Hotel Gramburg Gdansk

... for once, I was allowed to take photos. Took a lot of photos.<br><br> Things close up in a hurry so that was the last museum we were able to visit. Next was the shopping part of the tour. Mary&#8217;s street, or St. Mary&#8217;s street, wasn&#8217;t sure which, is behind St. Mary&#8217;s church and has a ton of amber shops. I found a cute little necklace with a cat pendant where the ...

... is a Gothic cathedral, unfortunately a bit overpriced, and closed most of the time. Strangely enough, Toru&#324; has also got a Leaning Tower, like the one in Piza. The difference is mostly in the size (the one in Toru&#324; is obviously smaller) and the style: the Leaning Tower of Toru&#324; is a simple Roman tower that started to lean immediately after its construction due to the instable ground on ...

... made of stone bricks and pine wood. So there is a church in Hel after all...<br><br>Soaked to the bone I find myself a place at the window of a small bar facing the church in Hel, for a feared breakfast of Polish Froth and dark black Nescafe coffee, maybe a quick sketch of this church in such a weird proverbial setting. <br><br>I`ll still have to backtrack the 35 km. long peninsula through heavy rain and storm wind in my face!!!

... Yeah! Makes a huge difference the next day. Of course I am back in the European Union and have been since Estonia. That means much more relaxed borders and throughout Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania I haven't had seen any border guards. The buses just drive through the borders and full speed. In fact I think I was in the toilet on the bus when I went from Latvia to Lithuania. What an entrance! So crossing into Poland was another blink and you'll miss it moment. In fact I'm sure we crossed ...

... We used the internet and then went back to the apartment to kill some time, and also to do some more laundry. The apartment is pretty chilly and I didn't see any way of adjusting the heat. For dinner, we tried getting into Restaurant Goldwasser but were told that it was "occupied" (somewhat rudely, I might add), despite several seemingly open tables. We were offered seats on the terrace but being a cold ...

... eating', not to mention, 'restraint' (a traditional polish dish, 'szmalec', consists of a thick layer of pure pig lard, seasoned with herbs, spread on a slice of bread). The fact that restaurants cost about a third of what they do in Australia, doesn't hurt either. The state of our stomachs was not off to a good start on our arrival in Poland. Following a brief stint of starvation on the train, because we didn't have any Polish money to buy any food (and possibly would have ...

... does a river even go past Oxford, and is it the Thames? My only knowledge of English geography comes from some vague fictional context to do with Victorian England and possibly Oscar Wilde. Secondly, Charis and I are going to England in what amounts to the dead of winter, and wearing the dress I now possess would result in both hypothermia and severe embarrasment, as the inevitable sleet worked its magic on the see-through-in-the-best-of-times fabric. And finally, but perhaps ...

Saturday 19 August Got woke up at 1130 by receptionist asking me to leave as check out time was 11. I felt so bad I asked to stay another night and slept till 6. Still felt bad so saw Madzik at work and went for Indian Chinese then walked round town, absolutely rammed, no crowd control lots of jostling to see an outdoor concert so I went to Absinthe to recover. Left about 11 ...

... with the tourist area until now. I found the train fine and got on the 10:17 to Torun. Again an old style 8 seated separate compartment style train. I read most of the way but kept looking out the window. It was the same as yesterday run down in places and then beautiful wooded areas. I had read somewhere that Poland is lacking in trees. Whether they have made a massive effort in the last 3 years since the book was written or I won't see any more ...

... with NO toilet paper!!! I was lucky that I always carry my own so that solved the problem. Figuring out which platform to get on was another issue since there were NO signs, talking about "progressiveness" here. I must struggle again asking which platform to get on with my limited Polish and schedule from earlier. I was finally be able to get on the RIGHT train. But this wasn't the end of the entire confusion. I found out later on the train that ...