Baltic Cities Cruise

This was our fist port of call. It was so good to be back on dry land after spending a full day at sea. The day at sea was filled with drama.

I went to go out on deck, but there was a barrier at the stairs. I went the long way round to the bistro and heard an announcement from the captain that there would be an emergency helicopter rescue and that is why the deck was closed. I had my breakfast and went down to the lower deck (which we called the anti-social deck or ASD for short) in time to see the chopper come by and winch down a doctor and supplies!

One of the things Jamie and I like to watch is Eurovision and we were pretty excited to learn that the final this year was in Copenhagen. We weren’t there on the night of the actual final, but it was still pretty cool to be in the same city that it is being hosted in.

We got off our ship and hopped on the excursion bus and it took us round the city. One of the places that we had free time was at Copenhagen Cathedral. We had our wonder round and decided to venture further afield since we had an hour here. We found ourselves in one of the squares in the city and it just happened to be Eurovision village. Jamie and I thought it was pretty cool that we were there. We were overwhelmed with how Eurovision it was. It would have been remiss of us not to get some pictures here and also our customary magnet. We did both!

The squares are called Gammeltorv and Nytorv.

One of the other places we stopped on this tour was Gammelstrand. It appeared to be one of the main shopping districts of Copenhagen.

We were let loose here for about an hour too. We decided to go explore. We crossed Højbro bridge and as we did we noticed a sign on the river wall warning boats of an underwater statue. The statue is The Merman with 7 sons. It is apparently taken from Danish folklore. Sadly, that is all I know of it.

One of the places we went to when we docked in Warnemünde was Rostock. It is a Hanseatic city. They thought it would be good to do a tour there.

The city itself seemed quite good. The tour guide seemed to know his stuff. He took us around the city to the main parts of the centre.

One of these was St Mary’s Church to see the Astronomical Clock. The clock runs for a number of years before it needs to be replaced. The clock itself can give you all sorts of information from what the weather is to solar and lunar positions to the day you were born. I checked this and it worked out. I double checked with Jamie’s date of birth and it worked out too. The clock chimes at noon and it brings out the 12 Apostles, but we didn’t have time to stand and wait for it to happen. We had a few other things to see.

Our next stop was to what they called the Stasi (Staatssicherheit) museum. I think the cruise got this bit wrong. From everything I have read, the Stasi museum is in Berlin.

This was a Stasi prison. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see what went on there. The tour guide talked us through what went on at the prison. Jamie and I were kind of fed up of the pensioners at this point so held back a bit and looked after everyone else had. This picture is of one of the prison cells left as it was when it was liberated.

It is hard for my mind to comprehend that this was not a prison of aeons ago but of a prison from the 1960’s.

The inmates had very little time and room to themselves. They took us out to a courtyard where they would get limited exercise time every week and it was about the size of the cell shown in the picture. The East Germans had made postmarks so that when the inmates sent postcards they could be marked so the families wouldn’t know where they really were. You can read more about the Stasi Prison here

We were brought back to Warnemünde to be dropped at the boat. We (Me really) figured since we had the time and were right there that we might as well walk into the centre of town. It is deceptively close. It is just over the railway but it is a 10 minute walk around the port and under the railway as there is no direct bridge to it.

We were quite hungry by the time we got there so we found somewhere that was selling Bratwurst and Currywurst. We had tried Bratwurst already and knew we didn’t like it so we opted for Currywurst. I’m not sure if we were just hungry or if it was really nice. We enjoyed it so much that we got another one on our way back to the ship.

The town was quite picturesque. Just over the river and behind the main street this is what we stumbled upon. There were quaint, cobbled streets after each other. The houses were like none we had seen before. These are the types of things Jamie and I like about our oversees travels.

By the time we were done it started to rain and we still had some Haribo to buy for a friend of ours. We were both irritable at this point as we were still hungry. We got to the ship just in time for the most horrendous rain, thunder and lightening storm. I filmed it and you can see the camera shake when the thunder claps. It was scary but also very awesome.

Tallinn was our next stop. We knew nothing of Tallinn. I don’t think we had even looked into it too much. I know I hadn’t. We took a tour with the ship and it was possibly the worst thing we ever did. We didn’t know – or rather weren’t made aware that there was the shuttle bus to the town. We would have much preferred this than the tour with the ship.

We did 2 stops with the ship tour and then decided to do a hop-on-hop-off (ugh, another awful one) tour instead.

Our first stop on the ship tour was the Upper Town. Don’t get me wrong, the city was beautiful. We stopped short of Aleksander Nevsky Cathedral. We headed up there and it was so ornate. It is hard to describe it and show it in pictures. We got there to here the bells go off. They are not like anything we had heard before.

After we spent time admiring the cathedral, we still had time to walk around. We did out customary souvenir shop and then decided to walk the streets. My goodness, what a beautiful city. There were cobbled streets everywhere. It was very picturesque. We didn’t quite know where to go. There seemed to be back streets everywhere. This part of town is where the foreign embassies were. Again, it is hard to describe it or show it in a photo.

We headed down into the old town and it was just as nice. We decided to walk around after getting off the hop-on-hop-off bus. We were both tired and hungry at this point. We didn’t really want to go too much further but we went ahead anyway. More beautiful cobbled streets. We got to one of the main squares in the city. We found somewhere to have some food and just sit before heading back to the ship.

