Sopot

The junior partner in the Tri-City set-up (along with Gdańsk and Gdynia), Sopot is a kind of Incongruity-on-Sea, a mix of elegant villas and marauding clubbers, an overdeveloped 21st-century seafront just streets away from typically Polish soot-cracked facades. Like the British seaside towns of Brighton and Eastbourne rolled into one, Sopot is about moneyed Poles flashing their cash in ritzy restaurants standing alongside old Polish literary-themed cafes, a strutting club scene illuminating pensioners taking to the waters while kids on the beach build sandcastles. Whatever Sopot has become, it certainly remains popular, with international visitors mingling with the Slavic waffle-and-ice-cream crowds on hot summer days then getting down at the beachside clubs on balmy Baltic eves.