Ellie here, checking in again – but right now, it’s from the UK! I’ll explain why once I’ve told you about the more fun bits of this week first!
Like I said last week, we had a day’s break, and then another set of visitors were coming! So it was all systems go, and a quick turn around on the laundry, and before we knew it, our friends from Colchester had arrived. Their flight got in after 11pm, so we tried to put on a bit of a Polish spread for their arrival, thinking they would probably be hungry! It was the Polish equivalent of many a European spread – bread, cheese, meats – you can’t go wrong really!
We were feeling like a real tourist company by now – we had a few good places in mind to go, we knew where the good Polish food was to be found etc… These visitors had quite a lot more love of beer than the previous ones, so we knew what the focus of their visit would be!
Our first day took us to Sopot, where we found a little pub brewing its own stuff, and where you could have a tasting menu of 5 beers for approximately £4! There did end up being quite a frantic chugging at the end though, as we had an appointment on the beach to get to – a sauna!
The idea of a sauna on the beach at night is a lovely, romantic one – and it was, for about 15 minutes. Until, and we should have known it was coming really, based on our previous experience, the guy came in (to our PRIVATE sauna, that we had hired for just the 4 of us…) and told us we had to be naked! Obviously, this wasn’t something we had planned to do in front of our friends, so, after quite some ‘talking’ between Konrad and the guy, we did manage to get the rest of our session in, but, unfortunately, it did take away a little from the experience. There had been no mention of it during the booking, when we were signing in etc .. you would think that as a tourist attraction, where they probably have lots of people from different places, who may not be so down with the nudity, that they would make it clear beforehand, or, here’s a crazy thought, NOT OBLIGATE PEOPLE TO BE NAKED!!
Anyway, when you’re with friends, you can make light of these things can’t you? So we still had a fun time – and I can definitely recommend the run to the icy sea from the heat of the sauna – if you wanna feel like maybe you’re having a little heart attack, that is!
Overall – it’s a really cool experience, the night beach sauna. But be aware that if you don’t wanna get it all out in front of everyone, you may need to call and check their policy in advance..!
On another of the days, as we made our way into Gdansk centre, we stumbled across the winter market, which hadn’t been there last time we walked through. It turned out to be a really good place to grab some food, and of course, some drinks, and for a sweet tooth like me, you cannot possibly be in a winter market and not get donuts! There were stands selling warm cherry wine too, which was delightful, and all in all it was just another really good way for people to experience some tastes of the culture.
Walking further into Gdansk, we also found the city sign, which we hadn’t been to before. I’m sure this will definitely become the photo spot for any future visitors we may have!
We also found another couple of cool bars – doing some quite lethal shots for £1 each, and spent quite a lot of time playing Monopoly Deal in these. One place in particular is a Jaeger bar, serving up all manner of Jaeger-based cocktails. Something that I would recommend trying is a shot of Jaeger, topped with beer froth! It really sweetens it up, and of course, being Poland, it costs about £1!
So yeah, all in all, another few days of much eating, drinking and playing games! And when it all came to an end, we flew home with them too!
Here’s the boring legal bit, and the reason why! – Basically, since Brexit, a UK passport-holder is only allowed 90 days within the EU in a 180 day period. Given that I’m married to an EU citizen, it is fairly simple for me to obtain a longer visa, no problem. However, we assumed (in no small part because there is almost zero information to be found regarding this. Trust me, I have Googled it all a number of times!) that I would need to go to the British embassy in Poland. Well, we were wrong, weren’t we? I in fact need to go to the Polish embassy in London! To give them my passport … so that they can send it back to Poland! Konrad rang and spoke to people and this really does seem to be the only way. So, we bought ourselves some £5 Ryanair flights, and here we are, knocking around in England for a couple of weeks! We will see how the visit to the embassy goes next week …
Check out our previous travel blogs here!
