August 9th, 2026

We have been to this port before but it was 18 years ago and we don’t remember much about it. Since the cruise ship we are on is large we had to dock in the industrial port and it is 45 minutes from town. There is no shuttle into town so we opted for Gdansk on our own which is basically a bus ride to and from the port to town with 3 hours to spend exploring on our own.. We had perfect weather. Temperatures in the high 70’s and partly cloudy. There are several city gates that you can enter the town through and all are very ornate.

The town is beautiful and we definitely did not remember that. You can see the dutch influence on most of the buildings, tall skinny and bright colors.

Town was quite crowded and our guide told us that yesterday there were 4 cruise ships in. I can’t imagine what town looked like with all those passengers. Today was also the start of summer festival which will go on for 3 weeks. The streets were lined with stalls of people selling amber jewelry, Polish wine, cheeses and meat.

Inside the walls is St Mary’s which is the 2nd largest brick church in the world.

We walked around and looked at all the things for sale and did not buy anything but we enjoyed all the people watching. We stopped at one of the food stalls and they were making fresh potato pancakes so we got an order as a mid-morning snack.

In the square there is a large statue to Neptune that was built in the 17th century to symbolize Gdansk’s connection to the sea.

We walked down to the river and they had these cool motor boats that look like race cars.

It looks more like the blue car is driving through a flooded street than actually on a river. We had to meet up with our guide at 1:50 for the hour ride back to the boat.

I loved how bright these buildings looked.

We were back on the ship by 3pm and not sure why, since “all on board” was not until 5:30. Seems like we could have stayed in town longer than 3 hours.

We met Linda and Michael for cocktails and then went to dinner in one of the specialty restaurants, The Crown Grill. It is amazing how much the cover charges for the speciality restaurants has gone up since we started cruising. There is now a $55.00/person cover charge at each of the speciality restaurants. We have the deluxe package that includes unlimited specialty dining otherwise don’t think we would be going there for $110.00 per couple. The restaurant was mostly empty so I guess others feel the same way we do. The food & service were great.

We lose an hour overnight on our way to Lithuania and we have an early morning Viator excursion.