One week from today...

Next Saturday we set off on the next leg of 2015's cruisepalooza. Here are some copies of documents about the next trip.

 

 

Day 78 and HOME!

Let me start by saying it is good to be home! It is great to see the world, but it might be even better to be home.

We were up at least an hour earlier than we needed to be. Clay told me I could sleep longer, but then laid there shifting around until he quietly said he'd like to leave now instead of later. I got up and showered and shampooed and dressed. I made a cup of instant coffee in the room. It was vile, but at least I got a sugar and caffeine kick start. I am not sure what time it was but it was before 6am I am sure. We tried to go down the 2 flights of old olden stairs quietly so as not to wake anyone else, but the guy at the front desk heard us anyway. He popped out to find out what was happening and helped bring down the luggage. He even offered to help tote it over to the Tube station but I assured him we could handle it. The clip on the strap to hold 2 suitcases together on Clay's big bag broke and he had to go 2-handed. That is not our only luggage loss this trip. His new hard-side carryon bag got cracked under the bed on Marina! I knocked out the dent and duct-taped the crack from inside. We'll see if we can't get some more use out of it. On the other hand, of the 3 burgundy pieces I was carrying, the 2 larger ones are a loss. I think there is a mid-sized one left in the eave storage and I'll keep the little carryon even though it is raggedy. I'll be shopping for new luggage for my Christmas present.

We didn't have long to wait for the next train to Heathrow. I was able to get a seat but Clay wound up standing all the way. The good news is that it was only about 8 stops, so not a long ride. The other good news was that since we were so early, there weren't really any crowds. We got to Heathrow Terminal 3 and found our Area easily. It is always confusing at Heathrow with American anyway and it seems to change every time we are there, so we never get it right. We did finally clear security twice and get our bags checked and our boarding passes without any real incidents. Clay wound up getting another special search. Still it didn't really slow us down and we had a lot of time to kill. We had breakfast at Rhubarb past security screening. We sat between Tiffany's and Harrod's to wait for our gate number to be posted. At Heathrow, once they post that and you get to your gate, you are usually held without any services like restrooms until you have boarded the plane and of course then you still can't actually go for a while! So, the good news is that you don't have a lot longer to wait, but the bad news is that the wait seems longer.

Our AA direct flight home was booked for us as part of the final Oceania cruise package with us paying a deviation fee to fly a day after the cruise ended and on this flight. We had requested the economy plus seats but didn't get them. At first we didn't understand, but later realized there were none on this particular plane. We still didn't really understand that until we boarded. This was a much larger and newer plane than we have been on for this route before. AA offered us business class upgrades on check in online yesterday at $600 each. Since we had paid Oceania the air credit plus $175 each for the deviation and they had paid $687 or so for the 2 of us that seemed excessive so I said no. It was the right call. The business class bed pods would not have been a good value for a daytime flight. Also, our seats 23 J and H were not that bad. They were roomy enough to me, not as I last remembered the AA economy seats. These had individual entertainment systems and they worked. We each watched several movies and Clay watched all the TV shows I think. It was fine. If we had been in the center section of 5 across, we would have felt differently I am sure. AA offered drinks about 4 times and gave a full can of soda each time. They served a meal of either chicken or pasta that was good. Later they served another lighter meal of tomato pesto wraps and coconut sponge cake. It was good too. We arrived in RDU on time. Things kind of fell apart then. There was a huge line at immigration even though they were well manned and it was only our international flight. Still for whatever reason we were in line a long time. Then they realized that people waiting to make 2 connecting flights were going to miss their connections and pulled them all out and they went to the front of the line as we were only 4 people from being called up. Next we got pulled out for an agricultural check since we declared we were importing tulip bulbs from Amsterdam. This is at least the 3rd time we've brought bulbs home as a souvenir from Amsterdam. We always very carefully buy the ones with the US certification and we have never been flagged before. Today we wound up behind about 20 people from India with suitcases full of lose rice, spices, herbs, bananas, apples, mangos. WTH!? This was a flight from London, not Calcutta! Had they packed this stuff all the way from India, or did they leave London packed like that? I have no idea. I have never seen anything like it before. When the guy finally got to us, he was like how did you 2 get here? We told him we had Dutch tulip bulbs that were certified for import. He believed us but said he had to x-ray everything and see the bulbs. Let's go! He told us we did everything right and apologized for the inconvenience. A half hour later than expected, a woman unlocked the door and released us to Ground Transportation. We walked right out and got in a taxi and $35 or so later we were in our house. Everything looked fine. The grass had been mowed so that was nice. We had a pile of mail to go through and the TV didn't want to work right away. I think Clay got that sorted out before he fell off a chair changing a lightbulb and hit his head. I was already for bed when the whole house shuddered under my feet. I went walking around looking before finding him on the living room floor by the chair. I offered to take him to the emergency room since he said he hit his head and it hurt, but he declined. I don't know when he went to bed. I fell asleep before 7pm. He told me he was too old to stand on a chair anymore and I agreed. But, I really think it is because we have been traveling too much though. We both feel like we are still on a moving ship and I think until that passes we just both need to be careful about balance. This morning he is fine. I don't even think he has a bruise on him. He is on his treadmill this morning. He told me he gained 14 pounds during the 78 days we were away. I got on the scale and it told me I had gained 7 pounds. But, we knew that. Clay did not weigh himself while we were away, but I did. I gained 8 pounds between May 6th when we left home and May 7th when we boarded Marina in NYC! I managed to lose 1 of those pounds while we were gone, but the real question still remains of how in the heck did I gain 8 pounds in one 24 hour period traveling from Raleigh to NYC?

