Blogs from Pomerania, Poland, Europe - page 8

I travelled to Gdańsk in SKM train, very fast. I had one stop in Sopot - I got off the train overthere because I wanted to go to Sopot's pier. This short excursion took just one hour. To Gdańsk I got about 5pm and I gave a bell to Tomek to let him know I'm already here. He replied me we could meet up aside of Monument Defenders of Polish Post in Gdańsk. Until this time I found a cheap hotel in Wałowa street - just for about 40 złoty (10 euro) per night. We sat in beer garden nearby Wyspa Spichrzów and made the orders. We were talking couple of hours because we hadn't seen each other from at least 4 years, even 5 five. We had plenty topics to talk especially reagarding current economical ... read more

This trip marks the first time I've done an entire vacation abroad entirely by myself. On past trips I've always either taken someone with me, or planned to meet with people I knew in at least a few destination cities, or both. I've visited individual cities solo, but only for a few days or a week at a time. I've found that meeting locals and seeing their cities and regions through their eyes has consistently led to my best experiences traveling. This is exactly what Saint Rick means when he says you must become a "temporary local" - but he's an extrovert and his "jump right in, don't worry how you look" methods just aren't what I'm ever going to do. That meant I needed to think about what I could do. And you know what ... read more

The unthinkable has happened - I'm too tired to blog. AGAIN. I know, right? WTF is up with wearing self out on the actual vacation instead of saving some energy for the Internet?? Fortunately for my loyal readers, the neighbors in this guest house just got in and are a bit noisy... Friday night, arrived in Gdańsk, Poland, after about an hour's delay leaving Reykjavík on Iceland Express. (No one could have predicted that a product called "IE" might have quality and reliability problems...) As many of you had already heard me relate many times, Iceland Express flight 267 direct from Reykjavík to Gdańsk operates only on Fridays. In the summer. Of which August 27 was the very last instance for all of 2010. So many ways to go horribly wrong! I may perhaps regale everyone ... read more

The morning we docked at Gdynia was a bit murky, it was still warm, but the skies were grey and ominous, as was our lack of adequate wet weather gear... hmm fingers crossed. We disembarked at the portside town of Gdynia and then took a bus to the town of Gdansk. We didn't really see much of Gdynia as we drove through it - to be honest it was just a modern (last 15-20years it has more-or-less popped up) clean town that could be just about anywhere. We did pass a lovely church on the way that claims to have the largest pipe organ in Europe... man if I had a penny for every time we heard that! (Actually I’d have about 12p... but still!) When we neared the popular Polish holiday town of Gdansk the ... read more

July 19 - I am an idiot. I don't know what I was thinking about, getting a ticket to Warsaw and then transfering when I could have just gotten a direct ticket to Gdansk. This is frugality at it's worst, ladies and gentlemen. I am no longer traveling for a year, trying to save pennies whenever possible. I live in Switzerland, and make a Swiss-ish income. I can afford to pay more for some reasonable amount of comfort. It's like I'm chartering a jet plane. But I still can't help myself. The ticket to Warsaw was about 1/3 the price, in the same amount of time, so I took it. I did not consider that my ten hour overnight journey would then be followed by an avoidable seven hour journey to reach my destination. But this ... read more