Gdańsk grew rich on its port, and Gdynia was built from scratch as one, so the sea is never far from a family day out here. Kids can climb aboard real museum ships, ride a boat out through the working harbor and look out from a lighthouse on the Baltic cliffs. Here's what we checked, from the medieval crane on the Motława to the tall ships moored in Gdynia.
Baltic Sail is Gdańsk's tall ships festival, held in the city since 1997. Sailing ships moor along the Motława in the Old Town, and the Szanty pod Żurawiem shanty festival plays on land beside them.
Kids can walk the quay looking up at the masts, then head to the children's zone to learn sailors' knots, sew their own flag and watch an Optimist dinghy take shape.
Święto Morza is Gdynia's yearly sea festival, a run of events spread around the city. Kids can see rescue ships up close, watch professional rescue demonstrations, follow a colorful parade and hear sea shanties.
Some neighborhoods add days of their own, from a fishing-history evening in Oksywie to a retro Sunday in Orłowo. A few events are formal ceremonies, so pick the lively ones with younger kids.
Gdynia Sailing Days is Poland's largest sailing festival, held every year on the sea in Gdynia. Out on the water, regattas range from Optimist, sailed by the youngest racers, to the spectacular 49er and 470 classes.
On land, the festival adds attractions. It suits kids who love boats and the sea, and watching needs no Polish.
The Crane is a mid-15th-century port crane and city gate, the largest and oldest of its kind in Europe. Inside, a multimedia exhibition with walk-through sets recreates the 17th-century port: how ships found their way into harbor, the goods that arrived, old shipbuilding methods, and a historic tavern.
The visit ends at the crane's lifting mechanism, driven by wooden treadwheels 6 meters across.
A branch of the National Maritime Museum in a brick-and-glass building on the Motława. Its interactive hall, "People, Ships, Ports", has over 60 stations: ship and bathyscaphe simulators, a lifeboat and evacuation chute, and a pool with a wind generator where kids sail remote-controlled model ships.
Over 40 traditional boats fill the glass lobby and the "Boats of Peoples of the World" exhibition, from a Venetian gondola to a sampan.
Sołdek is a steam-powered coal and ore carrier, the first seagoing ship built in Poland after World War II and the world's only one of its kind still preserved. Between 1949 and 1981 it made 1,479 voyages.
On board are four cargo holds, crew rooms and a fully equipped engine room. Below deck, the exhibition "Sołdek and its times" covers Polish shipbuilding and sea trade after the war.
Dar Pomorza is a three-masted sailing ship built in 1909 that trained Polish merchant navy cadets from the 1930s to the 1980s. It is now a museum ship moored at Pomorskie Quay in Gdynia.
Kids walk the main deck and go below through four levels: the commander's room, mess, ship's hospital, wheelhouse and engine room, each kept with objects from the ship and its crews.
The Naval Museum in Gdynia tells the story of the Polish Navy from 1918 to joining NATO, with a modern permanent exhibition, models of old sailing ships, and an armory of real naval guns, torpedoes and sea mines, many taken from Polish warships.
Next to it sits ORP Sokół, a Norwegian-built submarine that served until 2018. Kids can step inside the 47-meter hull that carried a crew of 21.
Gdynia Aquarium spreads more than 200 water species over eight halls on five floors, from Amazon tropics and a coral reef to the open Pacific, the Baltic and the cold North Atlantic. The Cold Seas hall, opened in 2024 below sea level in the basement, holds unusual jellyfish and crustaceans.
It is run by the National Marine Fisheries Research Institute, and a free web app guide explains each animal.
The Emigration Museum fills the historic Maritime Station (Dworzec Morski) in Gdynia's port. Its permanent exhibition follows the Sikora family to America, and kids can step into a transatlantic liner cabin, an aircraft interior and a Fiat 125p, touch and smell exhibits, and peek through spyholes in the walls.
The Little Traveller Room has books on travel and cultures and a model of the MS Batory liner.
Żegluga Gdańska's white passenger boats leave the quay by the Green Gate and sail through the harbor to Westerplatte, the peninsula where the first shots of World War II were fired in 1939. The route doubles as a tour of the port.