We are here at home until August 1, then we fly back to Montreal for a 10 day cruise through the Great Lakes to Chicago on St. Laurent. You won't believe it but I am looking forward to it. I have wanted to do this itinerary for a long time. We had travel documents in the mail for this cruise as well as tour documents for the land portion of our fall in Europe. Fingers crossed that Amras Cruises gets their business together and we don't fly over to Europe for nothing but this, especially since we have paid them a whole lot of money.

Southampton again

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

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We were both up early this morning. We both felt like the ship was moving around, but when Clay finally got up out of bed and opened the curtains, we were docked. We were docked on the starboard side but when he turned on the TV we could see the ropes attached to the dock. We were docked at Mayflower in Southampton. This is not where we were docked the last time we were here in May. We had a reasonable breakfast in Terrace. Then things fell apart. As predicted, clearing UK immigration on debarkation morning was a classic cluster cuss. We cleared out of the cabin about 20 minutes before 8am and toured the deck 6 atrium to see a 3 ring circus going on down on deck 5. This was the “line” to get into the theater to claim passports for everyone and for everyone who was not an EU passport holder to get cleared by UK immigration. EU residents could just pick up their passports and get in the equally long line to the gangway. It was not clear why they didn’t just return the EU passports to their holders last night sometime after they returned to the ship in Zeebrugge. That would have shorten the lines for everyone. But, I digress. This is why they want those evaluations before disembarkation.  We were in a line from the front of the theater to the aft elevators on deck 5. It was actually longer than that later as the end of the line doubled back past us when we reached Jacques. Then when we got our passports, the line reached from the theater stage, up the front stairs and around the atrium to the gangway. Thankfully, we didn’t have a tight deadline and we were still early to the National Express bus station. That was thanks to there being almost no line for taxis outside the terminal. There was no waiting for luggage as we had seen it being offloaded before 6am.

We got on the bus with no issues. We had been worried about the 2 medium suitcases under 44 lbs. each, but they didn’t weigh them. If we had known we would have just packed at 50 lb. limits that the airlines have instead. More on that later. We didn’t mind the bus ride that much except that it seemed there was no A/C. We got off the bus at Hammersmith Underground station. We topped off our Oyster cards and got on Piccadilly Line Westbound. We rode for a long time to get to Acton Town. We had chosen the bus to Hammersmith and the Piccadilly line to Acton Town because those 2 Tube stations are identified as handicap accessible, which means they have a lift. We thought this would be easier for us with a lot of luggage. It was just a theory in fact because the height difference between the trains and the platforms at both stations was more than 6 inches and would have been impossible for a wheelchair. For us it just made things more difficult. Lastly, we got to Acton Town Hotel within a few hundred feet of the Acton Town Tube station. That was the only good news. It is a dump and that is being generous. It is surely worth less than the 77 pounds per night we paid last February. Clay tells me that we have also booked and prepaid another night here in October! It was so conveniently located to him that he booked it twice. It is in the high 70sF here and there is no A/C. There is no fan either. Seeing all our luggage, the guy that checked us in put us in a room right under the roof eaves on the 3^rd floor of a building with no elevator! So much for all the logistical planning. To his credit, the guy carried 2 bags up the stairs with us. He pointed out to me that we were only here for one night and that we were welcome to leave some bags downstairs and only take what we need. I told him we needed them all because we needed to repack them for the flight weight limits versus the coach limits. He wasn’t happy but neither am I. As I said earlier, if we’d known National Express wasn’t going to enforce their rules we’d have packed for the flight in the first place. Why post rules online, if you don’t mean it?

Anyway, we had to check in to our flights, use the restroom and Clay had to change clothes since he had sweated through his. We were on our way today to St. Pancras/Kings Cross station on Piccadilly Line to go to the British Library’s Magna Carta exhibition. You may remember that we saw the best copy at Salisbury Cathedral when we were here before. This is the 800^th anniversary. They had a pretty good exhibit for 10 and 12 pounds entry fee. But their copies were nowhere near as nicely preserved as Salisbury’s. We were glad we had already seen it. Plus they didn’t charge for it! Still it was interesting and I’m glad we went. We went across the street after and ate a big late lunch at Euston Flyer, a pub. Clay had fish & chips and I had Cumberland ring sausage and mash. Both were big servings and very tasty. We could chose just one dessert and ordered 2 and split them. Both were really chocolatey and delicious but I think we slightly preferred the brownie. It had white chocolate chips in it. Clay also had a locally brewed draft beer. It was served in the traditional manner, warm. On the way back to Piccadilly Line, we stopped by a convenience store for a cold Coke Zero for Clay, to Platform 9 3/4s at King’s Cross for me where I got a patch and another convenience store for a supply of Fox’s Glacier Mints. Clay had an entire bag during his sore throat. I have had a froggy voice/scratchy throat for the past 3 days but I have just been using numbing spray. Still, we’ll want the Glacier Mints at home in the future.

