Gdansk

This part of the stay may have been our favorite.  Such a pretty place.  Our hotel was right on the river with a great view . . . I would like to thank Hilton for upgrading our room.  This town has been a shipping town since the 1300's.  The Gdansk Crane was in operation from the 1400s-late 1800s - the same crane!  It was destroyed during the war so the crane now is an exact recreation of the old one.  The engineering involved in building this enormous crane is amazing.  It was operated by men walking on essentially enormous "hamster wheels".  Gdansk was originally settle by the Dutch so the city feels more Dutch than Polish.  A lot of Gdansk was also destroyed during the war, however the facades of the buildings remained standing.  There are before and after pictures scattered around to give you the feel of what's original and what is recreated. 

A police car/boat, no joke.  There were armed policemen on the boat!

View from our Hotel

A model of the Crane.  We were never on the other side of the river so we couldn't get a good picture.

This is part of the Gdansk Shipyards where the Solidarity movement started.  Mostly ruins now. 

Poland is famous for Amber. . . so yea, there was a bit of shopping going on!

So Robert got bored with all the shopping and played with his camera filters.