Gdansk – the worlds busiest city.

One of the things we’ve discovered while travelling Europe is that if you visit a city on a Sunday it’s normally much quieter and you can easily find some free parking – only one of these was true of our visit to Gdansk.

We rocked up after a big drive through a bunch of roadworks to free parking – if we could find a space. There were cars everywhere! We found a spot – or rather we pulled up on the pavement ‘cos that’s what everyone else was doing and since we didn’t have a map we did our usual trick for finding the city centre – look for the tall, old, pointy buildings. We soon realised that we’d chosen the busiest day of the year to visit – St Dominics Fair – Europe’s largest outdoor trade & cultural event.

Apparently it only comes to town once a year and we were ‘lucky’ enough to drop in while it was there – I don’t think i’ve ever seen so many people in one place. The streets were lined with stalls selling everything from food to souvenirs to those vegetable peelers that can make your carrots and cucumbers into fancy shapes and you could hardly move.

After an hour or so of getting carried along with the crowd and me trying not to lose Liam we stopped for a Polish snack of Oscypek which is a smoked cheese made of salted sheep milk, carved into a spiky shape, grilled and served with cranberry jam. Now, it might have tasted a little odd (it was so much better once you’d dipped it in the jam) but any country where eating a slab of cheese on a stick is acceptable is ok with me.

After that we started thinking about what to buy for lunch (yes, we are ruled by our stomachs) when we came across a long line of people snaking out of a tent, after a bit of investigation we discovered that it was a line for free food! We didn’t know what it was when we got in line but it smelt good and was free so we were there with bells on. Turned out to be a generous helping of chicken and veg broth and afterwards we even treated ourselves to an ice cream to celebrate getting a free lunch.

Gdansk looked like a really lovely city but to be honest we couldn’t really see much of it through the crowds – just an excuse for a repeat visit I suppose!