We very much missed our cathedralquest for the past two years. Two years
ago we had a Baltic sea cruise planned, and Kathleen had a health
problem, and we had to cancel a week before the trip. Last year we had a
family member who had an extended illness, and we didn’t travel so we
could help with her care. This year we were all in good health, so we
planned a trip to Poland.
Why Poland? As some of you know, I love to build paper models of
cathedrals and other historic buildings that we have already visited or
will visit in the future. The Baltic sea cruise was to include time in
Gdansk, and I had a beautiful model of the waterfront which I had made
as well as Malbork Castle, which is near by.
I found that the two papermodel publishers in Poland had a wide
offering of cathedrals and other models. That was very much a deciding
factor in our decision. In all I had 31 papermodel kits of places that
we would visit. I only had six completed before the Cathedralquest
began.
The next question was how are we going to travel around Poland. Since it
has been two years since our last trip and we are both two years older –
I will be 80 next birthday, driving ourselves, as we have on eight of
our eleven past adventures, in a country where we did not know the
language did not seem to make sense to us.
The next option, was to go on a tour. While the first two that we
engaged to Italy and Spain did not meet our expectations, the third tour
to Sicily in 2014 with Colette was outstanding in every way. So we
decided to investigate Colette’s tours of Poland. They offered an
exciting trip which visited very interesting cities and all but one had
models so we booked a Colette tour for 11 days. We needed to add a few
more days, before the tour, somewhere to take a break in our flight. We
decided on Amsterdam.
So we flew to Amsterdam and spent four interesting days exploring
wonderful sites, which I will describe in detail on the daily report.
Then we flew to Warsaw to begin our Colette tour, arriving a day early
to explore a little on our own and the rest for the tour.
The next day we met Marta, our tour manager, and the 40 other tourist.
We were immediately impressed with Marta. She was born in Poland but
moved to the US about 30 years ago. She has been employed by Colette for
over 20 years. She had a delightful Polish accent, along with a vast
knowledge of Polish history which she was constantly sharing with us.
She showed great concern for each of the tourists, and took into
consideration any special needs or problems. She made every aspect of
the tour interesting, informative, fun, exciting, and well organized.
Everything about the Colette tour was almost perfect – who is perfect?
The coach was very comfortable and our driver, Andrew, a very skilled
and careful driver. Almost all of our hotels were top-quality in
locations near the historic area all of our meals were delicious. Our
local tour guides had excellent knowledge of the city and its history
(the law for travel companies is that local guides provide the different
city tours). We did, however, do a lot of walking and each day –
sometimes 6 or 9 miles or more. Our old legs behaved very well.
Our tour began in Warsaw, then to Kraków with a stop at Czestochow to
visit Jasna Gora monastery. After several days in Kraków, the next stop
was Wroclaw, with a three hour stop at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which was a
moving experience.
We had a great time in Wroclaw- I had made the model of the cathedral.
After two days we moved on to Torun- a delightful smaller city with a
surprise stop at Poznan. Our last city was Gdansk with its wonderful
waterfront and great buildings. From Gdansk, on our way back to Warsaw,
we spent several hours at the Teutonic Knights Castle at the Malbork.
Back in Warsaw we had our farewell dinner and left the next morning.
We retraced our steps and spent the night at an airport hotel in
Amsterdam to break up the trip. We flew home with a flight transfer in
Dublin on Tuesday. Poland has had a very interesting and often tragic
history, almost from the very beginning. Someone was always conquering
it – the Tartars, the Swedes, the Prussians, the Russians, Austrians,
the Germans, the Soviets and a lot of other folks. At one time in
history, because Poland had no natural boundaries, its neighbors
encroached and conquered until there was no Poland left. At the end of
World War II, Poland became communist under the dictatorship of the
Soviet Union. It was not until 1988 that Poland was freed from
communism.
During World War II many of the cities like Warsaw and Gdansk were
almost completely destroyed. Polish cities which sustain tremendous
destruction have now been almost totally restored. Each city was a
wonderful experience to visit. A lot of history have been written about
Poland so I will limit my historic remarks; however, I would recommend
two wonderful books which will help you understand Poland’s complicated
history. The first is the classic novel,
Poland, by James Michener. Secondly
Poland – A History by Adam Zamoyski. We were extremely pleased
with everything about the Colette tour and especially about our great
tour manager, Marta.
As I have for the past adventures, what follows is a day-to-day
description of the day’s activity along with history and photos of
places that we visited. There are 16 days and I will put them on as this
siteI finish writing each day, so please come back often so you can read
about this outstanding tour of a very interesting country.
