On our final day, we first took a look at Gdynia.
And while it may seem strange to have the seaports of Gdansk and Gdynia sitting side by side in Poland, on the Baltic Sea, there is an important reason both exist. For a time, Gdansk was not part of Poland at all. Gdansk has spent time as part of Germany, and also as a free city. Thus, Poland could not always rely on their ability to make use of Gdansk as a sea port. Gdynia was built much more recently than Gdansk. Today, both remain important parts of Poland.
I forgot to mention in one of the previous posts that we took a trip on a pirate ship. Well, just a pirate-themed cruise boat. We went from the pier at Sopot, and got to see the coast of Gdynia, before returning to Sopot.
We had hoped to take a ship to Gdansk or somewhere nearby, but as the official tourist season had just come to an end, our options were much fewer.
After Gdynia, we decided to go to Hel.
I have been told by Poles that I should go to Hel – they have often said what a nice place it is, so I’m glad we had a chance to see it. Hel is a peninsula, not far from where we were. While in Hel, if conditions are good, you can just see the coast of Gdynia in the distance.
As this was our last day, we didn’t want to stay out too long. But we managed to stop and visit the Seal Sanctuary in Hel before returning to the hotel.
We just happened to arrive around feeding time, so the seals were anxious to come out of the water to see the trainers.
I suppose that’s a bit anticlimactic, but this marks the end of the trip. My parents and Grandmother had a flight out of Gdansk at 5:00am the following morning. Grace and I slept in at the hotel, and caught a train back home to Krakow in the late morning. We managed to arrive home before the rest, but only by a few hours.
I’m glad to have been able to show my family some places near where I currently live. I’m disappointed that the weather had other plans. But that’s the way things go. With my grandmother along, we weren’t able to travel particularly quickly anyway, so its really just as well that the rain often kept us in, and doing things slowly. We may not have visited every place I’d have liked to, but I think we ate enough excellent food to forget about such details. It’s a shame that living so far away visiting the family, or having them visit me is not a simple task, so I’m definitely glad we had this trip together.
