Let me tell you about Sopot. You may not have heard of it. I didn’t know about it before now. Most of my friends have never heard of it either.
I wouldn’t have known about it at all had it not been for my brother, Raymond, and my sister-in-law Helena.
They come to Sopot often to see Helena’s Polish relatives and for a little holiday time, sometimes with grandkids.
Yes, Sopot is in Poland. It’s a ittle seaside town on the Baltic Sea, just a short distance from Gdansk.
Look up Sopot on Wikipedia, you’ll learn that it and Gdansk and Gdynia form a “tri-city metropolitan area”.
You’ll also learn that Sopot is famous for its health spas, sandy beach and its long wooden pier – the longest of its kind in Europe – that juts out into the Bay of Gdansk.
Sopot is also famous for its surreal, fairy-tale Crooked House, located in the town centre.
The town has a nice shoreline with clean, flat, sandy beach and closeby there are more desolate coastline areas as well as an inland forest with miles of hiking trails. This area apparently is also popular with campers.
Tourists from Scandinavia, particularly Norway and Sweden, know about Sopot and come here regularly along with visitors from Germany and some Brits. But it is still mostly undiscovered by North Americans.
We came here, after completing our Italy Islands and Lakes Tour and after our short time in Saint Petersburg to meet up with my brother and his wife for a little catch up time.
We arrived in an electrical storm with forked-lightning streaking across the sky and torrential rain beating down. It was a dramatic entrance.
But the weather changed quickly and it has been summery with temperatures soaring between 25 and 27 C all the time we’ve been here.
We checked in to the Grand Hotel, a big, old-fashioned hotel with modern rooms and a beautiful garden and panoramic views of the beach and Baltic Sea.
Our room has a Juliet-balcony with pelargoniums in window boxes on the railings. The unobscured view of the beach front was an unexpected treat.
Sopot, we soon discovered, is a pleasant, family-friendly seaside town with all the things needed to keep every member of the family happy during a vacation.
My bother knows Sopot like the back of his hand. He’s been here many times. The town presses all the right buttons with his sensibilities for comfort, convenience and cultural content.
First morning here, he and Helena, walked us into town and out on to the wide, long wooden pier.
The sun was shining, the waves were lapping softly on the shore, there was the sound of children laughing as they played. Everything was very calm and pleasant.
We strolled to the end of the pier, looked back at the hotel and the town, then strolled back again. Very relaxing.
The town itself consists of a central, spacious, tidy, neatly-paved square, lined by cafes, restaurants and gift shops.
For kids, there are little electric cars they can drive around for amusement. Amazingly, the kids manage to do this without crashing into anyone or doing any other mischief. Where did all these well-behaved children come from?
While the kids are motoring around the square, parents enjoy sipping coffee in a sidewalk cafe or just sit chatting and relaxing and enjoy the town’s uncomplicated ambience and uncluttered ocean views.
There’s a long, straight, flat walking path the runs parallel to the beach. Alongside this there’s another equally long, straight, flat bicycle lane for those keen to effortlessly pedal off into the distance.
By the time we got into town, the weather was back to blue skies and being bright and sunny and warm. As I say, it hit about 25 C most days.
Flower boxes looked wonderful and were filled with mint and pansies and pelargoniums and fuchsias and blue grasses and all sorts of other stuff.
But what is most striking in the town centre are the rows of pollarded lime trees, all neatly clipped to keep them down to a manageable size while still allowing them to provide light, restful, dappled shade.
For a change of pace, we nipped over to Gdansk and walked the town from top to bottom, side to side.
We saw the new super chic, high-tech iron bridge that lifts and closes to allow tall ships in and out of the harbour.
We walked the quaint cobbled streets where houses have facades with a distinctly Dutch-look, very similar to the front of buildings you’d see in Amsterdam.
Gdansk is friendly and prices are reasonable. The exchange rate is about 3.5 zloty to 1 Canadian dollar. The euro is about 4 to 1, and even though Poland is in the EU, it is still attached to its zloty and reluctant to give it up entirely. You can pay in euros but you will get change in zloty. Most stores and restaurants and taxi drivers prefer you to pay them in zloty.
We didn’t come here to do much. We came to stroll the streets and talk and stop and drink coffee and stroll a little more and chat and stop again and have another coffee, perhaps this time with cake or ice cream.
Our time was not about exploring Poland or Polish culture; it was all about seeing family and catch up on news.
However, we were very impressed by what we found. Gdansk and Sopot clearly have some talented municipal leaders and especially some far-sighted urban planners.
We loved the way they have incorporated clever landscape features, such as a kids water park, into the town centre as well as how other key landscape elements were carefully and well-maintained.
The atmosphere in Sopot is safe, upbeat and pleasant, just what you’d expect from a happy, seaside place where people want to spend time on the beach making sandcastles or swimming in the sea or just walking the pier and listing to music.
We spent time buying new sunglasses and tasting a few Polish specialty dishes.
Anyway, take a closer look at Sopot and Poland. I suspect it is a place more of us would enjoy visiting.
I think I would like to come back and explore more of this country.
swhysall@hotmail.com
