To the south of the former Jewish Ghetto area, along the slightly shabby Panska Street, you’ll find the newly opened Ice Bar. You can either drink in the room temperature, white-plastic looking front bar, or pay the cover charge to enter the real Ice Bar, where almost everything is made out of ice. The staff loan you fetching silver capes so you can brave the constant –8 degrees Celsius temperature. And as obvious as it sounds, it’s flippin cold! The capes are adorned with various tacky sponsorship logos but come with nice fur-lined hoods to keep your head warm.
Finlandia vodka of various infusions are served up in ice shot glasses but once you’ve downed one or two shots, there’s not much else to do except leave the bar and get warm. It’s probably a different story late at night on the weekends, but I wouldn’t recommend visiting the bar any earlier than 9pm.
I think ice sculpting is under-rated so I was keen to see what they had done with this place. I have to say that overall I was somewhat disappointed. For starters, the bar is really small. It takes all of a minute to admire the 4 or 5 ice sculptures, and with all the sponsorship posters slapped on the wall you feel like you’re part of an expensive marketing gimmick. In addition, the location in the middle of a rundown row of shops seemed really awkward and it had little cool factor (excuse the pun).
www.icebar.com.pl