We are back now in our hellishly hot and noisy garret. We’ll go to bed before dark probably and get up early. We have to leave here about 7am to make sure we get to Heathrow early before our AA flight at 10:30am.  We are ready to be home! This will be our first economy flight overseas in years. We have been doing this in economy plus, premium, extended or whatever else they’ve been calling it. But, tomorrow we are about 6 rows from the back of the plane in old fashioned cheap seats. Not looking forward to it, but we’ll be home soon. Clay says once we get the A/C cranked up at home, that he doesn’t want to leave the house for 7 days. I am not thinking that is even in the realm of possibilities!

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Brugge again

Monday, July 20, 2015

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Day 76. Two days before we get home. Clay was up first this morning. He did not go to the gym today. Since we leave Marina tomorrow morning, I guess yesterday was his last gym day, if he went. I don’t know. I’m babbling. I’m exhausted. It really is time for us to pack up and go home. But first a return to Brugge. This time in the rain. I am so glad we have already seen these places on good days! We had a final good breakfast because we know tomorrow will be an absolute zoo if past segment ends have been any guide.

We arrived at the dock in Zeebrugge on time at 8am, but then they couldn’t decide where to put the gangway and we were delayed leaving the ship. The ship had staged the exit on deck 5 but the local dock crew used their own gangway and put it up on 6. It was steep and slippery! The buses were waiting as were, this time, taxis. We were the first ones to board the complimentary shuttle bus to the train station in Blankberge. But, they had posted that the first bus wouldn’t leave until 8:30am and it didn’t. That meant there was no way to make the train at 8:42am. I am sure the shuttle providers understood that. They timed the buses to meet the departing and arriving trains when we were here last month. I can only guess that caused a problem with the merchants of Blankenberge and this time, they timed the buses to drop us off as the train was pulling out so we could buy our tickets for 5 Euros return and have 45 minutes to kill in town. We did walk through the Kerkstraat walking area to the seaside promenade to have a look at the Belgium Pier but all the shops were still closed. They were open on the walk back but I refused to spend any money on the principle of the thing. We caught the 9:42am train and on neither train ride did we get our tickets checked this time. I used the toilets again at Brugge station on the way to the bus. .50 Euros. Today we noticed a sign up that said that the bus was 3 Euros per one hour ride or 5 Euros for a day pass. We bought 4 tickets last time and only rode to the Markt and back to the station. This time we got a one ticket-two person daypass for 10 Euros. I don’t know how or why we missed that the first time. We must have looked like tourists when we bought the bus pass because the woman who sold us the tickets told us which bus to take and to get off at the 3^rd stop for the Markt. A woman at needlepoint had told us all there was a great cross-stitch store just off the Markt. We did not see it when we were here before so I Googled it and found the address. It was indeed just off the Markt on Philipstockstr. We walked there first. I can’t believe it but I bought another cross-stitch for this trip! Mom is going to have lots of work to do for us! Next we walked back across the Markt. We had about an hour to kill before looking for the Segway place to meet our noon 1-hour tour. We didn’t walk up the Belfort last time because one we were in Brugge before it opened and two because my knee wasn’t bending without locking with the knee cap out of place then. There are 366 steps and that just seemed too hard to come back down without bending one knee! Today it was open and both knees have been working fine, so we paid out 6 and 8 Euros and started climbing. I forgot about spiral staircases. I had Motion Ease with me and had to use it about half way up as I was fighting vertigo. We had thought we could pace ourselves slowly but that wasn’t really possible due to the number of people climbing and descending the tower. You had to go when it was clear and rest when you got to an exit room. It was interesting. We didn’t plan to, but we arrived at the bell/carillon chamber just a minute or so before 11am. We had to hold our ears for the next few minutes as the carillon played and the big bell rang 11 times. It was a trip. There is a large brass drum (the world’s largest) in a room below and they say they rearrange the pegs every 2 years to change the tune it plays. We looked out all the sides and all the openings and did not see a place to fall out of the tower a la “In Bruges”. We climbed back down again to real rain. We started walking to the Segway office. We were walking past an ice cream shop when I pointed out to Clay that the guy was using a giant wooden ladle/spoon to scoop gelato out of a big mixer looking machine and into a serving freezer. We stopped. Clay had 2 scoops and I had 1. It was 2.50 for one or 4 for two scoops. Clay’s was a better deal. They dipped the cones in chocolate first and then stuck a half a stroopwaffel on the side of the ice cream. I don’t know if there is a name for the cookies only that make up a stroopwaffel, but it was just the crunchy cookie side without a gooey center. It was good and would get us through the next hour in the rain. While we waited for the group to assemble and fill out paperwork, it really opened up and starting pouring. The only people that looked sadder than us were the ones on canal boats under umbrellas! So, there were 3 of us doing a 1-hour tour and 4 doing a 2-hour tour. We all left together, but Clay and I and guy from India left after an hour and a group of 4 from Mexico carried on for another hour. Since it stopped raining after about an hour, they may have made a nice tour of it. One hour was 35 Euros and 2 hours was 50 Euros. We’d have like longer, but didn’t want to worry about getting back to Marina on time this close to the end! Our tour stopped at St. Anne church and at the statue of Jan van Eyck who the guide and some random local guy told us was the most important artist ever. I’ll let you decide. We also saw the Markt, heard about the history and development of the town, heard about the Belfort and the town hall and other buildings on that square. We stopped behind the Jerusalem church and beside the lace center and the old almshouses. It was interesting and we saw a lot that we didn’t see the first visit. After the Segway Tour we looked for a place to have some frites but everything was packed with long lines. We just went to the bus stop and took the next bus to the train station. We had time to stop at Starbucks and get a mug as well to pick up some snacks for the train ride back. The 14:05 train was sitting at the 5B track waiting when we got on the platform at 10 of 2pm. We got on and found 2^nd class seats and ate. We got on the 2^nd shuttle bus back from Blankenberge and we were back onboard Marina by 3pm. All aboard is 4:30pm and we sail at 5pm. It was a bit longer day here last time as I have notes that the last shuttle bus was at 4:50pm and today it was at 4pm. When we got back to Marina, the dock's gangway had been moved to deck 5. It was an almost level walk. Much better.

