Europe cruise (Day 25)

Day 25 found us sitting in the port of Gdynia, Poland. There were no Princess sponsored accessible excursions so Mary and I decided to walk into town. We were up and to breakfast by 9:00. I had hash browns and orange juice. Mary had a bigger breakfast. The skies were partly cloudy but it was only maybe 50 degrees. We wore our jackets onshore. Off the ship we had our pictures taken. We were told the walk into town was about ten minutes. That was true to a certain extent. The area of town where there were shops and stuff was more like a 45 minute walk. It was a pretty day and thankfully the sidewalks were good.  Nick, our busboy passed us. A little later Meow passed us. On the way in we didn’t stop anywhere. I was taking time lapse videos. We walked half a mile into where the shops started. There was a church. Of course, Mary had to stop. While she was inside I watched the people. Gram and Anna (Australian couple we did St Petersburg and other tours with) showed up. We talked to them for a few minutes before going our separate ways. There was a Starbucks across the street. We agreed to get a cup of tea (Mary) and coffee (Jim). It took 20 minutes to get our order. Not that I cared. I was watching the world go by. We sat there for maybe half an hour chilling. Perfect spot for people watching. A few doors down was a souvenir shop. Mary got magnets. Down several blocks was a ice cream/pastry/etc. shop. We bought two Polish cookies – I’m not sure what made them Polish. They tasted like oatmeal. We also bought perogies. We didn’t know what was inside of them until we ate them on the ship. We think they were filled with mushrooms. All the way down to where the shops started was a lone door with Alkohol stenciled on the door. I couldn’t get in because the shop had a step to get in (it seemed almost every shop had step(s)), I asked Mary to see if they had a cheap red wine.  A few minutes later she came out with a $5 Carlo Rossi. The sales guy recommended it. I don’t have much confidence it will be any good, but it’ll be a $5 experiment. All along the way Mary was taking pictures of this and that. Coming back seemed quicker. When we got back onboard we went to he room. We spent just short of five hours onshore. In many respects, I think I’ll remember Gdynia as one of my favorite stops. We did it our way. We ventured into town – no map just followed others. We took our time. We tried some local fare. No/few cobblestones. It was a perfect day weather wise. A great way to spend our last stop. Mary napped. I worked on this log. We turned in my coupon for five beers. I’ve had two already. Mary went to Thomas Kinkade lecture. She learned about his history and the “N”s. She has been bitten by the art bug. Another hobby 😊

Thursday, September 12, 2019

I’m picking up the story of Day 25. I’m actually writing this Thursday night almost midnight. All signs point to disembark Saturday morning. We knew this day would come. I think we’re just hoping it wouldn’t come so soon – not complaining by any means. In order to attempt to adjust to the time difference a little bit we         are going to stay up later tonight. Not much later, but a couple hours. So, going back to day 25 – yesterday – after Mary returned from the Kinkade lecture we got cleaned up for dinner. At dinner we were seated in the same area. We had a bottle of wine left over from the previous night so we managed to kill that. For my appetizer I had a venison and quail terrine. Very different and very good. For my entrée I had seafood stuffed trout which was amazing. Mary had her big salad and she decided on fried chicken. She was happy with her choice to. I had ice cream – chocolate peanut butter. Mary had cookies with her tea. It was another very nice dinner. For whatever reason though Meow and Nick were crazy slow. The dinner was more than 2 ½ hours long. I’m not complaining but it made us miss some picture stops. We had to go straight from dinner to bingo. At bingo we did not win anything. We did hit a few picture taking stops before they closed at 10 o’clock. There were some good themes this time. For example there was one where we were behind a three card poker table. We had on a hat and we held cards. They were pretty cool pictures. After that we made it back to the room. I started to watch a movie called the hummingbird project or something similar. It didn’t have captions so I did my best to understand what was going on. We crashed shortly thereafter. I would say that we slept pretty well. I only woke up Mary a couple of times. So that wraps up day 25. It was our last onshore adventure. As I mentioned above, it was a good adventure.