the baltic sea on a windy day.
throughout our stay in dębina we often made tiny explorations around the village, morning walks along the beach or above the cliffs. it doesn't need much to make me happy, and just being near the sea is one of those few little things. and sometimes it doesn't need a myriad of words to properly describe my love for the sea - sometimes the fact that i took pictures to remember those days by the sea totally suffices. the sea doesn't need to be explained, it needs to be felt, and taken in and let it devour your sense of being as part of a greater image, beyond any imagination.
tiny paths above the cliffs leading through beech and pine woods. i think we were strolling into the direction of poddąbie that day.
walking over entangled roots ❤
and always a sneak peak down to the sea.
along the path towards poddąbie you will encounter some old barbed wire fences, they belonged to the premises of the 69th squadron of the polish air defense army. they worked with missile artillery from 1974 to 1992, and since then the place is not used anymore. i didn't dare to enter the area back then, though, as you never know if it's still used to some capacity. even though there were some big holes in the fence and also fallen concrete poles, so it would've been easy so step inside and see what's left. apparently there's a bunker still on site, but other than that most of the constructions seem to have been dismantled.
another sea image, perhaps?
i like to imagine this being a skull of an unknown beast.
a tree stump with a view.
raising its arms in worship of the sea.
eventually we made it down to the beach. love finding these old trees turned into some sort of sculptures.
water puddles creating a work of art in the sand.
abstract art created by nature 😍
i could've made hundreds of pictures of the sand that day! looking at these gives me great peace of mind. i feel like these should get framed and hung up on the walls somehow, don't you think?
found a random lifesaver.
bless those old withering trees, even when they've been burnt at one end. finding endless inspiration in these unintented sculptures!
endless beachwalking.
overgrown cliffs 💚
erosion takes down trees even on smaller cliffs.
❤
an image of dots - microscopic and sanded down, rocky and polished, alive and wearing a red dress with black polkadots ⏳🌑🐞
oh, how i love these wild beaches so much! 💖 and isn't it interesting how the colour of sand can change so much, only a few hundred meters away and depending on the insolation? i love that about the sea, you never know what might await you.
love me a rocky beach ❤
rolling waves weathering and polishing all these rocks, little by little, over aeons of time.
starting with this critter ( found on the wall of the local insect museum )! łeba did actually not feel super welcoming to me, it is a tourist destination through and through. it caters especially to families with kids and cheap pleasure-seekers, which the existence of amusement parks and many discos and bars proved to me. it didn't have many charming spots, but if you left the town core you were able to find at least a tiny bit of respite in the less populated areas. oh, and i liked the harbour parts a lot. but harbours i like in general 😉 even when there's an amusement park looming around the corner.
the beach of łeba. in the far back you can see the hotel neptun, a former casino/spa hotel.
a closer look. beach chairs are actually rather a german thing, up until our visit in łeba i hadn't seen any on the beaches we've been to. hotel neptun was built in 1906 on a dune, which would lead to problems as it had to endure lots of disastrous storms that threatened the building to collapse. fortunately it never came to such an event and it still stands today.
the red of this sea rescue booth is creating such a cool contrast to the beach landscape 😍
walking towards the port entrance.
one thing all polish harbours seem to have in common is the blue meets yellow colour coordination and of course the use of concrete. the port entrances also seem super long, reaching far into the land until they hit the actual harbour. but it might be that's actually always the case and i am just unknowing 😂
but this entrance really stretched out pretty much, that fact i definitely did not miss out on. i read that it was about 2 kilometres long.
this part of the port entrance seemed newly renovated, the concrete was much lighter. you can see some yachts in the back, protected in a separate basin.
moving out to the sea. it was actually pretty nice to sit down on the quay walls and watch the yachts come in and out. the concrete saved the warmth of the sun and radiated it again, making it super pleasurable to watch the sceneries, despite strong and cool winds.
almost a picture perfect scenery :) by the way, the canal leading out into the baltic sea is actually a river that bears the name of the city ( or is the city bearing the name of the river? ), the river łeba.
harbour appliances and gadgets are my favourite thing. this construction probably loads or unloads smaller boats into or out of the port entrance.
typical fisher boats lined up.
what would a polish harbour be without at least one hanseatic ship? 😅 of course you need to serve the tourists some real life hanseatic experience, taking a cruise just outside the harbour on the 'high sea'.
a closer look the intricate decorations. actually quite liked this ship!
in front of the first one was another one!
bot of them were super shiny and quite majestic. cruises with both of these ships can be booked here, though they seem only to operate in summer.
fell in love with this cheeky guy ❤
on the other side of the harbour you had a view on a fun fair. i think it was a contemporary thing, i couldn't find any further informations on it.
these are only my cup of tea if i can ride the ferris wheel or that big chairoplane ( or a rollercoaster ), otherwise i'm not too interested in these kinda things. i used to love going on fun fairs as a kid ( i think every kid does ), but as i got older i started to detest the hype and shindig that comes with these. plus, there's always too many people in places like this 😂
that chairoplane actually quite appealed to me!
another historic-looking boat, this time a viking one! found this super cool, actually 😍 what i couldn't find, though, was any information about this boat, only a hint that this serves as a bar.
łeba has another harbour basin, through which the river chełst flows ( which discharges into the łeba river ). this basin is pretty narrow and small, which created a cute atmosphere of a little fishermen's district.
fish restaurants and smokehouses could be found along the chełst canal, and we had dinner in one of them ( not this one, though ). while i can't remember the name of the restaurant anymore, i have to say the food was amazing regardless. in all the time we've stayed in poland, every single restaurant or cafe we sat down in never disappointed. polish people seem to be quite the hosts!
tiny petrol and service station that i found interesting.
and a random brickstone building i liked, because it was the only brickstone building in the whole street and i also loved the cobblestone pavement.
the architecture in łeba didn't really knock me off my socks. in many of the smaller towns there wasn't really a unique cityscape, actually. the only thing i noticed again and again were horizontal elongated dwellings and the checkerboard houses i mentioned a few posts ago, but it wasn't like a coherent thing. i think that also has to do with the fact that many of the now bigger towns grew quickly due to a rise in tourist activity, when they've just been sleepy, almost forgotten fisher villages before, with only a heap full of houses. it was strange to me that places like rowy and łeba, which both are established destinations, had so little character ( mainly only when a harbour was involved they did start to shine a little ). like they are mainly comprised of a lot of resorts, bungalow parks, hotels and guest rooms, and only some small amount of the structures you can find there are actually traditional and historic. i guess i just like being transported into a different time architecturally, making out specific details and learning about the local history. but when everything is kinda bland and adhers to the system that is housing as many tourists as possible, it is hard for me to find an emotional and inspirational connection to a place.
ah, well, but not all was boring and bland, even if i make it sound like it 😂 that's why it's important to stay curious 😉
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