June 21, 2019
Our second day in Poland was spent touring the resort cities of Sopot and Gdynia, both located north of Gdansk on the Baltic shoreline. I would compare them to California's Malibu and Laguna Beach--beautiful, indulgent places where the wealthy vacation.
Sopot is marked on the map below with a red pin, about mid-way between Gdynia and Gdansk:
Our guide called Sopot, which is less than 10 miles from Gdansk, "the Polish Riviera." I can see why the Polish elite would want to spend their summers here:
One of the most famous hotels in Poland, and indeed in Europe, is Sopot's Grand Hotel. Built in the 1920s, it was THE place to stay for the rich, famous, and important. Its most infamous guests include Adolf Hitler and Herman Göring. (I wouldn't want to stay in the rooms they slept in, would you?) Over the years, other guests have included King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Fidel Castro, Charles De Gaulle (although he complained that the beds were too short for his 6' 5" frame), Greta Garbo, Vladimir Putin, Reza Shah Pahlavi (the Shah of Iran), and Omar Sharif.
