A change of scenery is sometimes all you need.

Last week I was moping around here contemplating the heavy stuff like ‘What is my purpose in life?’ and ‘Why does dinner need to be made EVERY night and can someone’s mom come make us dinner tonight instead?’ (Mom that question is for you!) and finally, ‘Where will Miss H grow her roots?’.

But then the weekend came.  Mr F and I had a date night planned and we decided to go on with it anyway even though I came down with a horrible sore throat.  (We hadn’t seen each other in a while with all his travels.)  Good thing we did because he had actually bought plane tickets to Gdansk in secret.

I didn’t find out where we were actually going until sitting at the airport looking at the departures board watching which flight was boarding next.  It’s nice to have a surprise once in a while.

Gdansk, Gydnia and Sopot are three cities next to each other on the Baltic.  This is the Polish seaside, and The Spot to go in the summer.  It is apparently super busy with loads of traffic.   For us, off season is much better.  We prefer to avoid the scene and hordes of tourists fighting over a spot on the beach.

We stayed in the spa town of Sopot, and in our short 24 hours walked along the pier there and beachfront.

The main port city is Gdansk. I did not know anything about it until we moved to Warsaw last fall, and I started reading Polish literature and history and saw a few great movies.

Gdansk is where the Polish Solidarity movement began, with Lech Walesa in the shipyards, that brought an end to Communism.   It is steeped in history before that time as well and there is a lot to see there.  We will certainly go when we have more time.

Since our time was short, we stayed in Sopot for our walk and dinner.   Dinner included traditional Polish soup called Zurek.  It is a little sour and garlicky and has sausage and boiled eggs in it.  This one was really good, and the perfect thing for my sore throat.

I realized on this trip that I need to spend more time exploring Poland outside of Warsaw. On our next trip we would use beautiful and calm (in the off-season) Sopot as a base to explore the area including touring Gdansk.

So…after the weekend away, have I solved any of those existential questions weighing on my mind?   No.  But they don’t seem so heavy this week.  The answers will come in time.

It was certainly nice though to have the change of scenery and some time near the sea!