Thursday 16th May Gdansk Poland

 Our ship docked at the Polish port of Gdynia around 9am in the morning. We had booked to do an excursion to the nearby city of Gdansk. After breakfast, around 11.15am we disembarked and hopped on a coach that was to take us into the old part of the city of Gdansk. This journey took about an hour as we travelled through the port are of Gdynia, the spa city of Sopot, finally reaching Gdansk. To be honest all these towns just seemed to meld together to form one big city. The architecture initially was large, austere concrete blocks with little decoration, probably built after the 2nd world war. We had a very good guide who was Polish but spoke both excellent English and German as our coach had people from both groups on it. Once we reached the old part of Gdansk, we were given a map and told we could go off on our own and explore. We were very impressed by what we saw. The old part of the town was over a thousand years old and the integrity of the town square and the buildings had been retained. After walking for a while and admiring the magnificent old buildings we ventured along the bank of the main canal. Here restoration work was being completed on both buildings and the nearby canal walkway. We saw large photos of the area being restored which had been taken after WW2. Many of the magnificent building we saw had been destroyed in the war or what followed after it. For many years there had been discussion as to whether the old city buildings should be razed and a new modern city built in its place.  Thankfully this did not happen and many of the old buildings have been completely rebuilt, brick by brick using what had been used in the past. Apparently, only last week an old building on the canal that housed a wooden crane many hundreds of years old had been rebuilt and opened for the public. We saw this building and many others. Gdansk is also famous for amber and we must have passed a hundred stalls or shops selling amber jewellery. We returned to the ship just in time for dinner. A fabulous day.


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