Gdansk and good things come to those who wait

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We are currently on the coach back to the ship following our stop in Poland and the old town of Gdansk.

The journey from the port is around one hour by coach and we utilised the princess tour "gdansk on your own". The tour guide, initially, walked us from the coach to the old town and seemed to go on and on before us and others actually insisted that she just tell us what time go be back and let us go explore. We didn't want a walking guided tour!

Gdansk is completely walkable once you are in the old town... most places will NOT take anything but the local currency but there are places to change money dotted all over. We did, eventually, find a thimble and flags and even managed to use Euros to pay..... but If you do come, change some money as there are lots of cafes etc which are well worth a visit.

The town is walled and has several, very old, gates at strategic places. We think that we found all the main highlights including St. Brigitte, St. Catherine and St. Mary churches all located very close together and each vying for the most spectacular prize.

The town is very very old and the architecture reflects this.... like other places we visited, cobble stone pavements line streets and some of the buildings looked to be crumbling away. There was one particular part of the town which reminded us all of diagon alley from the harry potter books.... the shops and buildings were closer together and, with the narrowness of the street, it gave a real closed in and magical feeling to the place. There were cool gargoyles too which were used as water drains for rainwater.... quirky but fully functional!

The highlight of the day was our decision to change some money and try a local soup and beer.... it was quite a cold day. We waited and waited for the soup, Barbara was tutting and tapping her watch and we kept reminding her that we had an hour left and maybe they were cooking it from scratch. It reminded us of the time that she ordered fresh lemonade on another trip and moaned that it was taking so long to arrive, she must have been squeezing the lemons.... turned out that was exactly the case.

This was very similar...... the soup was advertised as, local soup with mushrooms, polish sausage, bacon and boiled egg....served in bread.... we thought maybe the served in bread bit was a grammatical quirk but, no, the time it took to arrive was because it was served IN a hollowed out baked bread giant roll. Both the soup and bread was piping hot and it was incredible. The bread was freshly baked and the soup hot, creamy and so tasty. We were all immensely proud that we gave it a go. Gary had, initially, said no to the soup!! Boy was he glad he changed his mind!

The main street was lined with some very non talented accordion players of various ages.... one particularly bad kid was parked outside the cafe we ate at.... it was so bad it ended up being funny. He rammed the instrument in and out and wail0ed loudly to no particular tune....They were of course all begging.

The trip ended with a visit to an amber store and the a farcical attempt by the guide to count everyone and check we were all here. Whilst I waited for this, I found a very talented violinist.... she really was good and I gave her some money.

Im posting this now even though our day isn't completely over.... 4g will help me post photos and videos.

A good day. X

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