Day 10: Gdańsk/Warsaw, Poland

Today began our journey homeward. We had to catch a train from Gdańsk back to Warsaw, and then tomorrow is our flight back to NYC. We spent the morning walking around Gdańsk and soaking in our last moments before our train left at 11:00am. Here are some pictures we took during our morning walk.

[Ilana on Mariacka Street]

[Facing the west gate of the Royal Route]

[View of the canal from a pedestrian bridge]

[Ilana with her coffee along the canal]

[View from our hotel room]

Since our route back to Warsaw covers the same path we took to get to Gdańsk, there was nothing new for us to keep an eye out for. We did manage to get a glimpse of the medieval Malbork Castke, which was built by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century. By the mid 1400's the Knights, having become a force to be reckoned with, were progressively defeated by the Poles with the help of the Lithuanians and other nearby lands. The Prussians took over it after the Polish partition at the end of the 18th century and it was severely destroyed during WWII. About 10 years ago it was restored and is now open for tours and has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

[Malbork Castle]

The rest of our ride was fairly uneventful as I caught up on reading and Ilana watched some episodes of Friday Night Lights on her laptop.

When we got back to Warsaw it was dinnertime. So we took to our familiar streets to soak up our last evening in Poland, grab some dinner, and take some pictures.

[Ilana in front of the rebuilt walls of the old town center]

[View of the main square from an approaching side street]

[Inside the main square]

[Ilana is getting really good at taking night shots]

[Monument in the old town]

The great Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith said it best, "I love it when a plan comes together". Our goal was to use this day as a relaxing travel day and to end up in a place we were sort of familiar with so we weren't scrambling up to our last minute of vacation, and mission accomplished. This has been a fantastic trip and we were sad this was our last evening, but we are thrilled to have seen so much of Poland in such a short amount of time.

FJJ