Ashore are the ruined barracks, the Guard House No. 1 museum and the Monument of the Coast Defenders. Best for school-age kids into ships or history.
Kościuszko Square is the seafront heart of Gdynia: a fountain, modernist townhouses and the Maritime Poland monument. It runs straight onto the South Pier, built on a man-made peninsula into the sea.
Moored along the quay are two museum ships, the warship ORP Błyskawica and the tall ship Dar Pomorza. Further out are the Avenue of Passenger Ships, the Joseph Conrad monument, the Sails monument and the Gdynia Aquarium.
ORP Błyskawica is a 114-meter Polish Navy destroyer launched in 1936 at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, and the oldest surviving destroyer in the world. She fought through all of World War II, from the Dunkirk evacuation to the Normandy landings.
Now a museum ship moored in Gdynia, she still flies the naval ensign and keeps her own crew, and hosts official Navy ceremonies.
Galeon Lew is a passenger ship built to look like a 17th-century galleon, sailing under the Polish flag from the Długie Pobrzeże waterfront. The run to Westerplatte passes the Gdańsk Shipyard, the repair yard, the docks and Wisłoujście Fortress, while a guide tells the history in Polish, German and English. Sea shanties play on deck and there is a bar on board.
Rozewie Lighthouse stands on a beech-wooded cliff at Cape Rozewie, on the open Baltic coast. Visitors climb the 33-meter tower, first lit in 1822, up to the lantern. The tower holds a lighthouse-keeping exhibition, and the grounds include the restored engine room, the Stodoła gallery of marine art, and a granite bust of the writer Stefan Żeromski, whose name the lighthouse carries.
The museum fills the B-2 "Bruno" emplacement, one of the German Schleswig-Holstein gun batteries built in the forest 1.5 km from Hel's center during WWII. Inside, exhibitions cover the 32-day defense of Hel in 1939 and the history of the Polish Navy.
Outside, an open-air park among the pines holds big hardware kids can walk around: cannons, sea mines, torpedoes and launchers, boats, fire trucks and narrow-gauge rail cars.
Gdańsk grew rich on its port, and Gdynia was built from scratch as one, so the sea is never far from a family day out here. Kids can climb aboard real museum ships, ride a boat out through the working harbor and look out from a lighthouse on the Baltic cliffs. Here's what we checked, from the medieval crane on the Motława to the tall ships moored in Gdynia.
Baltic Sail is Gdańsk's tall ships festival, held in the city since 1997. Sailing ships moor along the Motława in the Old Town, and the Szanty pod Żurawiem shanty festival plays on land beside them.
Kids can walk the quay looking up at the masts, then head to the children's zone to learn sailors' knots, sew their own flag and watch an Optimist dinghy take shape.
Święto Morza is Gdynia's yearly sea festival, a run of events spread around the city. Kids can see rescue ships up close, watch professional rescue demonstrations, follow a colorful parade and hear sea shanties.
Some neighborhoods add days of their own, from a fishing-history evening in Oksywie to a retro Sunday in Orłowo. A few events are formal ceremonies, so pick the lively ones with younger kids.
Gdynia Sailing Days is Poland's largest sailing festival, held every year on the sea in Gdynia. Out on the water, regattas range from Optimist, sailed by the youngest racers, to the spectacular 49er and 470 classes.
On land, the festival adds attractions. It suits kids who love boats and the sea, and watching needs no Polish.
The Crane is a mid-15th-century port crane and city gate, the largest and oldest of its kind in Europe. Inside, a multimedia exhibition with walk-through sets recreates the 17th-century port: how ships found their way into harbor, the goods that arrived, old shipbuilding methods, and a historic tavern.
The visit ends at the crane's lifting mechanism, driven by wooden treadwheels 6 meters across.
A branch of the National Maritime Museum in a brick-and-glass building on the Motława. Its interactive hall, "People, Ships, Ports", has over 60 stations: ship and bathyscaphe simulators, a lifeboat and evacuation chute, and a pool with a wind generator where kids sail remote-controlled model ships.
Over 40 traditional boats fill the glass lobby and the "Boats of Peoples of the World" exhibition, from a Venetian gondola to a sampan.