We have a last dinner tonight at Toscana. It wasn’t our first choice to have a final dinner at one of the specialty reservation restaurants, but when we made reservations back in May that was just the way it worked out. So, we’ll go and then get our 2 bags each outside the cabin by 10pm. I’ll post this now in the assumption that nothing else newsworthy will happen. If it does, I’ll talk about it another day perhaps. It isn’t clear that I’ll post again before we got home, but I’ll try to keep notes to update the trip blog and post them later.

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Amsterdam again

Sunday, July 19, 2015

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I slept in today. I have no idea what Clay did. I think he was coming into the cabin when I awoke, but I can’t swear to that. It was cold and rainy when the day started. It stayed that way until mid-day. That worked out for us. We went to breakfast and by the time we were suited up in raingear for the weather, it was time to go ashore. The Captain said yesterday that he would pick up the pilot at 4:15am to bring us through the lock and up the river Ij to dock in Amsterdam at 9am. We were right on schedule. We got the closer in spot of the 2 today. That little bit shorter walk was nice. It was pouring this morning. We went out and went straight to the tram stop for 25/26. We bought 24 hour tickets from the driver for 7.50 Euro pp. We took it to the Central Station and walked across the square to the other side and got tram 14 to Muntplein. We got off and walked along Singel canal’s floating flower market to find some US/Canada certified importable tulip bulbs. We bought 3 bags for 13 Euros. We also found an Amsterdam patch there. We walked on and found a Starbucks but on seeing it we were both sure we already have that one at home. I hope that is true. They had a great one for all of Netherlands but that seemed like one mug too many, so I didn’t buy it either. We didn’t really have anything else to do so Clay located The Grand Hotel which was the most expensive hotel he ever stayed in once on a business trip without me. It was on the southeast side, we have previously spent most of our time in the Joordan. Then we walked back to Central Station and took the 26 tram back to the Passenger Terminal and dropped off our bag of tulip bulbs and set out again. It was still pouring rain even harder now. We took 2 trams to the Westermarkt and walked up Prinsengracht past the Ann Frank house and its very long and soggy line to a short soggy line outside the Pancake Bakery. We waited in line about 15 minutes to get seated. We shared one ham & cheese pancake and one Nutella pancake. Clay had a big draft beer and I had a hot chocolate. Clay has decided that we have to have a crepe/pancake maker for Christmas. We’ll be online shopping soon. He already had a waffle iron purchase fail online while we’ve been away. It was on back order for months and while we’ve been away, it was cancelled. Too bad, we’ve had a wide variety of waffles too while over here in the Scandinavian countries. From there it was only a short walk to the Ij Dock. This is a new small reclaimed land island since we were last here. The best news was that the rain system had finally finished moving through after lunch. We were already wet and in waterproof gear but it was dry, windy and sunny for our 2-hour Segway Tour. It was a private tour with a young man named Tine as our guide. He had actually been to NC before! He told us that in a few days he will post photosfrom our tour on facebook.com/amsterdamsegway. We covered a lot of Amsterdam and we specifically went around the Hortus Botanicus and the Artis. Those are some very old parks. One is the botanical garden and the other the zoo. We went on a little East of there to see the tallest wooden mill in the Netherlands which adjoins the Ij Brewery. That was cool. It looked a lot like the thatched windmill we visited outside Amsterdam on our last stop here. This one was much taller though. We had never been in this part of Amsterdam before so it was something new for us. We were out on the Segways from 2 to 4:10pm. Amsterdam was the most difficult city we have ever toured on Segway. We used bike lanes like in Stockholm, but here there was a lot more traffic and scooters and motorcycles were using the bike lanes as well. We had a number of mishaps and collisions. Clay was off his twice but never fell down to the ground, so Tine never seemed too disturbed or surprised. I think he was more surprised that we didn’t kill ourselves! He gave us cards afterwards that said: “If you can ride here, you can ride anywhere.” True enough.

We were back onboard by 5:10pm. We had been delivered letters last night about turning in our passports before Zeebrugge and they collected them when we came back aboard. This is evidently the passport collection that they missed when we entered Schengen in early June. You may remember our difficulty leaving Schengen for Svalbard from Tromso because we had never “legally entered” Schengen. The problem is that we still haven’t legally entered Schengen. We got stamped leaving Tromso, but when we came back through the Oslo and Stockholm airports, we still never got stamped as entering. We’ll see how the Purser handles this in Zeebrugge. The letter said the ship had to clear everyone to exit Schengen for the UK. The letter doesn’t say how long they’ll keep the passports but I am guessing that they will keep them until we are cleared to enter the UK. Otherwise, we’ll all need to go through passport control on arrival in Southampton and that would be a mess with people trying to make flights.

