Things to do in Pomeranian Voivodeship

The Pomeranian Voivodeship covers about 18,300 square kilometres of Baltic coast, lakes and river delta. Gdańsk is its capital. Tours in the Pomeranian Voivodeship leave from there, and things to do sort into the Tricity, the delta and the spits.

The Tricity and the delta

Gdańsk, Sopot and Gdynia form the Tricity. They run together along the Bay of Gdańsk, and fast urban trains link them every 6 to 30 minutes.

• Sopot. A resort with a pier 511.5 metres long, the longest wooden pier in Europe.
• Gdynia. A fishing village turned seaport in the 1920s. Its modernist centre, built almost from scratch between 1926 and 1939, is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The destroyer ORP Błyskawica and the sailing ship Dar Pomorza are museum ships in the harbour.
• Malbork. The Teutonic Order's brick castle on the Nogat, a UNESCO site since 1997. About half of it was destroyed in 1945. A basement exhibition shows nearly 2,000 amber pieces, and the town is about 40 minutes from Gdańsk by train.
• Stutthof. The Nazi camp near Sztutowo, run from September 1939 to May 1945 and now a museum. It stands on the Vistula Spit, which runs east to the Russian border.

Spits, dunes and the west

The Hel Peninsula is a sand bar about 35 km long, in places only 100 to 200 metres wide. A road and a railway run along it to the town of Hel. Winter storms sometimes turn it into an island.

• Kashubia. Lakes and woods west of Gdańsk. Kashubian, the local language, has been an official regional language since 2005.
• Łeba. About 105 km from Gdańsk, beside the Słowiński National Park, a UNESCO biosphere reserve. Its dunes advance 3 to 10 metres a year.

How the tours run

Guided tours here are private. The longest, to Toruń, takes ten hours and leaves the voivodeship, as does the transfer to Warsaw.

Practical

• Weather. July and August afternoons run 22 to 23C along the coast, and Hel stays near 22C. January days sit near 2C.
• Distances. Hel is about 100 km from Gdańsk and Łeba about 105, so each takes a day of its own.
• Stutthof. The museum opens daily, and from October to April it closes at 3 pm.
• Trains. The Tricity line runs on to Wejherowo and Lębork.