Gydnia, Poland

Had an early start this morning because I'm doing a passenger tour called Best of Gdansk and Marlbork Castle. The tour started out with a 2 hour drive to Marlbork Castle. A castle originally built in 1274 by Teutonic Knights but has changed hands many times since. It is also the largest stone castle in the world. What we saw of the castle was amazing. In 2 hours there was still most have the castle we hadn't seen. When we entered one of the court yards we came across an art installation being put up. One of the passengers knew who the artist was that was doing it. She was attaching rope made of cling wrap together making also like a spider web. The passenger was telling me how she has been all over the world doing these art installations including places like Hong Kong. I was not able to find out her name though.

After the castle it was time to head for lunch. On our way there we passed a chapel. Our tour guide told us when the chapel was built but what made the bus go silent is what happened with the chapel later. During World War 2 the chapel and surrounding area was a concentration camp. Where people were sent, shot and then buried in mass graves surrounding the chapel which were now fields. It was a lot of fields.

We arrived at the restaurant where many tours were all meeting for lunch. We had zurek soup which was excellent. Meatloaf with pickled cucumbers and pickled onions in it. Which was not my favourite. With it however was potatoes and buckwheat which was good. Dessert was a number of different types of cakes. I tried two different ones. Both of which were very good. With the meal they had coffee, tea, water and they served everyone a beer. My policy on tour is to at least try everything so as with all the alcohol I've tried, I had a sip, hated the taste and stuck with water.
Next we headed to Gdansk. We didn't spend too much time here. Our tour guide gave us a half hour walking tour and then we had about 20 minutes of free time before we had to head back to the bus. The tour guide explained to us how most of the city ended up getting destroyed and rebuilt to match watch it looked like before with a few additions like in the picture of the woman laying down on the stone wall.Read more