Day 1 24/11/07 - Poland

London -> Gdansk -> Malbork -> Gdansk

Highlight

• Managed another very smooth run to the airport, again timed exactly right.
• Lots of people again, but we moved quickly.
• Gdansk doesn’t have a lot of signs and definitely no English, so it was a bit of a struggle. A small percentage of people seem to speak English, so it was not TOO bad.
• We finally found our car, amid the snow, a little red Renault.
• Managed to check in early. The hotel was basic, but comfy and quite cute.
• Drove to the shopping mall to get some supplies. Their huge Carrefour certainly doesn’t pale compared to others.
• Ate our goodies in the car, on the way to Malbork Castle – but got stuck in a traffic jam, and of course Slokky stalled the car, but he didn’t actually get lost!
• The weather got colder and darker, with light rain as we drove along.
• Malbork Castle is the biggest brick castle in the world, with a river and moat around, as expected. However, it was pulverized after the war and almost completely rebuilt.
• The castle was very cool and scary, with many dark passages. And since it was dead season, there weren’t many people visiting, so at times we had the whole place to ourselves and the guards. You can definitely get lost.
• The reason for our rush was that everything closed at 3pm, so we drove to Fashion House, another one of those fashion outlets, complete with a fake lighthouse, because we needed to stock up on winter clothing!!
• Well, there was no designer brands here, just high street, but we were surprised by how steep the prices still were, after hearing that everything is cheap in Poland. Well, don’t believe it, and the people are very stylish as well!
• We spent ages looking for a winter coat, but luckily the place is quite small and the assistants are very helpful. We ended our trip with gore-tex gloves and a down jacket.
• We chose a small, hard to find restaurant with Polish only menu, with a great waiter, of which only one spoke English and great food. We also almost had the restaurant to ourselves too!
• Back to hotel for that very fast free wi-fi, since we still didn’t have Internet at home (thanks BT!), then sleep.

Food

• Muller rice yoghurt apple, vanilla custard and strawberry
• orange juice (5.79 PLN)
• Cebularz (onion bread) (2.10 PLN)
• chleb bread (195 PLN)
• Leczo (sausage stew) (13 PLN /kg)
• toffee chocolate bar (3.65 PLN for 4)
• dinner at Restauracy jka U Babuni:
  • red wine (8 PLN)
  • barszec ezlpiero (beetroot soup with dumplings) (8 PLN)
  • Piecrony schab po (pork with apricot sauce) (29 PLN)
  • Pierogi ruskie (18 PLN)