BootsnAll Travel Community

Hi There!

This summer my mom and I are meeting up in Berlin on Aug. 14th, and we were hoping to visit a bit of Poland, particularly Gdansk. I was wondering how difficult it is to travel around Poland, and if anyone had any recommendations on hostels/cheap hotels, towns to visit, renting a car vs. Train/bus.

We also need to be in London by the Beginning of September. (Sept. 2), But we were hoping to ferry from Netherlands instead of flying. How realistic is it that we can get this done, and again any info would be great!

Thanks!

Travelling around Poland is very easy. You might rent a car if you think you'd move a lot around. But, otherwise you can get anywhere by train, or bus. Train is usually better on longer distances, and bus locally.
Gdansk (my home town) is a great place to visit. It has one of the best old towns in Poland (and Europe), and nice sandy beaches. You'd also enjoy to visit Sopot, which is the seaside town between Gdansk and Gdynia. All the three adjoining cities form Tri-City, which is like one bigger city altogether.
Unless you need to be in Holland, you can fly from Gdansk to London, and the cheapest way is probably wizzair.
For accommodation look at those two links:
hotels
hostels

If you want to travel from mainland Europe to England without flying, it's probably easier/faster/cheaper to take the Eurostar than a ferry. It goes from Brussels, but that's easy to reach from the Netherlands.

I agree with moniak that it's easy to travel around Poland. If you want to see a lot of small towns it may be worth considering renting a car, but otherwise trains and busses are just fine. Gdansk is a great city, beautiful and vibrant. I spent a couple of days there in 2000 and have always wanted to return. I camped there so I can't recommend any hostels or hotels there unfortunately. If you want to add a stopover between Berlin and Gdansk, I would recommend Poznan.

Even if you're ignorant of the language and not too savvy on public transportation it's easy to get around Poland by train or bus. They're both really inexpensive, too. I'm a fan of trains (as opposed to buses) but we found that the bus was a more comfortable ride.

Train travel is allmighty in Poland.

If your going from Berlin, do a stop over in Szczecin(Stettin), Its my home town so im a little biased haha.

And definetly have a look at Malbork Castle when your in and around Gdansk.

My favorite city in Poland is hands down Krakow though. It just leaks polish culture, and there are tons of day trips to do around the city. The salt mines, Aushwitz-Birkenau, Wawel, etc etc.

Thank you so much!!

I am actually going to be in Krakow before with my friend, and we are ending our trip in Berlin, where I'm meeting up with my mom.

Sounds good though, and thank you for all the suggestions!

Poland...ah Poland.

Yes. Doing Poland in that time frame is possible. Getting to London by the specified time is also possible. Of course, having time constraints means only squeezing in the necessary and forgoing aimless wandering, which is sometimes the best way to travel.

Gdansk, Warsaw, Krakow, Malbork, Oswiecim (Auschwitz), and Torun. Hitting these six places would effectively cover the country.

Getting to London would be either two longish train trips or one seriously long train ride across most of the continent. Of course, Easy Jet, Sky Europe and countless other discount airlines make that trip in under two hours!

Enjoy!

Poland is one of my favorite countries. I agree with everything posted above; that train travel is ideal.

I just want to throw in that Wroclaw is a fantastic city.

Is very easy, people is quite helpful there, me and my girlfriend hitchiked around there and it was very good.

Also there are lots of trains but can be problematic to buy the tickets because they dont understand other language but polish. And is difficult to find information in english about trains. But with patience Im sure you can travel where you want

train fares in Poland