Welp. We’ve done it again. We flew the coup by flying to Europe! In true form, we decided to take advantage of the downtime in boat life and travel the quicker way (via plane) to Poland to kick off a mini-tour of some new places in Europe. So we found an affordable flight to Warsaw (via LOT Airlines), and left the Chesapeake Bay and its unbearable August heat/humidity behind.
It took a few hops to get from Deale, MD to Gdynia, Poland (our first stop), so we broke the trip into multiple legs flying Regan National (DCA) to JFK (NYC) and JFK to Warsaw to get us into the country. We spent a day in Warsaw, and then took a train north to the Polish coastal town of Gdynia, where there are many shipbuilders and a small boat show the weekend of our visit.
Why Poland? Well, we heard it’s cool, both literally (averaging 75F as the high temp most days) and figuratively (the people are amazing), and there’s a boat builder here that we wanted to explore more of.
What about Loka, you say? One of the reasons we felt comfortable leaving her in the yard is that we have known vendors working on the project. They’ve done this repair before on a sister ship, so the unknowns are likely to be few and far between. We’ve been in close contact with the vendors, and the project is progressing (getting regular reports). Given that, we felt comfortable heading east and exploring some different parts of the world.
Three Cities in Two Weeks
So far, we’ve spent a day in Warsaw, a week in Gdynia, and have just arrived in Gdansk for a week. The weather has been generally cooler and pleasant. The food has been very tasty. We’ve been indulging in all the Polish delicacies such as perogies, soups, seafood from the Baltic, sausages, breads, and chanterelles in everything!
Our Polish is still pretty terrible (it’s a very challenging language), and everyone we’ve interacted with has been kind regardless. We know enough words to say hello (jen-dobry), thank you (jen-ku-yah), and sparkling water (voda gazo-vana)…the most important things! And we arrived in Gdansk smack in the middle of a citywide festival, St Dominic’s Fair, featuring food, artisans, and designers from the Pomeranian region (the “county” where Gdansk is situated).
One thing we’re observing as we travel is how we utilize the LLMs (aka chatbots). We are using them to get better contextual interpretations of Polish phrasing. We’ve also use it to find Polish/European products to replace items we run out of or didn’t bring (nail polish remover, sunscreen, etc.), which makes buying that stuff a lot less risky. That doesn’t stop us from buying the “wrong” product at the grocery store, though! In my attempt to buy instant coffee, I bought a grain-based coffee substitute called Inka. Turns out, Inka has no caffeine, which makes it a nice evening beverage. The adventurous purchases are still an important part of our travel experience.
Where Next?
Where we’ll go next is still TBD, but we have some interesting prospects. We may head northwest to Denmark and possibly Sweden. Or we may head west towards the Netherlands and then maybe towards the south of France, an area we have very high on our list.
Much like sailing, we are looking at weather, routing (trains), and considering crowds/events. Summer in Europe is a special time that also includes a lot more people than we normally surround ourselves with. As a result, we’ll likely be looking at smaller towns with easy access to the big cities.
Discover more from SV Loka
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.