Sołdek is a steam-powered coal and ore carrier, the first seagoing ship built in Poland after World War II and the world's only one of its kind still preserved. Between 1949 and 1981 it made 1,479 voyages.
On board are four cargo holds, crew rooms and a fully equipped engine room. Below deck, the exhibition "Sołdek and its times" covers Polish shipbuilding and sea trade after the war.
Dar Pomorza is a three-masted sailing ship built in 1909 that trained Polish merchant navy cadets from the 1930s to the 1980s. It is now a museum ship moored at Pomorskie Quay in Gdynia.
Kids walk the main deck and go below through four levels: the commander's room, mess, ship's hospital, wheelhouse and engine room, each kept with objects from the ship and its crews.
The Naval Museum in Gdynia tells the story of the Polish Navy from 1918 to joining NATO, with a modern permanent exhibition, models of old sailing ships, and an armory of real naval guns, torpedoes and sea mines, many taken from Polish warships.
Next to it sits ORP Sokół, a Norwegian-built submarine that served until 2018. Kids can step inside the 47-meter hull that carried a crew of 21.
Gdynia Aquarium spreads more than 200 water species over eight halls on five floors, from Amazon tropics and a coral reef to the open Pacific, the Baltic and the cold North Atlantic. The Cold Seas hall, opened in 2024 below sea level in the basement, holds unusual jellyfish and crustaceans.
It is run by the National Marine Fisheries Research Institute, and a free web app guide explains each animal.
The Emigration Museum fills the historic Maritime Station (Dworzec Morski) in Gdynia's port. Its permanent exhibition follows the Sikora family to America, and kids can step into a transatlantic liner cabin, an aircraft interior and a Fiat 125p, touch and smell exhibits, and peek through spyholes in the walls.
The Little Traveller Room has books on travel and cultures and a model of the MS Batory liner.
Żegluga Gdańska's white passenger boats leave the quay by the Green Gate and sail through the harbor to Westerplatte, the peninsula where the first shots of World War II were fired in 1939. The route doubles as a tour of the port.
Ashore are the ruined barracks, the Guard House No. 1 museum and the Monument of the Coast Defenders. Best for school-age kids into ships or history.
Kościuszko Square is the seafront heart of Gdynia: a fountain, modernist townhouses and the Maritime Poland monument. It runs straight onto the South Pier, built on a man-made peninsula into the sea.
Moored along the quay are two museum ships, the warship ORP Błyskawica and the tall ship Dar Pomorza. Further out are the Avenue of Passenger Ships, the Joseph Conrad monument, the Sails monument and the Gdynia Aquarium.
ORP Błyskawica is a 114-meter Polish Navy destroyer launched in 1936 at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, and the oldest surviving destroyer in the world. She fought through all of World War II, from the Dunkirk evacuation to the Normandy landings.
Now a museum ship moored in Gdynia, she still flies the naval ensign and keeps her own crew, and hosts official Navy ceremonies.
Galeon Lew is a passenger ship built to look like a 17th-century galleon, sailing under the Polish flag from the Długie Pobrzeże waterfront. The run to Westerplatte passes the Gdańsk Shipyard, the repair yard, the docks and Wisłoujście Fortress, while a guide tells the history in Polish, German and English. Sea shanties play on deck and there is a bar on board.
Rozewie Lighthouse stands on a beech-wooded cliff at Cape Rozewie, on the open Baltic coast. Visitors climb the 33-meter tower, first lit in 1822, up to the lantern. The tower holds a lighthouse-keeping exhibition, and the grounds include the restored engine room, the Stodoła gallery of marine art, and a granite bust of the writer Stefan Żeromski, whose name the lighthouse carries.
The museum fills the B-2 "Bruno" emplacement, one of the German Schleswig-Holstein gun batteries built in the forest 1.5 km from Hel's center during WWII. Inside, exhibitions cover the 32-day defense of Hel in 1939 and the history of the Polish Navy.
Outside, an open-air park among the pines holds big hardware kids can walk around: cannons, sea mines, torpedoes and launchers, boats, fire trucks and narrow-gauge rail cars.
