Along the Baltic coast

Started off with breakfast at the hotel...it was included in the cost of the room. Here's the choices we had at breakfast:




Here's my plate:



The total bill for the room, 2 dinners, and breakfast was $75. I'd say that was a good deal!

So we headed off to go remedy the bank card situation. I went into a bank in a town down the road and was able to call the bank collect and got it remedied. I then was able to withdraw some Polish zloty (money)...so we went down the road and stopped at a gas station to buy a map of Poland...which will help immensely...even with the gps.

We had a destination in mind today...I will tell you the name in a bit...but had planned on taking a side trip to a National Park on the Baltic that sounded interesting. The only thing was that we had to get off onto really off the beaten roads. They were horrible...about 1 1/4 lanes wide...the total road! Dad described it as a goat path with semis (trucks) on it. It was so bad we aborted our mission and got back on the better roads. Here's a picture of one of the roads that was not the worst, but not the best, either:



Here's the better road. Dad calls this the Polish Interstate. Kids, all I can say is be thankful for Eisenhower.




Somewhere we stopped at a place for a cup of soup. It's called Zurek and it's made with fermented rye grain...very different and very good. It even had 2 quarters of a hard boiled egg in it. It sounds weird, but it was really good. here's what it looked like:






It had little pieces of kielbasa in it, too...but I gave most of mine to Dad.

We continued down the the roads and it just seemed like they kept getting worse. We got off the beaten path and went through a very small town (don't blink) with rough shod people and even worse looking houses and buildings. We felt like we were in back woods Mississippi. The day was fairly frustrating and tiring going on these roads. But we don't let things like that ruin our day...we did find humor in it all.

Anyway...we continued on to our destination...the name of the place (I'm not kidding) is Hel. Hel is the farthest point on a peninsula extending out 22 miles from the mainland, just across the Gdansk bay. The little peninsula (called Hel peninsula) is anywhere from 650 ft. wide to 2 miles in width. So today you could very fittingly say we were on the road to Hel. (And at times....it seemed like it). And do you think we made it to Hel today?? Hel, yes!

So our destination was at a place in Hel called Green House ...it looked nice online. As we were driving to Hel, we passed some other nice looking places to stay, but when we got to Hel and saw the Green House, it was appalling...in fact it looked like Hel! It looked like a big cement tenement slum at best. Dad said it looked like a flop house in a military red light district.

So we turned the car around and went back up the road and tried to find a better place to stay. One place was full...but this other place was available. It's just fine and also includes breakfast tomorrow. So I'll just say this...we've been to Hel and back.

So if that doesn't make you groan enough....here's another special picture:



A Pole cat