Last weekend, my coworker and next-door-neighbor went with me to Old
Town on a little field trip to 'educate' me on the town's history and
sights. It was a fun time, and thanks to the fact that my co-worker is
also a teacher, I can safely say that I feel sufficiently educated.
We
started at the Archaeological and Historical Museum at the edge of Old
Town. The museum houses a lot of medieval objects excavated from Old
Town as well as old crafted items from the 17th and 18th centuries when
Elblag was a rich port city. The museum itself is pretty small, and when
we arrived in the early afternoon, we were pretty much the only
visitors, so of course I joked that we were like VIPs getting the museum
all to ourselves. The museum employee followed us around to unlock
doors for us and show us where to go. According to my friend, every
Polish museum worth its salt will have an amber museum as a feature, and
sure enough, the Elblag museum had one in the basement. They also
happened to put some creepy realistic(ish) looking wax-figures in the
basement with the display, and I managed to keep running into them,
thinking they were real, and freaking out. This happened three times (at
least, that's all I'm going to admit to)!
When we were done with our private tour of the museum, we decided to get a snack. And by snack, I mean fancy gourmet-style cheesecake from the famous Elblag Hotel. Now, I promise that I'm not usually one of those tourists that take pictures of every single thing they eat, but in this case I couldn't resist.
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| It's just so pretty! |
Next, we explored some of the nooks and crannies of Old Town. Off to the side of one street, sheltered within the buildings, is the Church Path, a narrow passage which used to lead from the very center of Old Town to the gate of the Dominican Church. Now it's shorter and just connects two streets, but it's still kind of cool.
The Art Museum, 'Gallery El,' was our next destination, and the one I was most looking forward to visiting. The gallery is located in the former Dominican Church of Mary. On the walls and floors inside there are sepulchral stones with epitaphs dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries etched with names of nobles and merchant families. Inside and outside there are some interesting art displays, some more enigmatic than others.
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| For example, this 2-story shopping cart |
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| The outside of Gallery El |
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| Ruins surrounding the gallery |
We followed up our tour of the town by heading to a bar located right on the canal, where I was encouraged to try the 'EB beer,' made locally from Elblag's very own Elbrewery. I actually liked it a lot, especially considering I'm typically not big on beer. But I think they should call it Elbeer instead of EB, because anything that sounds okay with the pre-fix 'El,' in this town should definitely take advantage of that.
