Our second day in Gdansk, we walked and climbed till our legs couldn’t take it any more. The day started at St. Mary’s Church. The church was begun in 1343 and reached it’s present gigantic size in 1502. It began as a Catholic parish church and then passed to the Protestants during the reformation and from 1572 until WWII it was used by them.
It’s not so impressive from the outside, but inside you feel like an ant. The astronomical clock was constructed in the 1460s and it shows the hour, day, month and year, along with phases of the moon, the positions of the sun and moon in the zodiac cycle and the calendar of the saints.
One attraction we couldn’t ignore was to climb the church tower. It’s about 230 feet high and to get to the top you have to climb up 405 steps.
The steps are numbered so you don’t forget.
There’s an observation platform at the top and it gives a panoramic view of the whole city.
I thought about earthquakes on the way up, but when I saw the date on top, I figured we were pretty safe. Needless to say, the climb down was harder on the knees than the climb up. Our legs felt like rubber and we hurt for the rest of the day.
The problem was, there was more climbing to do. I still wanted to explore the Big Crane from the inside. 
This is a model that was in the museum built inside the crane. In order to really experience it you had to climb to the different levels. 
The giant wheels were driven by man power. 
The crane also offered some interesting views of the damage from WWII and the new harbor.
No comments:
Post a Comment