We’ll go to Terrace for dinner. We are sailing out of Amsterdam now. We are on the port side this time, so we have a different view. Nice. The Captain hasn’t announced when we’ll arrive at the lock, but hopefully we’ll get to see it again. We are just passing IJ Dock where we rented the Segways. Cool! I’ll go ahead and post now and edit later if needed.

I'm back. The Captain did speak but we only heard the last of it about entering the North Sea again after 8pm. He did say he expected much calmer seas than when we left with only 4 foot waves.

We had a letter on our bed when we got back. Bad news all around. We change the clocks tomorrow night before our arrival in Southampton. Also, as predicted we must have a face to face meeting to enter the UK. This took our 3-day crossing to do on the way over here! On Wednesday, we have to be out of our cabins by 8am and off the ship by 9am. Our Brown 4 luggage tag group has to be in Marina Lounge at 8:20am to meet face to face with UK Immigration. We do have to catch a bus at 10:30am in Southampto, but thankfully not a flight that day! We also had a letter pointing out to us, in case we hadn't noticed from the earlier preliminary invoice, that we have a $15 non-refundable credit balance to spend or lose. We went down to the boutique and shopped after dinner. We bought 3 $5 bags of Maltesers!

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Final sea day

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Clay said he would let me sleep in today. He came back and woke me at 7am. We had breakfast at 8am. He went to a Zeebrugge destination lecture at 9am and I went up to Horizons to wait for needlepoint at 9:30am. This is my last needlepoint!

The Captain said the seas were about 8 feet at lunch. It was a little rough most of the night. He said we turned into the North Sea about midnight. I would estimate that by now the seas are about 20 feet and I have just about had all I can handle. I have had Seas Bands on all day and have taken extra meclizine but I am not staying ahead of the motion sickness.

We will be in Amsterdam tomorrow and have made plans to take a 2-hour Segway Tour. We will go to Bruges the next day and have another Segway Tour booked there. The next day, we will leave Marina one final time, spend a night in London and fly home. Thursday night we’ll be back in our own bed!

I will go ahead and post now as I think there won’t be anything more to tell. 

Copenhagen again

Friday, July 17, 2015

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Last night I happened to be looking out at 10:40pm when we cast of and sailed away. There were hundreds of people lining the waterway in the dark to see Marina off. It was actually dark! We had a pretty good sunset about 10pm. I guess everyone got back onboard before sailing time and we left early again.

We both kind of slept in today. Clay was up first but did not go to the gym. He sleeps all night the same as me, but then he has napped from 1 to 3 hours during the day time too. I know I’d like a nap. We were late to breakfast and there were so few people in Terrace that it seemed like we had missed something. When we got back to the cabin, it was being serviced so we went to Horizons to watch the sail into Copenhagen and Clay had some more breakfast. Once we saw that we were docking at Langelinie in the exact same spot as last time, I had Clay take me down to the private spa terrace which we could see below. Our concierge level keycards open the door. You have to walk all the way forward through the spa to get there. I am not sure I see the appeal. It is forward facing but it was in the blazing sun this morning. I guess that is the point since it is all sun loungers out there with 2 hot tubs and showers. We came back in and got back in the cabin. We got ready and headed ashore. We did not book anything today. Our goal was to walk by the Little Mermaid and to Nyhavn for a canal sightseeing cruise. Clay is still trying to spend the over $500 worth of Danish kroner he got her last time. I still can’t imagine what he was thinking or how he got so much when I thought we had ATM withdrawal limits of $500 or even less. Anyway. We walked past all the landmarks we paid for a bus tour of last time (except Rosenbourg Castle) in less than an hour of walking. We got on to the 10:20am canal boat tour and it lasted an hour or so. We paid 80DKK pp instead of the cheaper boat but same boat and same tour for 40DKK pp because we are trying to use this odd currency up! On the boat tour, we got a better look at the private yacht Eclipse, the largest privately owned yacht in the world which we had seen as we walked past on our way down the harbor side. Clay t-shirt shopped some, but he hasn’t been buying t-shirts much on this trip and he had already bought the world’s most expensive t-shirt the last time we were here. Even trying to spend money, there is a limit! We walked through the Stroget, a pedestrian area of shopping streets. We were looking for somewhere to sit down and have lunch. It was unpleasantly crowded. We reached the end before finding a place. As we looked to the right at Radhus Plaza, we spotted both Starbucks and Hard Rock Café. We might spend some more cash yet. But, not enough. First of all the Starbucks Copenhagen mug did not have the Little Mermaid on it. But had what looked like the royal guard in front of Buckingham Palace. We saw royal guards in front of a castle and a palace here but didn’t see anything that looked like that. So, I passed. We finally went into Hard Rock for lunch even though we don’t like their food. It is usually expensive and Copenhagen is more expensive than most places. We had 2 sandwiches with fries and a beer for about $50. We went down to the shop and bought 2 t-shirts that cost even more than lunch. We walked across the plaza to the waiting Oceania shuttle bus parked outside Tivoli and boarded. It got us back to Marina by 3pm.

