Studying Med in the White and Red: Gdansk and Kolobzreg

This spring break most of the friends here in Poznan left to go home. I really wanted to go to some town in Poland to see more of this country. I talked with Valerie and she loves driving trips and wanted to rent a car and she also wanted to see the Baltic sea. We made the arrangements and got things in motion. First, we drove to Gdansk. Valerie's roommate went there the week prior and said it was very fun. Gdansk is a port town on the Baltic and it was destroyed numerous times throughout its history. It was a very important maritime city thus the appeal to take control of it. It's official history starts back in 997. We arrived and decided to check out the Dom Muzyka. It is a really nice hotel, which is part of this music university. We spent that evening/night walking around, getting our bearings, and finding some food. The next day was spent doing some touring. We went to a couple museums (archeology, Gdansk history), St. Mary's Church, amongst other things. We left that next day and decided to go to Kolobzreg. We initially had a thought of going to Hel, which is a town in this peninsula but the town seemed a bit boring off season. Kolobzreg used to be a seat of the Polish Bishopric in 1000, putting it on par witrh Krakow and Wroclaw. It is a fairly small seaside town and most people were 50+. It still had some life, even though everything closes around 8pm. We spent the time there relaxing and getting massages. 70zl for a full body 1-hour massage is a great deal and it felt great too. We also used the pool and jacuzzi that was also part of the spa resort. The hotel was called the Maxymillian and was the tour book's "author's choice." It was quite nice, but they didn't have shampoo... even after we asked them for some. Strange. Driving was really fun. We rented a manual Fiat, quite small, butter color, and had no problems with it. Valerie even took a turn and learned to drive stick for a couple miles.

Back to the real world now with the next 1.5-2 months being filled with tests and endless studying.. FUN!

First attempt at manual, not soo successful, but she did get it!

Some scenery

Drove through a TON of tiny towns like this one, pretty cool to see places like this

quite nice

stumbled upon a monkey zoo attached to a gas station

the road temperature

took a detour on one of the many 'death roads' and found ourselves in the middle of a nice forest

good place for a little leg stretch

sign washing

Garmin took us through some wild towns on dirt roads. I think she was set to shortest way, not necessarily best way, but it was fun!

Hotel room in Gdansk

Dom Muzyka

Evening over the tributary

Another

Cool ships, including a pirate ship

the Dlugi Targ, the main market road that the visiting kings would travel down once they went through the Golden Gate

First dinner, I had some fish, Valerie had some rice. Nice view sitting outside.

Gdansk at night, used my new camera and the shots turned out great

On the left you can see a destroyed building that has yet to be rebuilt

Arrr

The main street

Clock tower was where the Gdansk National History Museum was located

A nice tribute to NASA, fairly strange but cool none the less.

great mustache

Pictures of Gdansk when it was destroyed

Dlugi Targ

Creepy statue, being mimicked by Valerie

St. Mary's Church, the largest brick church in the world.

Astronomical clock

Stairs up to the top, second highest building at 86m. The stairs were numbered. This was oddly similar to the Blarney Stone!!!

Halfway there.. 400 steps in total.

200 round staircase steps and 200 like this up through the top.

Beautiful

Met some elder English people who were visiting and they were nice enough to take our photo. Not sure how the woman made it up and down, she was quite unsteady.

Ulica Mariacka, one of the most unique streets in all of Poland. It was rebuilt after the war exactly how it was before, using the pieces from the rubble to construct it perfectly. Each building had a terrace, pretty cool looking. In Gdansk, there is tons of amber for sale as Poland (especially these seaside towns) was the center of the amber trade, bringing it down from the Baltic Sea.

Ul. Mariacka

Haha, nice one Valerie.

Burrito in Gdansk? The restaurant was called Burrito. They even had Cholula hot sauce, it wasn't too bad.

Snuggie

Hotel in Kolobzerg

Stands selling tons of things on the boardwalk.

The monument for the Marriage of the Sea and Man.

The lighthouse

Towards downtown

Downtown. We met a bartender that lived for 18 years in Poznan. Later we met this other guy who worked at the Italian restaurant and his girlfriend lives in Poznan and works at our medical university, small world.