Gdansk is a city on the Baltic coast of northern Poland that has so much history. At the end of WWII, Gdansk endured heavy air raids and then was rebuilt in the 1950s and 1960s. Gdansk could be seen in one rushed day, but I think it is best for an extended weekend, especially if you want to take a day trip to Malbork, the world’s largest castle. Gdansk Airport to City Center There is only one airport in Gdansk – Walesa Airport. It is located about 15 km from the city center. You can get to the city center by train, bus, or taxi. It is very easy to find all means of public transport getting from the airport to the city center. All you need to do is follow the lines on the floor until you get to the desired place. Both the train station and the bus stop are very close to the airport. Bus 210 leaves once an hour and the journey lasts about 30 minutes. One ride ticket costs 3,20 PLN. If you arrive at night, the bus N3 goes to the city center and lasts about 45 minutes and costs 4,20 PLN. Currently there is no direct train to the city center. You will need to change one time in Gdansk Wrzeszcz. The trip with a change will usually last no more than 45 minutes and costs 6,50 PLN. However, there are no night trains. The price for a taxi is much higher than public transport and can range from 50-100 PLN depending on the time and day. Free Now taxis or Uber let you control your cost and estimate it before you reserve a taxi. Where to Stay I stayed at Hotel Artus right in Old Town directly across from St. Mary’s Church. The view from the bedroom of the cathedral was amazing! I loved hearing the church bells throughout the day and night. I don’t think the location could have gotten much better. Main Town Hall is right around the block, Golden Gate is a 5 minute walk, the Crane and main river walk is a 5 minute walk, and the Central Train Station is a 12 minute walk. The price was so cheap considering the location! Day One Gdansk Main Town Hall is a historic building in the main city. It is one of the finest examples of the Gothic-Renasissance historic buildings in the city, built at the intersection of the Long Lane and Long Market, in the most popular part of Gdansk. The Main Town Hall houses the History Museum. Neptune’s Fountain is located at the Long Market, in front of the entrance to the Artus Court. The restaurants by the fountain are a lovely place to sit for a bite to eat or a warm drink while keeping warm by the fire. The Green Gate is one of the city’s most notable tourist attractions. It is situated between Long Market and the River Motlawa. Across the bridge from Green Gate is Granary Island. Crops used to be stored in more than 300 granaries on this island. You can see their ruins now, as most of them were destroyed in WWII. I stopped for breakfast at Nana’s Pierogarnia. The staff was very friendly and the food was delicious. If you continue walking, you will see Milk Can Gate. Two towers of this gate have cylindrical shapes, reminding people of milk cans. Its aim was to defend the city in the past. The Polish Maritime Museum was established in 1962. It is dedicated to gathering, researching and preserving artifacts and documents concerning ship transport, international trade, fishing, and culture of people working at sea, rivers, and those ashore – as well as the dissemination of knowledge on maritime history of Poland and its economy through the ages. I did not go in the museum, but I did pass by it. SS Soldek was a Polish coal and ore freighter. She was the first ship build in Szczecin after World War II and the first seagoing ship completed in Poland. The name was given in honor of Stanislaw Soldek, one of the shipyard’s shock workers. The ship is currently preserved as a museum ship as part of the National Maritime Museum collection. Next to the Museum is the Polish Baltic Philharmonic, which is a concert hall that hosts regular concerts and annual festivals. If you continue on this side of the river you will reach the Ferris Wheel and Gdansk sign. This is a fabulous spot to take photos. The AmberSky Ferris Wheel is something fun to do to get a great view of the city. On the other side of the river, I went to the Museum of the Second World War, which opened in 2017. You could easily spent 3+ hours in this museum. I highly recommend spending the extra 5PLN for the excellent multilingual audio-guide, which senses where you are and tells you what you are looking at. The heart of the museum is the permanent exhibition which is split into three parts – The Road to War, The War’s Long Shadow, and The Horrors of War. The building consists of three major spheres, which symbolically represent the connection between the past (museum), present (current outside surroundings), and future (40-meter tall leaning tower with a glass facade). Down the road is the Museum of the Polish Post. You can see various exhibitions about the history of the Polish post in this museum, including the collection of documents from WWII. Heading back to the river, I came upon Swan Tower. This Gothic tower used to be a part of the city fortifications and now serves as a seat of the Polish Marine Club. Continuing to walk along this side of the river back toward the city center, I came to Huckster Gate. Built at the end of the 15th century, this gate is the youngest in Gdansk. Its style reflects Flemish influence. There are several restaurants along the river,
