Gdańsk · Backpacking

Transport is the easy part: a single ZTM ride is 4.80 zł, a 75-minute transfer ticket 6 zł and a 24-hour ticket 22 zł, with children and young people travelling free. The traps are seasonal — an hour in the Sopot aquapark is 79 zł in high summer, more than three days of city travel. With a hostel bed and two meals, most people run at 130–220 zł a day.

MZKZG sells one ticket valid on SKM and Polregio trains and on ZTM Gdańsk, Sopot and ZKM Gdynia buses, trams and trolleybuses across the whole bay area. Sold through the FALA system, at outlets and via the online office. If you are sleeping in one town and sightseeing in another, this is the ticket to ask for.

Polregio runs from a station in front of the terminal, joined to it by a covered footbridge. For the city centre you change at Gdańsk Wrzeszcz, where SKM trains leave from platform 3; some services run straight through to Sopot and Gdynia. Machines take cash and cards, or buy in the Polregio, moBiLET or FALA apps.

A milk bar on the main tourist street of the Main Town, which is unusual — these subsidised canteens are normally exiled to the side roads. Order at the counter, carry your own tray, eat pierogi, soup or naleśniki for a fraction of what the restaurants twenty metres away charge. No alcohol; cash is often easier.

Nine guarded bathing beaches run along the Gdańsk shore, from Jelitkowo and Brzeźno round to Stogi, Sobieszewo and Świbno; lifeguards are on duty roughly 09:45–17:15 from the start of July to the end of August, with Molo Brzeźno and Stogi opening a few days earlier. Outside those dates the sand is still free, just unsupervised.