We plan to watch the movie Black Sea on TV at 3:30pm. We are invited to the past passengers’ cocktail party in Horizons at 5:45pm. I expect we’ll go. I expect we will have dinner at Terrace. Tomorrow is our only sea day, cruising the Skaggerak. I still don’t know what that means! I am pretty sure we’ll have to sail the North Sea to get to our last 2 ports of Amsterdam and Zeebrugge. We have booked a Segway tour in Amsterdam for 2 to 4pm. I also want to buy tulip bulbs there and for some reason, we didn’t find a patch there last time. We’ll see. I’ll post now and if anything extraordinary happens the rest of the day, I’ll come back and edit this. Later. The end is nigh!

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Warnemunde, Germany again

Thursday, July 16, 2015

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Clay was up early and went to the gym. I slept a while longer but I was up before he came back at 6:30am. We had to be outside of the Warnemunde Cruise Terminal by 9:15am to meet our Friends of Dave Tour. This was 135 Euros pp for a full day tour to Wismar, Schwerin and Warnemunde. It was a good day and I can recommend it. So we went to Terrace for breakfast and then back to the cabin to prepare. I put on sunscreen today since for the first time in days there was no rain predicted and I have burned some over the last 3 days without it since it was supposed to have rained. Oh, I am happy to report that for the first time on this cruise we docked on our port side! Yeah! The port of Warnemunde was just as we remembered it. With one exception, the swans had youngsters that were so grown that they weren’t even fluffy anymore. We didn’t see any young swans when we were here before.

So, we met Chris, our Friends of Dave guide and by 9:30am the 14 of us who had showed up voted that we not wait another 15 minutes to see if the 4 people who had signed up but had not paid their deposits would show up. They had a full sized bus for us and everyone could have their own row. Chris set everyone up with headsets and he had a microphone and we set off on the bus. It was at least a half hour ride to Wismar. It was an old medieval town with some destroyed churches. One just had a tower remaining and it was a museum to medieval church construction in Germany. It was originally damaged by British bombs at the end of WWII, but in 1960 it was blown up by the DDR. This area is the German state of Mecklenburg and it was formerly in East Germany and behind the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Bloc. They built a lot with red bricks. We saw how they were made and then we watched a 12-minute 3-D animated film on how they constructed such large buildings in the 1100-1200’s.  The 2^nd destroyed church we saw had been recently reconstructed and was now in use as a theater. We walked around for around an hour and then went for a big heavy German lunch. We had seen menus and heard every option described by Chris on the bus and they were ready for us. We had a private room at Brauhaus am Lohberg. They are a brewery/restaurant. The food was good and hearty. Maybe too hearty for the hot day and fairly early lunch. I had goulash and a huge glass of Riesling. Clay had a big dark beer and a small Pilsner. He preferred the dark. He had a dish that was a pork rib with the bone removed and stuffed with fruit and then cooked. He liked it. I don’t know what it was called. There was a good selection and we could have selected from the light appetite menu, but we didn’t.  We had about 20 minutes of free time after lunch. We looked for a patch and bought Clay a very delicious ice cream cone down the block. We walked by the deep harbor to where the bus had moved. We drove about an hour for everyone to have nap time and to get to Schwerin. I stayed awake and the bus was very hot. Clay slept. In Schwerin, we saw the castle. It had been seized by the DDR for government use and is now the Mecklenburg state parliament building. It evidently only has 12-14 rooms open to the public and Chris said only one of them looked palatial. He said the best views were from the outside and the gardens. So, we didn’t enter. We walked all the way around it and up to the Markt Square of Schwerin. We had an appointment with a private upstairs room at Café Rontgen. We could order cake and ice cream or either alone from a pastry case. I had a raspberry mousse cake and Clay had 3 scoops of toasted almond ice cream. They had coffee and water upstairs at tables for us already.  After that we had almost an hour of free time. Chris gave us each maps of Schwerin and showed us where we were and that is where we met again later. We went to the Tourism Information center in the Rathaus and found a Mecklenburg patch for 3 Euros which we bought. We walked around the big church off the square and through a grocery store and around a several block area before going back to the main square to meet back up. Chris led us back to the bus through the old Jewish Quarter and showed us the restored synagogue and some “stumble blocks” around the corner. I don’t know if I’ve talked about these before but we’ve seen them in a number of cities. I remember seeing them as far away as Tromso, Norway. They are brass blocks set into the sidewalks in front of the homes where Nazis took people (mostly Jews) from their homes. They list the victims’ names, dates of birth and death if known as well as where. Some are simply listed as taken as they were lost after that. His were especially tragic as it was a family of 4. The mother and father were taken to Auschwitz where they were eventually murdered. The son was sent to a separate camp where he was eventually murdered and the daughter was never heard of again after the night the family was taken. She simply vanished. Chris’ talk about it was very moving. We had more than an hour drive back to Warnemunde. We stayed awake and spotted deer, cranes, and hawks from the bus. The bus dropped us off outside the cruise terminal and we said goodbye to our driver. We could either go to Marina or continue on a 10-15 minute walk with Chris to Warnemunde. Most of us went with Chris. From the ship, it looks like the train station is directly across the street, but you can’t get there that way! He walked us past the ferry station right in front of the ship and down the waterfront until there was a small walkway with a sign and arrow “Am Bahnhof”. Bahnhof means train station. We walked until we reached a pedestrian tunnel and took the stairs down, walked through and up on the other side through the train platform area and crossed a turning bridge to enter Warnemunde. Tourist Info was straight ahead. He advised us to turn right and walk along the waterfront to see the lighthouse. We did but avoided going past it since he said the beach in Warnemunde was nude. Along the way Clay had a Backfish sandwich. He liked it. Clay also found one of the few penny smashing machines we’ve found in Europe and we got some 2 cents pieces for him to make one as a souvenir. We walked back to Marina and got back around 8pm. We went up to Terrace for the German buffet. I had a bratwurst with sauerkraut and pretzel roll. Clay ate a salad and finished mine. There was a nice sunset tonight as we waited to sail. We probably won’t leave early tonight. We have left some of our ports earlier than posted, I assume because once everyone was back aboard they just went ahead and sailed. We have a lot of people off to Berlin today though and they will not be back until the last minute. At least, we were last month when we were here.

