Today we decided to do our usual city tour, so that we could get to see the main attractions whilst being guided. On Friday we had come across a tourist buggy doing tours and the guide called Michael gave us a card. So we rang to book a tour at 11am. To fill in time until 11:00, we went for a short walk along the Sw. Barbary, into Dziewianowskiego, across the Kanal Na Stepceand and back along Olowianka and Szafarnia to the hotel.
We thought we were being picked up from the hotel, but we waited and waited but no buggies turned up. After several calls, we got hold of Michael who said he would meet us at the Green Gate. So we went to the Green Gate, next to the Green Bridge (neither of which were green) and waited some more. There was a small string ensemble playing under the arches of the Green Gate next to the Green Bridge which we listened to whilst we waited some more. They were probably playing Greensleeves!
Eventually, a buggy turned up, quickly followed by a second and the elusive Michael. And after a bit of negotiation about how long a tour we wanted, we were on our way without a clue how long the tour would be.
The buggies proved to be a most agreeable means of travelling around, with us being able to disembark at regular intervals to view the various locations of historic interest. The tour included the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers 1970 near the entrance to what was then the Lenin Shipyard. It commemorates the 42 or more people killed at the time and is the first monument to the victims of communist oppression to be erected in a communist country. We also visited the memorial to the Polish postal workers who died defending the building from the German forces.
After our tour was finished, we were ready for something to eat and selected the Fahrenheit Restaurant (unsurprisingly near the Fahrenheit Thermometer) on the main street for some lunch.
The ladies were keen to revisit one of the streets we had visited on our tour which comprised almost entirely souvenir shops selling the local speciality Amber. Certainly it was an amber and then red warning for the men to hide their wallets!
We then went to investigate the galleons and various boat trips to see the ship yards and somewhere called Westerplatte for a possible trip on Sunday.
After all this walking and attempts to extract the ladies from the shops, we decided to have some tea or beer on the floating restaurant near the Green Bridge near the Green Gate.
Whilst having tea on the floating restaurant we decided to book to come back for our evening meal. This proved to be a bit of a mistake. To start with, the waitress said they don’t recommend the house wine or the sea bass! We had to wait one and a half hours for our meal and Sally eventually got served after most of the rest of us had finished. Alan said that maybe in Romania, they don’t see a problem with serving meals at different times, only to be reminded that he was in fact in Poland!
Then we found that we didn’t get the 5% discount advertised on leaftes given out earlier in the day. We wanted to not pay for Sally’s meal, but the waitress said that it would come out of her salary, which we thought might be true and similarly if we complained, she might suffer. So we put it down to the Polish way of treating tourists (and waitresses) and went on our way. Oh, how different from that waitress in Prague!
We dealt with the disappointment in different ways, Brian and Pete went for a drink in town, Chris and Sally went to church and the rest us went back to the hotel for a sweet and coffee!
