Gdańsk, Poland

 I’ve got a list (as I’ve mentioned before) of foods named after places that I’ve eaten in the places they were named for.
A Frankfurter in Frankfurt or a Chicago style hot dog in Chicago, for example.
So for our one stop in Poland, you KNOW I had to find a Polska kiełbasa (Polish sausage). How hard can that be, right?
Well…. That depends on how literal you want to be with that term. I’ll explain later.

The docking in Gdańsk (pronounced g’DINEsk by the locals - no idea why it’s got that long “I” sound in there) was pretty impressive. Have a look:

That’s a satellite map - the red star near the top is where the ship stopped and did a pirouette to face the opposite direction.
Then we backed up aaaaaaallllllll the way to the red circle. No kidding.

That large space just to the right of where we parked is a memorial park to WWII - which literally began right there. The round spot in the left portion of that park is the big monument, which we had a really good view of from the ship:

Then we had brekkie and hopped on the bus for our walking tour. Yeah, that sounds odd, but our walking tour was in the city centre, which was about 20 minutes’ drive from the dock.

Architecturally, the city is really interesting. Most of it was bombed to smithereens during WWII and all that was left of many of the buildings was the “-1 floor” as our guide called it, or ‘basement’ as we’d say.
The city mandated that when those structures were rebuilt, they should look as close as possible to the original. I think they did a good job.

On the other side of the river are brand new buildings, just a few years old. They aren’t replacing anything historic, but they still have to fit in with the legacy stuff. I think they did a good job here, too - obviously new, but still fitting in.

The city was walled at some time in its history and this is one of the gates that’s still standing:

For awhile, Lech Wałęsa had his offices in the left portion of this gate. I thought that guy had passed on years ago but I looked him up and he’s still alive, even after getting Covid. Rock on, LW!

Beyond the gate lies Long Street, which is chock full of shops, restaurants, and residential apartments.

One of the apartments was once the home of Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (yes, THAT Fahrenheit) and there’s an original Fahrenheit thermometer out front.

Of course, Poland uses Centigrade now, so whatevs.

As we passed each restaurant, I checked the menus, looking for a place to get a Polish sausage, but most everywhere was still doing breakfast at that hour.
Next stop was the famous fountain depicting Neptune fighting a sea dragon.

The statue went under some restoration and in 1988 they added a fig leaf over his naughty bits, which is absolutely idiotic, because this fountain sits next to the town hall.

So what? What does that have to do with the fig leaf?
Well, why bother covering up Neptune’s parts, when the building next door has a big gold statue on top of king Sigismund II Augustus with a giant boner?

That is actually a codpiece, as the king is wearing armour and yes, I went down that rabbit hole when I was looking up WHY the statue would have a boner bit in his armour. I now know way more about codpieces than I probably should.

Example: “codpiece” is so named because the Old English word ‘cod’ meant ’scrotum’. Think about that next time you select your fish-n-chips.
Also: the codpieces were often laughably large and even decorated sometimes.

This was apparently all the rage in the late 1400s to early 1600s and the statue on Gdańsk’s town hall was put up in 1566, so there ya go.

Oh, one last trivia bit: the codpieces were easily removable and usually far bigger than was necessary to hold the intended contents, so they became something of a medieval clutch bag for dudes. Guys would store a snack, coins, or even jewels in them… which eventually led to a man’s jiggly bits being referred to as the ‘family jewels’.

You’re welcome.

At the other end of Long Street was the old prison tower, circa 1586.

Around the corner from there was the armoury, circa 1605. It’s now an art school and studio.

The armoury has a notorious feature on it, which also makes Neptune’s recent fig leaf extra-stupid. I know you aren’t going to be able to see it from the above photo, so here’s a zoom-in shot of the lion crest over the right-hand door:

Yep. The lion on the left has a boner. Why? Dunno. You can’t blame it on armour fashion trends in the 1500s because the lion isn’t wearing any.
Another fun feature of the armoury is the water spouts. These were common on many buildings - instead of having your downspouts go to the ground, you’d stick them out far above the street and make them ornate, so the water poured out of them like a fountain. The armoury’s water spouts have dragons.

Oh, and just to the left of the water spout, there’s Rob in a helmet looking off into the distance.

Just down the road from there is the largest brick church in the world, St Mary’s

A quick peek inside:

At this point, it’s time for lunch and I still haven’t located any Polish sausage (unless you want to make that figurative, then you can count the king and the lion) aside from one buffet restaurant we passed near the prison tower. It was too far to walk back to and neither of us really wanted a buffet, so we chose a restaurant called Gdański Bowke that the guide assured us had authentic Polish food.
Rob got pierogis, and I went all-in on the authentic experience and ordered “ Talerz Portowych przekasek do wódki “ (plate full of port snacks to be taken with vodka).
It was challenging, and you absolutely need the vodka to get through it.

OK, so let’s see… that tomato relish in the blob on the left…. Isn’t. It’s raw tenderloin with diced onions, garlic, and other things.
The small cup behind that is horseradish and some kind of red sauce. It wasn’t ketchup and it wasn’t fruity and I was afraid to ask.
The big bowl is chilled herring, kinda pickled, with onions in oil with a lemon wedge.
Behind that (you can’t really see) are giant slabs of duck paté and some black pudding.
The stuff on the right is wild boar terrine, thinly sliced. Then there are some pickles and pickled mushrooms scattered around.

The raw tenderloin was pretty good, except for that first bite when I expected it to be tomatoes.
The black pudding was actually quite nice, then I re-read the menu to see what it was I had just eaten, discovered it was black pudding, then didn’t eat any more of it. First and last time for me on that one.
I generally like pickled herring, and the wild boar spam (err, ’terrine’) was OK, as was the duck paté.
Having said that, there isn’t any of that I’d order again. I’m glad I had the authentic dish and had the experience, but once and done for me.
The vodka, however - a local craft potato vodka - was the best I’ve ever had. Smooth, clean, with a hint of caramel at the end. Absolutely delicious and it was poured ice cold from a bottle literally covered in ice.

On the bus heading back to the ship, we passed an utterly ridiculous KFC

Dinner was back at Manfredi’s and of course I had that steak rubbed with brown sugar and chilli flakes. Third time on that one, still delicious.
After dinner, singer Toni Warne was back and just as good as before.

Then we headed back to the room and I did a load of laundry and typed this email.
…and I also got a nice shot of a nearly-full moon over the water.

Nite, y’all.

On to the next day!

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