It was rainy in the morning so we didn’t get going until after 10.30am. We caught the free bus again and were soon back in the old town. 

We revisited the Main Street – Dluga street and decided we needed coffee. So we went back to the same spot as yesterday. 

After our nice coffee and cake we walked under the Green Gate to the river. We walked past the ancient Gdansk crane from 1444 seeing the treadmills above where men walked to move the crane up and down. It could raise 2 tons to a height of 30 metres – a big feat in those days.

 

We then continued down the river to cross a pedestrian bridge. We were just about across when an alarm started going saying ‘ Please leave the bridge’. Once everyone was off it was closed and it started going straight up in the air. 
The pirate ship zipped through just in time before it closed again.

An old city wall tower is part of a new hotel.

We had some fun with the big Gdansk letters.

We then went to the National Maritime museum which is a big thing in town due to the important port.

We started with canons from Russia and Sweden in the 16th century.

There was a good exhibition on 2 cruise ships the Batory and the Pilsudski built for Poland in the early 1900s in Trieste and their changes over their lifetime. Top polish designers planned everything onboard. There was crockery, textiles and silverware designed for the ships.

In the 1930s they first did cruises from Poland around Europe and were priced for the Polish market.

In WWII they became warships. The Batory took orphaned children from the UK to Australia in 1940. Thete is now a bit if controversy about this as not all were orphans and they were treated badly at the orphanages when they arrived.

The Pilsudski unfortunately ran into a mine east of Yorkshire, England and sank. The Polish captain jumped in the water but unfortunately drowned.

The Batory started travelling to India through the Suez Canal in the 1960s.

Unfortunately this didn’t make much money so it became a stationary restaurant. After a long life it was eventually scrapped in Hong Kong.

The other exhibitions upstairs started with log canoes, progressed to Vikings and then into more sophisticated boats. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of English so we got the gist of things. 

At the end there wasn’t an art gallery of maritime related artwork.

The Japanese paintings portrayed their battles with Russia and were still very 2 dimensional. The sea was similar to its representation in very old Hokasai screen-prints.

Once we were finished we then walked back over the river – once the vertical bridge was down again.  

We found the monument to the postal workers who died when the Germans invaded in 1939. They held out in the postal workers who office for 15 hours. Some were shot but some were put to trial but found innocent. Those who did the shooting were then guilty of committing war crimes.

The post office is now restored after the top floor had been heavily damaged. 

We were the close to St Bridget’s Church which became the main church supporting the Solidarity ship workers in 1980. The priest Henry Jankowsku came to perform services at the shipyards that helped keep the strikers spirits up. Lech Walesa  credited him as being a main driver for them keeping going and being successful.

We saw many amazing sights in there.

The amber altar still being built but looking pretty incredible.

500 nuns skulls in the crypt – only found during renovations in 2010. The church was previously a convent.

There was an area dedicated to murdered priest Jerzy Popielusko.

It was now 4.30pm and we hadn’t had lunch. 

We are creatures of habit as we went back to the same place we had lunch yesterday. It was now 4.45 so we decided to have dinner now so we didn’t have to cook when we got home. I enjoyed a traditional pork roulade stuffed with local mushrooms which was excellent. A very heavy shower came down while we were there. We decided to get going after it stopped. 

Glenn and I then caught the bus by the skin of our teeth. We left Lisa and Sean in town getting photos of the rainbows and the interesting light and clouds. Glenn and I got good photos on the beach near the campsite. 

Here are Lisa’s photos in town.

We had tea and chocolate biscuits back in the van. We saw Lisa and Sean later after they had a diversion in a bar in town. It is cold tonight so good to get to bed early.