Day 521: Malbork Castle

Day trip today was out to Malbork Castle, about an hour outside Gdansk. It's a huge brick castle, originally built by the Teutonic Knights in around the 12th century. It was expanded a couple of times until it was the world's largest brick building, and the world's largest castle by land area as well! Very crowded since it was a very hot Friday during summer school holidays, and also the start of a medieval fair thing they have going. So lots of people around.

We'd opted to leave Schnitzel at home, since the full audio tour of the castle takes about 3.5 hours and given the 30 degree heat we definitely couldn't leave him in the car. And of course going in separately wasn't really an option.

As it turned out, the audio guide was really well done - a good mix of background info, context and trivia. Did plenty of filming, and I hope the video will turn out nicely! Had a Polish-style bruschetta for lunch, consisting of a large piece of sliced bread topped with lard and bacon, grilled onions, and stewed pork. Delicious.

After lunch we headed home, arriving back around mid-afternoon. Considered heading back out to have a look around Gdansk since it's apparently a nice city and we hadn't seen much of it yet, but given the heat and sweat we both felt rather more like resting. So we did! More pierogi from the supermarket for dinner.Read more