I typically don’t book tours because I’m a pretty good planner and it’s usually much cheaper to do everything yourself. However, after I made up my mind that I wanted to see Alexandria, Luxor, and Cairo all in one trip, it became much more convenient to just go through a tour company. I also tried looking up flights and trains to the cities outside of Cairo and compared them to the tour price, and I found that I actually saved money. It was also nice not planning for hours on end for a change. We booked the 5 day/4 night Cairo, Luxor, and Alexandria tour on TourRadar.com. The tour operator was Go Discovery Travel. The tour code is #110679. This tour is perfect if you have limited time and are interested in seeing as much as possible. That’s how I like to travel! We had private tour guides and drivers the entire tour, this was so nice so that we could take as much or as little time as we needed and alter the itinerary when we wanted to. We explored churches, mosques, museums and old markets in Cairo. We of course saw the incredible Giza pyramids. Additionally, we went to Alexandria to get a glimpse of the Greek and Roman era in Egypt. We also flew to Luxor and visited the biggest open air museum in the world. https://www.tourradar.com/t/110679 Day 1:On arrival, a representative from Go Discovery Travel was waiting for us at the Cairo airport. He helped us with visa procedures, customs, and luggage claim. The visa costs $25 and is purchased before border control and baggage claim. Bring USD. It is a very easy process and nothing needs to be done beforehand. The representative then had his colleague, Medo, transfer us to our hotel for check in. We stayed at Le Meridien Pyramids Hotel in Giza. It had an awesome view of the pyramids! Because we arrived in Cairo a day before our tour started, we booked an extra night. This gave us the opportunity to see Giza the first day of our trip on our own. The options they suggested for the day included a sound and light show, a dinner cruise, a camel ride during sunset/sunrise, or a quad bike for one hour around the pyramids. We decided to do a quad bike around the pyramids. The tour company quoted us $50 for it but I told them I saw it on Viator for $15 so they gave us that price instead. Medo picked us up and took us to lunch at Abou Shakra right outside of the pyramids. The restaurant provided an excellent view. After the tour, we went back to the hotel to relax and have a drink by the pool while gazing at the pyramids for a couple hours. Then, we were picked up for our pre-booked Sound and Light Show. I didn’t read about what this show would be like but to be honest, I expected a bunch of people to be standing around looking at a strobe light show that lit up the pyramids. I was not expecting a 50-minute long Egyptian story and background about the pyramids. It was very informational and a good introduction to our day in Giza, although a little boring. After the show, we went back to the hotel and ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. They had excellent food! This concluded our first day. Day 2: LuxorAfter going to bed around 10PM, we got a call 30 minutes later saying that our itinerary had changed an that we would be heading to Cairo airport at 2AM to do our day tour in Luxor. This was supposed to be the following day but they said they had problems with plane tickets. This was very frustrating to hear that we would only have a couple hours of sleep. Because we were leaving so early, the hotel provided us with a breakfast box to go. When we arrived in Luxor, a private tour guide was waiting for us. First, we crossed the Nile River to the West Bank. We were mezmerized by the Valley of the Kings that had more than 60 royal rock cut tombs dating back to 1450-900 B.C. We were allowed to explore 3 tombs of our choice. Note that you must purchase an extra photo ticket if you wish to take pictures. We decided not too, but regretted our decision. We were able to sneak a couple pictures but people were getting thrown out and forced to delete all their pictures. After the Valley of the Kings, we were taken to a local shop where a guide showed us how carvings made out of different materials are done. After some demonstrations, we were given free time to explore the family shop. We ended up purchasing a very cool Egyptian carving. Next, we headed to the beautiful, unique terrraced Al-Deir Al-Bahari Temple. We were also amazed by the colossi of Memnon. We then took a lunch break