This is the front entrance.
It's Hotel Gotyk. Right by the old town section of Torun.
Here's our room. Bed and bathroom.
Right around the corner was the home of Coperuicus. He was born in Torun.
We then walked over to the Vistula River.
The receptionist at the hotel told us that we needed to go see the leaning tower. Don't know why it's leaning, but it actually looks like it was built that way. So here's a picture of it.
And here it is on the street that you enter the tower. It was already closed so we didn't get to go inside.
Next we went to visit the old section of town. Every town has an old section. Most of the time they call it the renik.
This is the old town hall. Beautiful buildings.
Here is the statue of Copernicus in the middle of the old section.
Here is the Church of the Holy Spirit. All of the churches are huge. We couldn't go inside this one because they were holding mass or something.
Here's the Church of the Virgin Mary.
Huge chairs, stained glass windows and elaborate artwork everywhere.
(Sorry, me shaking)
And here's another one. This is St. John's Cathedral. This one was beautiful inside also.
Torun is a very small town and all of these churches were within 4 or 5 blocks of each other.
Here's where we ate dinner on Thursday night. A little pizza place right around the corner from our hotel.
We couldn't eat everything so we paid for a little box and gave the remaining pizza to a homeless person on the street.
And here's the breakfast spread in the hotel. The Polish people eat a lot of meats and cheeses and a lot of things we didn't know they were for breakfast. Everything that we chose to eat was very good.
We left Torun about 9:30 and headed north to the largest castle in Poland (maybe Europe). Anyway it was a Teutonic Knights castle and it was huge.
Here are some pictures before we entered.
Most of the castle has been rebuilt. This picture below is what it looked like after the war in 1945.
There were 3 walls and 3 moats with in the castle. This is the first wall.
Here's the gate into the center courtyard.
And the center courtyard.
Here's the entrance through the second wall. There were so many bricks!
They had a chapel inside for the knights to attend. These are part of the stained glass windows.
One of the archways into the inner most part of the castle had carvings of the wedding of Christ and the story of the 10 virgins.
They ground their own wheat for bread.
This kind of shows how big the inner most building was. It was one huge castle. We went in about 11:30 and left at 14:30.
We just tried to show how enormous this place was.
When we left Malbork we drove up to Gdansk. Found our hotel. We had to take a picture of what we saw out of our window. They shined a light on this all night long.
Neptune was a famous figure of Gdansk.
And here's our room.
Our first stop was out to Westerplatt. This is where WWII started. The Germans came up the coast and started bombing.
This is the memorial built to the men who fought valiantly for 5 weeks and then surrendered. They were all killed later in concentration camps. That's me and Wayne in the front.
We were right on the Baltic sea at this point. The Tuellers joined us in Gdansk.
Then on to Old town. This is the Gold Gate.
And this is the Green Gate.
This is the tower of one of the churches in the center of town.
We went back the next morning and went inside. They were having some kind of service for navy men.
This is the pinkest building in the square. We just had to take a picture of it.
This is called the Milk Can Tower
This is the oldest crane in Europe. It could lift up to 4000 kilos from ships that came up the waterway. We went underneath it to look up inside. The ropes that the pulley system uses are very, very large.
Of course we had to stop for lunch. Starting from the left is Elder Tueller, Sister Tueller, Sister Shaw and Elder Shaw. The Shaws are assigned to Gdansk right now.
We have a lot more pictures, but this is getting way too long.
On the way home, we started taking pictures of the overpasses they have here in Poland.
All different colors and shapes and sizes.
Our FHE group is getting bigger every week. I made a chicken casserole that had some seasoned bread in it. It was really good. And we had just enough. I made two of the 13 X 9 pans and everything was gone.
So, it was good to get away for a while, but it sure felt good to get back to the office. And to be with the people we have grown to love. We love it here in Poland. I know why returning missionaries say that their mission was the best two years of their lives. Besides the people you meet, there are many, many spiritual experiences that you have everyday. After FHE on Monday, I met with the sisters and their new investigator that is a Buddhist. She was thrilled when we talked about the Plan of Salvation and how it pertains to her and her family. She said that she finally understands why she is here and what will happen to her after she dies. It was simply awesome to see her face light up with understanding. These are the blessings we are receiving.