Tomorrow Copenhagen, again. We’ll go it alone and I’m sure we’ll have a better day than last time.

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Malbork Castle and Gdansk, Poland

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

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We moved the clocks back an hour last night. Well, some of them. But, not the one that was set as an alarm to wake us up at 5:30am. So, we got up at 4:30am anyway, then Clay realized his mistake and we tried to go back to sleep for our extra hour. We had an early start this morning in Gdansk. Contrary to our published schedule of docking in Gydnia, we docked in Gdansk. It was just as well since it was closer for us. We had our last Alla Tour here today. We did not get off to a good start. Our directions were clear to go meet our guide/driver at the main exit from the port 15 minutes prior to the appointed time, so 7:15am. Now, as far as I can recall we have not had a single Alla rep meet us at the bottom of the gangway. So, 3 of us were out there. We didn’t think Alla would even run the tour with only 3 participants and we were right. I offered at 20 of 8am to go back to the ship to either find someone else with Alla or the guide/driver or to reboard and ask the tourism rep onboard to try to call the local number since we just kept getting a few rings and then a hang up. The walk was about 3 football fields and it was hotter and sunnier than the forecast predicted. So, I was already pretty hot and bothered when I got back to the gangway. There was a woman right at the foot of the main gangway with a handwritten sign in ballpoint pen and one of the names was B D Burch. I didn’t recognize anything else as she had Alla/ some other tour company name written there. I didn’t even know the initials and last name of the other man in our group who was out at the port gate with Clay. The 2 women working there, our guide Evelina and her tour company boss started to berate me and I went off. I whipped out my directions and told them we had been outside the gate for almost a half hour as instructed. They finally agreed that was what my paper said and the 2 of them had intercepted everyone who came down the gangway later than instructed. We loaded a car and a van and set off again for the gate. The whole thing started all over without the boss lady. Evelina told Nate and Clay that guides are required to wait at the foot of the gangway. Evelina was shown the instructions again by someone else not me because I was in the back seat of the van and she agreed that it was not correct. She assured us that we were still on schedule and we were, but I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t gone back and found them. We were only a group of 7 today, 5 in the van and 2 in the car. We only had the one guide so she had to meet up with the other 2 everywhere. Our itinerary was to travel to Marlborg (or Marlbork) Castle for a tour. It was a 50-minute drive and we went through a former wetland that is now agricultural land and a breeding/nesting area for storks who migrate from Africa annually. That was interesting. We were in Marlborg Castle for 2 full hours. It was originally built by Teutonic knights which was a religious/militaristic organization which began with the Crusades. They built a series of castles/fortress towns in Europe after losing Jerusalem in the 1200s. Marlborg castle was abandoned with the end of the order and rebuilt at the end of the 19^th century. It was destroyed during WWII and is continuing to be rebuilt to this day. It was built almost entirely of red brick.  We drove back into Old Town Gdansk by 12:15pm for a walking tour with a stop in St. Mary Cathedral. We drove back to Marina at 1:45pm and we back aboard by 2pm. All aboard was 2:30pm and we sailed away from Poland at 3pm.

We will probably just veg and nap this afternoon. We will go to Terrace for dinner and go to bed early. We have a tour tomorrow in Warnemunde of Mecklenburg with Friends of Dave. Alla Tours referred them and we used Alla the last time here to go to Berlin. I only hope this tour is as good as Berlin was. There were people on this tour for our last time at this port and they liked it and the guide, Christian so fingers crossed.

I’ll go ahead and post this now and if anything else notable happens, I’ll come back and edit the post.

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Klaipeda, Lithuania and the Curonian Spit

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

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One week from today, we’ll be leaving Marina in Southampton and be on our way home. Of course, we’ve felt like we were on our way home since we went back to Stockholm to re-board Marina. Now, the end is tangible. Clay said last night that he was glad he had decided not to go into work during the short period we are home before the Great Lakes cruise. He is probably right. We’ll probably just barely have time to get through the back log of mail!

We were both up early today to get laundry done. Clay went to the gym after making sure that I was up and the laundry room was open. Last night there was a line to do laundry, this morning there was no problem. I got it done and we went to breakfast at Terrace.

