but it’s a bit lost on someone who doesn’t really eat or drink. Still, I’d seen it, I’d used up a chunk of my time and now I’d pretty much “done” Lodz. It’s a much more likeable place than many Poles apparently give it credit for but I think you don’t need more than a day to feel like you’ve seen it.

Back to the hotel to get my bag and then back to Fabryczna, the so-called main station. I needed to get a ticket back to Widzew so I could catch my train from there to Warsaw. I stood scanning the departure board for the next train to Widzew when something caught my eye. A train to Warsaw, leaving five or ten minutes before mine is due to leave from a station five or ten minutes down the line. I got out my ticket, compared the times, compared the train number, opened DB’s website and looked up my train. Yes, that was my train leaving from Fabryczna. The website had sworn blind I couldn’t do that. I’d tried and tried to get a train that left from the actual local central station. Ok, well, instead of taking an earlier train so I’m at Widzew in plenty of time for my train, I’ll just… get my train. I bought a ticket for the Fabrynczna to Widzew bit just in case my ticket got checked and then I bought a drink and a Mars bar and found somewhere to sit. I’d arrived a bit early but I wanted to get the train with plenty of time so I didn’t miss my planned train at Widzew. Without having to build in that time, I suddenly had a lot of time to kill at the station.

My train was already there when I finally made my way down to platform 3, track 2. I checked, double-checked and then triple-checked. This is definitely the train on my ticket. Why isn’t it going to Warsaw Centralna? My ticket says Centralna but this doesn’t. But it’s IR 10143/2, leaving Fabryczna at 16:14 and Widzew at 16:20 and due into Warsaw around 6pm. It’s definitely my train. Well, maybe it can’t fit all the in-between stops on the board and it’ll stop at Warsaw Centralna.

Guess what? It didn’t!

Actually, Warsaw Wschodnia is a little more convenient. I’d looked up public transport on the way, so I knew I wanted a three-day ticket (Poland is so good at having exactly the ticket I need – 48 hours when I had 48 hours in Wroclaw, 3 day when I have 3 days in Warsaw – ok, I didn’t bother with trams in Poznan or Lodz) and I found a ticket machine which was very keen for me to understand that I needed to validate my ticket. Thanks, I got that. Then I had to find the right side of the station for my bus. I’ve got that wrong every single time so far. The signs under the station give street names and a few clues for which side you want but it’s not until I pop up and open Google Maps to look for my stop that I discover I’m on the wrong side.

Walk back through. Spot bus 123 passing. Scurry up to it. Discover it stops and sits here for 10/15 minutes. The 173, my other option, is due in 4 minutes. And it was the 173 that got here first. Six or so stops down the road, walk through the towers and there I am. I walked into blissful air conditioning, handed over my ID almost before I was asked (and had it refused because the driving licence that’s closer to hand than my passport and has been accepted at Lodz, Wrocaw and Poznan suddenly “isn’t ID”) and then up I went to the 10th floor. From the outside, I hadn’t realised this place even has a 10th floor but it does. No air conditioning all the way up here. I can open the windows terrifyingly wide although I can’t then close the curtains around them so here’s hoping it’s not too hot at night. The wifi is pretty rubbish up here too. It’s not a bad room, it’s just nowhere near as gorgeous as the one I had last night. No fridge either. But it’s nice to know that the next time I have to pack up and shoulder my luggage is to go to the airport to go home.