After the leisurely journey from Warsaw on board the PKP (Polish National Railways) service we had a ten minute walk from the main station (Gdansk Glowny) to our hotel in the old city area. Again we were in a three star hotel, the Wolne Miasto Hotel, and it was a really good clean place for the price and included a decent buffet breakfast too - our rooms were on the third floor so you did need to be a little bit careful of the sloping roof!

Prior to dinner there was chance to visit a coffee shop and have a cocktail - I really do think Starbucks, Nero and Costa in the UK are missing a trick here as they are limiting their clientele to coffee and tea drinkers . . . . . . . anyhow, dinner at the Zuraw Restaurant, adjacent to the Giant Crane (or Zuraw) on the historic waterfront was a bit of a let down. Despite very good reviews it was clearly a bad night for them having already ran out of any chicken (due to them having three large groups in during the day the waiter advised us) and even though we had ordered we then heard the kitchen had closed (and it was only 8.00pm) and two groups of six who had just sat down left the building as a consequence. The waiter assured us that our food would be prepared and even though it eventually did arrive things had taken far too long. When paying our bill, the kitchen was still preparing food and people were still being allowed into the place - it really was a little bizarre. On a positive note the beer that they had on offer, called Kozlak, was an absolute belter - who needs food when there is good beer?

On the Saturday morning we caught the local train to Sopot, just twenty minutes from Gdansk to visit this seaside resort. The new railway station building in Sopot is really swish and clearly they are keen to create a good impression from the moment you arrive in the town. With the sun beating down on us it really was a most pleasant place to wander around and of course to walk along the pier out into the Baltic Sea and on the beach too. The beaches were fairly busy, the ice-cream shops were doing a roaring trade and it seemed like everyone was there to have a good time. We managed a coffee stop (well, beer for me) at the Sofitel Grand Hotel before looking for somewhere to eat lunch at. The Lubrow Brewery Pub/Bar, on the main square, enabled us to enjoy some decfent food (my Mum's first ever beetroot soup!) and a nice sampler rack of beer as we watched the world go by. When I last visited Sopot in December 2005 the beaches were frozen and there was a need for a woolly hat and gloves - what a contrast!

Another fifteen minutes or so along the railway from Sopot and we had arrived in Gdynia and out of the three cities that make up the tri-city area it is noticeably different from Gdansk and Sopot. It certainly is not on the main tourist trail, prices are a bit cheaper than the other two places and there is less English (errr, well none that I saw) on restaurant signs. My best Polish language skills still got the ice-cream flavours we wanted (good job I had my phrase book though to check what was on offer) and drinks. Even though Gdynia it is not the most attractive of places it did maybe feel a bit more real than Sopot and Gdansk which are very touristy by comparison. Another visit in the future will allow a better look around the place and explore a little further, or maybe what we did see between the main railway station and the harbour/marina area was it?

Once back in Gdansk we had dinner at Bar Pod Ryba and the experience was overall a far better one than the previous evening. The food was great and the large potato pancakes stuffed with mushrooms (for Mum) and pork goulash (for me), which were served with shredded cabbage, beetroot and carrot were fabulous - they even had my new favourite beer available on tap! The rather filling meal, including two beers, a glass of wine and a coffee came to around £17.00 - it was so good we booked to go again the following lunchtime.

Sunday morning saw Gdansk shrouded in mist until around 11.00 when the sun started to creep though. After a walk around the marina area we called into the Town Hall building to visit the city museum before having lunch. This time at Bar Pod Ryba we went for the filled baked potatoes which were really good and again great value for somewhere that is within the old town area.

That pretty much saw the weekend be over as it was soon time to head to the airport and catch the Ryanair flight back to Birmingham. The newly built railway out to the airport is very good and you can catch trains to/from Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia from there. The price of a single ticket was a whopping 75p from the main station at Gdansk to the airport - what a bargain!

Overall it was a great weekend and good to show my Mum just a small bit of Poland - given we walked over 25 miles over the course of the weekend she has maybe come home for a rest. I know she really enjoyed her first experience in the country and maybe, just maybe, she will find a reason to go back. She can now at least say "thank-you" and "ice-cream" in Polish so there is no stopping her!

For myself, I have two more visits to Poland this year and will be visiting Poznan and Wroclaw in October and then Lodz, Krakow, Zakopane, Lublin and Rzeszow in November so the spare Polish Zloty (PLN) currency that was leftover will certainly come in very handy.