[7ducks]

Our agency told us about a "boarding house" that we can stay at. We need two rooms because of our size family. Anyway, she says it is $780 per week. Breakfast is included. Now this is in the city we are going to (Bialystok), and they said that Warsaw will be more expensive than this.

This seems really high to me. I have to say I wasn't expecting it to be so steep.

Do you think this sounds pretty average? Is it true that we will have a hard time finding an apartment or hotel suites for less than this in Warsaw?

Thank you.

[mama08]

Sounds incredibly high to me. We were in Sosnowiec, and there was basically 1 hotel. This was late Dec thru mid Jan of this year. We paid just over $200 a night for a suite including breakfast. The hotel was not new, food was good....nothing fancy. Once we were in Warsaw we paid about $100 a night for a 2 bedroom apartment with a kitchen & washing machine. Very nice, clean, near downtown and Old Town.
Kelly

[mama08]

ooops...thought your post said $780 a night!

[Kama]

7Ducks, that sounds basically reasonable. We rented an apartment in Warsaw though and it was not much more than $120 per night (no breakfast though). I would expect Bialystok to be a bit less, but it is not that bad. I think we forget that Poland is getting a bit more expensive, it is in the EU now and all. The price will probably depend a bit on the season too, and the spring-summer may be higher than off season.

[lastpaige]

We were given a few 'suggestions' by our agency and they were high in cost - also because we were required to get 2 hotel rooms. Instead we found our apartment (in Wroclaw) through some friends and came in WAY under what was 'suggested'. (About $1,000 for a month.)

Later we found out these were not 'suggestions' but that the agency was basically trying to tell us where to stay. Even though our apartment was within walking distance to the orphanage. There are many questions for which I'd like to be a fly on the wall, one of which is what percentage of kick-back do the agencies receive on their 'suggestions'.

If you have any connections at all I'd definately use them and try to find an apartment.

[7ducks]

Well we do have a contact from a church in Bialystok. She thought it seemed high too, and said she'll ask the people in her church (250 people) if anyone knows of something more suitable for us. Hopefully something will come of that.

[LisArno]

I think we paid $70-80/night for one hotel room (two star hotel, but fine once we moved from the spider room) with breakfast in Wroclaw. We were supposed to have the kids from day 1 and needed two rooms (at obviously double that price) but that didn't happen, so we were able to cancel one. We had a one bedroom apartment (with pull out sofa and crib) from the Old Town Apartments in Warsaw and paid around $120/night (no breakfast). This was a year and a half ago.

[mschaefer]

While in Katowice, we were unable to find a short-term apartment as the area is more industrial and less tourists. Hotels were more for business travellers and we too needed two rooms. For 2 rooms one week was about $1750 (avg $250/day; 125 per room) and this rate was with the weekend discount. Once in Warsaw we paid less as we could get a 2 bedroom apartment for about $100/day however we were there in the "dead of winter" and we hit a special deal. As spring and summer get closer rates will definitely increase. Also prices will vary based on how the dollar is doing -- we were happy we had exchanged enough money early in the trip as the dollar dropped twice while we were there.