Baltic Cruise - Gdansk, Poland

 Thursday morning we arrived in Gdansk, Poland.  Gdansk is Poland's 6th largest city, with about 500,000 population, and one of Poland's busiest seaport.   Gdansk became a city way back in the year 997, and became part of the Prussian empire in 1793.  Gdansk then became part of the German empire in 1871 and was home to one of the first events of WW2 in 1939 when it became part of Nazi Germany.  After WW2, Gdansk became part of Poland.

We did a group walking tour, where we learned a lot about the history of Gdansk, architecture and the people of Poland.

Notice the turtle on top of this building 

At the end of the block, you can see part of St Mary's Church.  It was built in the 1350's and is the world's largest brick church

Inside the church, is a 46 foot wooden clock built in the 1460's that tracks time, lunar phases, zodiac positions and the saints' calendar.  Every hour a the clock has mechanical parade, with the longest happening at noon featuring the Three Kings, 12 Apostles and Death.  Our tour guide got us there a few minutes before noon so we could watch it.  It was pretty impressive. 

 

On our walking tour, we got to see some of the iconic architecture and loved every corner we turned around 

The main streets around downtown were packed early afternoon!

Fun fact:  Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was born and lived in this house in Gdansk!  He was an inventor, scientist and physicist known for inventing the thermometer and degree scale we use today.  Interestingly, Poland does not use the Fahrenheit scale - in fact, only a handful of countries still do.

After our walking tour, we stopped by a local bakery our tour guide said was one of the cities most authentic and oldest bakeries around.  We went in and the ladies working, all over the age of 70, didn't know a word of English.  We had a great time pointing, acting out and trying to communicate with them about which pastries we wanted to try.  We were all having a great time laughing as we tried to figure out what each other was saying.  The pastries were so good!!!

The nights show on the cruise was some super talented violinist who played rock music while running around the stage and through the audience - pretty entertaining

What time is it?  8pm sunset?  Nope.  How about 10:30pm?  The further we went on the cruise, the later it was before it got dark.  

We had a great day in Gdansk!

Steps walked today:  10,305 - about 5.12 miles