We noticed there was a stage and children singing. We weren’t quite sure why and then we realised that it was Mother’s Day there too. It was bitter-sweet for us. Great that we were there, but sad that we were there on this weekend. The kids did an amazing job.

We decided to head back to the shuttle bus and into port. I just wanted to show a comparison of the ships. The one on the right was our ship. Look how tiny it is!

Never in my life did I think I would be in Russia (that being said, I never thought i’d visit any of the places I have). It really happened though.

We were warned of long immigration queues on docking in St Petersburg. Thankfully we did an afternoon tour so never encountered the 30-45 minute queues they said. I think it took us about 15 minutes to get through immigration. Here is my landing card. It’s official – I was in Russia! Добро пожаловать в Россию!

This visit is going to be tough to condense into 2 more paragraphs and pictures, but I will try. Maybe I will write a separate post about it.

The first days tour was a bit of a rush job. We got on the bus and headed into the middle of town. We were dropped off in Arts Square. We weren’t really told much. We drove down Nevsky Prospect and then left for a couple of hours to our own devices.

The weather turned on us and it started to rain. We didn’t get to do much sightseeing. We wandered around and found ourselves in front of The Church on the Spilt Blood. It is so impressive. Very ornate – as is the case for most churches and government buildings in Russia. I was in total awe at seeing it. I just couldn’t figure out where to focus my eyes. The rain started a bit more here and we had to head off on our way.

We headed towards the Prospect and crossed the road to the Kazan Cathedral. It was very dark and dim inside. You weren’t allowed to take pictures inside. We sat there for about 45 minutes and a cat found its way to Jamie – of course! While there, we saw a huge queue in front of a painting. We weren’t sure what it was, but came to find out later that it was a painting of Our Lady of Kazan. People kiss and pray to it for guidance.

We headed back to the bus and stopped and got our souvenirs. The amount of Matryoshka Dolls there was incredible. They have them in just about every shape, size and colour!

We got back to the ship and had to quickly change to get back out for the ballet. We saw Swan Lake. Where else to see the ballet but in Russia!

The 2nd day in St Petersburg was our most intense. We had a tour guide who was very knowledgeable and there was plenty of pro Russian propaganda from her. We were able to look past it since she was really good at her job.

She gave us a really good insight into St Petersburg. She took us to the Neva river. We then headed to St Isaacs Cathedral. After that we went to The Church on the Spilt Blood. We then headed to Palace Square. Here is where the tour split. Some of the tour went to the Hermitage (Jamie went) and a couple of us went to the Field of Mars and back round to Palace Square to pick up the rest of the group.

There is so much more to say. I shall leave it here for now.

Helsinki was one of the ports I was looking forward to going to. One of the reasons I was looking forward to it was because of Sibelius.

I love, love, love his piece Finlandia. It was surreal to be there in the country where it was written and the country it was written about. I’m glad Jamie agreed on the yours to explore tour with the ship.

Our next stop on the tour was to see the famous Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi. After our quick stop there we headed to the Temppeliaukio Rock Church. The church itself is built into a rock. The Helsinki folk didn’t want a church that was built up from the ground so the only alternative was to build into the rock.

The final part of this tour took us to Senate Square. We were dropped right at the edge of the square. Having a quick look round, it was easy to see the Russian influence. The buildings weren’t as ornate as those in St Petersburg though.

After we had a look round, we decided to head to the market. We were again tired and hungry at this point. Jamie had some salmon soup and I had sausage and chips. I think they were enough to fill a gap, but not as nice as we both liked.

We would have loved more time here. There was just so much right in the market and senate square to see. We just didn’t have the time to see it all sadly.

This was the final port on our cruise. It was sad that we weren’t going to be stopping anywhere else. It was also good because by this time we were ready to be home too.

Ever since I worked in London, I have wanted to come to Sweden. I had toyed about with the idea of maybe visiting Gothenburg. I decided instead I would go to America. I didn’t regret that decision, but I was always left wondering what Sweden would be like. This was excellent because it was going to fulfil that wonder. Let’s not forget that Sweden is home to Abba and I love Abba.

We decided at this port that we would do a hop-on-hop-off since there was a shuttle bus into the centre.

We got there and there was a lot of traffic and we put this down to it being rush hour. We all of a sudden saw a ton of police. We come to find out later that the head of the UN – Ban-Ki Moon – was in town and this was why there was traffic.

While we were waiting for the first hop-on-hop-off bus, we had a little wonder around where we were. The parliament building and the royal palace was right there. It is another place had to describe or show in just one photo.

The bus took us all around Stockholm. It really is a pretty city with lots of history and lots of old buildings. This is the Nordic Museum.

As you may know from some of our other travel posts, Jamie and I like to go to supermarkets to get a feel for what they are like. We hadn’t done it since we were in Warnemünde. We decided that we’d stop at one we had seen from the bus.

It was fun to see inside a Swedish one. We saw some water that was labelled old school flavours. We got some ice cream flavour. I can tell you now, it was like drinking plain soda water. It was awful.

We came across these crackers. The look huge! Nothing more to be said about them.