at a restaurant before continuing our tour on the East Bank. We had time to explore the Karnak temple, which is the biggest temple on earth. After, we were taken to a Papyras museum where a local guide showed us how papyaras paper is made. We had the option of purchasing paintings on papyras paper. We also saw the Luxor Temple at sunset. At the end of the tour, we hung out at a café across from Luxor Temple to kill time before we were transferred back to Luxor airport to catch our flight to Cairo airport where our representative took us back to our hotel. Day 3: Cairo and GizaThis day was dedicated to the highlights of Giza and Cairo. We started our morning with a free buffet breakfast in the hotel. Shaimma, our egyptologist tour guide, picked us up in the hotel lobby. She was an excellent tour guide! We began our tour by heading to the Giza plateau. There we explored several monuments
The first thing you want to do when planning for a EuroTrip is to decide which countries you would like to visit. I wanted to see as much as possible in two weeks. After knowing I had two weeks to travel, I purchased the 15 day continuous global rail pass on eurail.com (interrail.com if you are an EU citizen) and got 2 extra days for free since they were having a sale. https://www.eurail.com/en/eurail-passes/global-pass This pass allows you the freedom to explore all your dream European destinations using the Eurail Global Pass. This convenient train pass gives you access to rail networks in 28 fascinating countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, although be aware that you will have to pay a reservation fee in specific countries or for night trains. Once I knew which cities I wanted to visit, I downloaded the Rail Planner app to see how long it was from each city and which cities would not be direct trains. I took notes beforehand and had a general idea of when I would be traveling but still had the flexibility to plan as I went if I needed more time in a specific location. The great thing about Eurail passes is you don’t have to worry about missing a train. You can hop on whatever train you’d like without a timed ticket. You can download the apps here – IOS, Android. Rail planner shows you all the available times, type of train and possible connections for the city of your choice. The application is done by Eurail and the cool thing about it is that it is available offline! I used the app the entire time during my travels and was fully satisfied with it! There are some cases when you will need to reserve a seat on your trip and pay a reservation fee. This can be done at the train station. For example, it is mandatory to book your seat on a night train. We did this a few times. The average cost of a bed on a night train is around 20-40 Euros. We had time to sleep while traveling, which was awesome to wake up in our next location! One example of when we did this was from Madrid to Lisbon. You will also usually need to book your seat when using a fast train that is marked with an R on the Rail Planner App. This can be as low as 3 Euros or as much as 30 Euros. Sometimes you will have the option to take the same route on a slow-speed train but I think it is worth it to just pay the fee in some instances. High-speed trains are common in France, Italy, and Spain. Additionally, you will need to reserve your seat on popular routes that may not have free seats. Stop 1: Amsterdam https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/20/amsterdam-netherlands/ Stop 2: Berlin https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/20/bamberg-germany/ Stop 3: Prague https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/22/prague-czech-republic/ Stop 4: Vienna https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/22/vienna-austria/ Stop 5: Bratislava https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/23/bratislava-slovakia/ Stop 6: Budapest https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/24/budapest-hungary/ Stop 7: Lake Bled https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/25/bled-slovenia/ Stop 8: Florence https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/27/florence-and-pisa-italy/ Stop 9: Nice https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/30/nice-france/ Stop 10: Marseille https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/06/30/marseille-france/ Stop 11: Barcelona https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/07/03/barcelona-and-montserrat-spain/ Stop 12: Madrid https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/07/01/madrid-spain/ Stop 13: Lisbon https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/07/03/lisbon-portugal/ Stop 14: Porto https://mandytravelstheworld.news.blog/2016/07/03/porto-portugal/ Check out the links to each city’s blog for more information on the specific places. If you have any more questions about the Eurail pass or planning a EuroTrip, please comment below!
