Malbork Castle

 This was probably my favorite stop on our trip. I actually didn't know about this castle until I got a book from the library about Poland. All my googling and pinteresting about northern Poland or gdansk nothing came up. So I am very glad I picked up the book at the library. The malbork castle is actually the biggest castle in the world! Some people don't want to believe it because it's not the tallest in size but it is the largest in land mass and definitely the largest brick castle in the world so very cool. 

It was raining the day we explored the castle but since it was our last day on the trip we knew we had to go raining or not. Luckily we brought our rain jackets on the trip so we were all set. We got to the main enterances visitors center and the line was really long for tickets but there was a kiosk to buy tickets to so I got in the kiosk line and clark got in the regular line. I ended up getting the tickets first and then we went to get our audio guides. There is only two options for tickets either with an audio guide or a guided tour. It kind of makes since because the castle is so huge that you really would have no idea where to do or what your looking at if you didn't have some sort of guide. 

The audio guide was amazing and very well done. It actually had a gps in it so when you moved from location to location or from room to room it knew where you were and would start telling you about that. It also told you where to go next. We followed it pretty closely. I think a couple of the rooms we skipped out a little early but other than that it was so interesting that we definitely were glad to keep listening. 

We also learned that there is a place to buy tickets once inside the castle walls so you don't have to buy tickets at the visitors center on the main side. Just an FYI. There was no line at the ticket stand inside the castle. But we didn't know.

The Malbork castle was severely destroyed in WWII and they actually just finished all the reconstruction snd restoration in 2016 so this is the first year you can see it in all its original glory again so that was very exciting. It is also a world heritage site. 

There was so many cool rooms to explore and so many churches, chapels, kitchens, cafeterias, all within one castle. Im sure if you lived in the olden days you could be in the castle for months and months and never even leave. Another thing we loved about the audio guide was that we got to go in these little rooms and there secret doors. I told clark that if we didn't have the audio guide there is no way we would have known about some of the areas and passageways.

You can climb up to the very top of the highest watchtower. It was a little extra money. 8 zloty a person which is about $2.20 USD so for us it was worth it. We had come that far we might as well go all the way to the top as well. The climb to the top was a lot but the view was worth it. We got an amazing 360 degree view of the grounds and the town of Malbork. The castle was seriously one of our favorite things we did on the whole trip. I think I loved it so much because of how well organized it all was and we got so much information about the castle. It was really very cool.

We then went back to Elblag, Poland which is there we stayed the last night of our trip and we went to this little cafe to get dessert and there was a super friendly cat that came and sat on our laps. I had to snap a photo haha. 

This is my last post from our Poland, Lithuania, Latvia trip. I am so glad that I got them all up within about a week. I am trying to stay caught up on posting. 
love, Carlee

Rain jacket: North Face

Leggings: Nike

Nike Shoes: Amazon