Ok, so the reason we went to Gdansk was that all our holiday plans went to hell in the space of 5 minutes... Long story short, our trip to mazury got cancelled on the 28th of December, while we were travelling back from a day in warsaw...

Wszystko było zaplanowane. Alkohol wybrany. nic tylko wsiąść w autobus i jechać! Niestety (a może na szczęście) nie Mazury były nam pisane... Co zatem? Opcji było kilka:

Some of them included a train to Berlin, or flying to Prague, Stockholm or Rome. So, after a fair bit of discussion, and some fruitless searching, Asia suggested Gdansk. Brilliant.

Pojechać - żaden problem, pociągi z Warszawa jeżdzą co 2 godziny - co zobaczyć? wszystko co miniemy po drodze, ale gdzie spać - oto jest pytanie! Po nocnych poszukiwaniach, znaleźliśmy 3 prawdopodobnie wciaż dostępne hostele - pozostało nam czekać do rana, by sprawdzić to prawdopodobienstwo!

After an early wake up, and an essential cup of coffee, Asia called all 3 hostels; 3rd time lucky! The Baltic hostel was to be our 5* palace for the next 3 nights...

Niewątpliwie! Szybko więc zaplanowaliśmy podróż pociąg do Warszawy - 11:30; pociąg do Gdańska - 15:00. U między czasie - lunch, ogromna kolejke do kas PKP (moja działka) i ostatnie zakupy (karta pamięci - ... - misja Antona). O 15 zasiedliśmy wygodnie w przedziale z zamiarem ujrzenia Gdańska o 20:00 tego samego dnia.

Or so we thought... After taking almost an hour to reach the outskirts of Warsaw, the train stopped dead. Great. But luckily, that's when we got to know our fellow passenger, Iwona.

Następne 5 godzin przegadaliśmy o Angli,Bieszczadach, Warszawie i fotografii - zagryzając to wyszystko Ukrainskimi cukierkami - mniam!

Chook-a-chook-a-chook-a-crash-bang-wallop! We'd arrived! As soon as we exited the train station (9:30pm), we realised we had a slight problem: the hostel "right next to the train station" was not, in fact, there. So after some serious searching (including INSIDE the train station, for some reason), Asia eventually did the logical thing: phoned the hostel, got directions, and promptly took us the wrong way.

So once again we back-tracked to the station, made our way over the main bridge, took the 3rd set of stairs, and started knocking on doors... of the wrong bloody building! We finally noticed some people leaving the building next door, and made our way inside.

W środku czekał na nas starszy pan w podejrzanie dobrym humore... niewątpliwie wskazującym na spoźycie. ...

By this time we were famished, hence the decision to walk to the Old town. with Asia as my trusty guide, I had no doubt that it would be quite an adventure. As expected, we took the "scenic route", which was actually a pretty good way of getting to see the Old town from a different perspective. Gdansk is a beautiful, majestic old city, with an interesting mix of German and Polish architecture. We fell in Love. Eventually we stumbled upon ul. Dluga, and on it a nice looking restaurant.

• Dinner:
• Asia had Zurek (Soup in a crusty roll), followed by Apple Pie
• Anton had Pork Ribs with cabbage, followed by Pancakes with Chocolate, nuts & fruit

Nie było łatwo. Wszędzie droga i ...

By the time we finished eating it was well after midnight, and we were stuffed and sleepy. Once we got outside though, the cold shocked us back to reality, and it was a mad rush to get back to the hostel before we froze to death!