World Cruise Day 149/163 Viking Homelands - Gdańsk, Poland - Gdańsk was Ggloomy but Ggood

Cruise day: 149/163

Ports days: 79
Sea days: 70
Countries: 26
Continents: 5
Ports: 59

COVID update
Arlona is on day #7 of her COVID lock-up isolation. She remains in good spirits and sounded perkier today to my highly trained ear.  She was still testing positive as of yesterday, so at this point, we expect she will go the whole ten days in isolation.  That means she will be paroled released in the morning on Tuesday, May 24, just in time for Stockholm.

Gdańsk is a busy port city on Poland's Baltic coast and is where we find our Viking Star today.  The port itself is rather industrial and unremarkable.  A short 20-minute bus ride takes you to the city itself with its classic facades that have been rebuilt to their pre-WWII bombing glory.

The weather included rain on and off throughout the included Gdańsk on Foot tour.  Couple that with mid-50s temps and winds gusting into the 20s and it made for a very Bergen-like day, at least from a weather standpoint.

Crossing the waterway before exiting the bus

Former granary buildings

Approaching the waterfront

Crossing the bridge to the Green Gate - one of the many city entry gates that still stand

That massive structure is a crane - more on that coming below

We took a peek through the Green Gate before heading farther down the waterfront to the crane

This was the next gate as we walked down the waterfront - Chlebnicka Gate

Prussian Hags

Approaching the crane

The crane was bombed in WWI and is now being restored - this is a model

Constructed in the mid-1400s after the original one burned down, this was powered by two men that walked inside what were essentially two six-meter hamster wheels - the rotation of the wheels lifted the loads off ships - up to 4 metric tons (about 8,800 pounds) up to 11 meters (36 feet)

The WWII museum's glass top peeking over the other buildings

Entering the city through St Mary's Gate

This street was fascinating with porches on the front of each building, gargoyles for routing water off the upper structure, and ornate carvings adorning many of the buildings.

A model of the Titanic carved from amber - Gdańsk is the center of the world's amber trade

Four Quarters Fountain representing the four quarters of old Gdańsk

The Royal Chapel

Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

There is some debate on who is #1, but it is in the top three largest brick churches in the world

Neptune's Fountain from the early 1600s

Artus Court - a social center in old Gdańsk

Old Town Hall

The coat of arms is unique in that the lions are both facing the same direction - typically they face each other or away from each other

The former armory

The Golden Gate

We completed our tour with an hour of free time to wander.  I found friends and sat and had a beer.  It was about 11:30.  Doing the math, I determined that at home, it was 5:30, so it was after 5 and therefore OK to have a beer.  I function at such a high level that I do not get bogged down in silly details like whether that was 5:30PM or 5:30AM.  It was after 5 and I went with that.

After that, we met back up with the tour guide, went to the bus, and went back to the ship. 

High Gate

St. Elizabeth - Roman Catholic rector

Poland stands firmly with Ukraine and has accepted several million refugees

A piece of the Berlin wall and a piece of the shipyard wall where the Solidarity fight began

Monument and museum honoring the fallen shipyard workers in the 1970 Solidarity movement

Cranes at the shipyard

The shipyard sign

The soccer stadium

I was feeling damp and a little cool so it was good to get back to the ship.  Arlona sent me a project she worked on a day or two ago.  A seagull landed on her deck, so she snapped a photo and used it for painting inspiration.

She has teased me that she has been working on a multi-day painting project, so I will be excited to see that when she determines it to be complete.

The dreary weather and a missing spouse meant that the afternoon would be decidedly low-key.  I spent the afternoon working on this post and then went up to the World Cafe for dinner.

We sailed away from Gdańsk at about 8:00PM, right on schedule.

We are headed for Mariehamn, the capital of Åland, an autonomous territory under Finnish sovereignty.

The Åland Islands are much closer to Sweden than they are to Finland, but hey - proximity to Sweden didn't do much for Bornholm, did it?  One thing about Mariehamn is that they are a timezone away at UTC+3.  Therefore, we are time-jumping again tonight, moving the clocks forward for two days.

Then we'll be flipping back again to UTC+2 before arriving in Stockholm the next day.  For this one port, I'm surprised they just don't have us stay on ship's time.  It will be interesting to see how they handle it next week as there is no sea day between Stockholm and Mariehamn.

Here's something I saw online today that you can ponder.

When Sweden and Denmark play against each other in sporting events, the scoreboard typically shortens the team name to a three-letter abbreviation of the country names, SWE - DEN.  Interestingly enough, the letters that have been discarded are DEN - MARK.  Weird, right?  And with that...