So, like yesterday we arrived a little earlier than the new delayed arrival time. It was a nice sail into the Curonian lagoon by the Curionian Spit. I saw the long approach from Horizons Lounge during needlepoint this morning. We went up to Baristas around 11am to have a quick, light lunch before we had to meet ashore at 11:45am with the Alla Tours group and guide. So, we had a long busy day. Here is what we did. 11:45am we met up outside the port gate. It was very close. Actually, old town was very close too! We got in the van with 10 people and the driver and the guide at the port gate and headed for the ferry. We went out onto the Curionian Spit for most of the day. By noon we were over there. The ferry ride was only about 5 minutes and there were at least 3 ferries running. We went first to Smiltyne Beach. They hunt for amber to wash ashore there after storms. Unfortunately, there was no debris on the beach so odds were low. I searched hard anyway and found a tiny crumb of amber! It seemed to me that there could be a lot of tiny pieces of amber making up the beach, just mixed in with the sand. Our guide, Mindagus, gave each of us a piece of amber with a hole drilled in it as a condolence. That was very nice! Next we had a stop for photos at a Gray Heron and cormorant colony. We didn’t find any herons, but we found thousands of cormorants nesting up in the oldest part of the forest out there and they had killed off a large swath of the big old trees with overwhelming amounts of poop. Next we drove to Nida and visited an amber museum/gallery. We walked across the street and walked through an old, odd cemetery. Lithuania is known for being the last European area to become Christian and they still have a lot of pagans. We have been surprised that we have heard double digit percentages of people who self-identify as pagan as we travel through the Baltics. I think that had something to do with the weird footboards at the graves. We crossed the street again and walked along the waterfront and through the little town of Nida. Everyone wanted lunch even though it was not on our itinerary. The guide suggested a place and it was good and reasonably priced. It took a long time out of our day though. The guide sat at our table and we and another couple bought him lunch. We drove a long way next to get to the highest point of the traveling dunes and to see a solar clock-calendar sculpture on top. From the top you could see a great panorama of Neringa. You could see the Curonian Lagoon on the left, the Russian part of the peninsula and on the right the Baltic Sea. I think Mindagus said the dune was 84 meters tall. For some reason, I did not have the Hill of Witches on my itinerary but the others said they had it. We didn’t really have time to do it anyway, but we stopped and walked about halfway up the hill and saw a half dozen or so creepy wooden sculptures in the woods. This was in the little town of Juodkrante. Last stop was a photo stop at Amber Bay in Juodkrante. This was the site of an amber mine in the 1800’s. They took out 75000 kilos of amber during something like a 3 year period. We drove back to the ferry and returned to Klaipeda after 5pm. At 5:30pm we left the driver and van on the far side of Klaipeda and we started our walking tour of old town. Almost as soon as we started, Mindagus took us to 1 of 3 courtyards in Klaipeda and showed us restrooms and bought local beers for everyone that wanted one. Then we set off again on our walking tour. The thing that was missing for me again today was a map. It was a good tour though and I for one certainly appreciated the guy’s patience with us and for his flexibility with our changed arrival time and the group’s demands. I don’t actually know what we paid for today’s tour, but I think the list price was $130pp.

We had very good luck again with the weather today. It was supposed to be 67F and rainy. I don’t think it ever got that warm and it only rained on us off and on for less than an hour of our day. It was cool, windy and mostly cloudy but it could have been much worse.

We went to Terrace for a late dinner after we got back on Marina. I don’t know if it is always like that but Terrace was an absolute zoo for the last hour they were open tonight. I hope we don’t ever have to do that again.

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Riga, Latvia

Monday, July 13, 2015

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Clay went to the gym this morning and I slept right through it. He started making noise about 7:30am and I got up. We weren’t to breakfast again until after 8am. We went ahead afterwards and went and got seats in the front of the front window in Horizons to watch the sail in to Riga. It was a narrow and winding channel through a very industrialized area. I guess we stopped about 15km shy of the passenger terminal adjacent to Old Town. I don’t know why exactly. So, we were originally expected to arrive at 9am, then they announced it would be 10am, but I guess since there were 2 cruise ships and one ferry docked next to old town that maybe there was no room for us. In any event, last night’s newsletter said we would dock at KS Cargo/Container Terminal and we did at about 9:15am. We could see vans like Alla Tours uses parked outside the port gate and a small crowd of people with signs out there so to be safe we did not wait until 11am which was the new time Alla Tours had posted for meeting at this port. We went out and it was SPB and some other private tour operators waiting out there. Somehow all the other providers stayed close to their original schedules and found out the port had changed and were here. By 10:45am they had all left. Shortly after that the rest of the 17 people who were booked on today’s Alla Tour started trickling out to the gate. Right at 11am, Jennifer and the van/minibus showed up. She acted like they had been down at the other port waiting and had raced out here. I know at least one person in the group claimed they had called someone with Alla Tours and told them about the change in port. I don’t really have a good explanation for what happened here. Jennifer was otherwise well prepared. She had marked up a map of Riga for each couple with the Cruise Passenger Terminal and our route for today marked (not our port which was too far away to appear on her map!). She did the best she could with us I think. There was never a lunch scheduled in this 5-hour tour program, but it running from 11am to 4pm without one caused problems. People should read what they are booking. If it had been 10am to 3pm without lunch it would have been the same problem. The only thing we actually sacrificed due to the changes was free time. We had about a 30 minute drive into and out of town to add to the equation due to the port change. We started with a panoramic photo stop from across the Daugava River. From noon to 12:30pm, we had a short walking tour through Riga’s Art Nouveau district centered on Alberta Street. As we drove away, we went past the former Riga KGB building. From 12:45pm to 1:10pm, we walked Freedom Square to the Opera House. After that we went over to Riga’s Central Market which was moved from Old Town into some nice large open buildings to create the largest market/bazaar in Europe. Jennifer and we and a couple of others bought food and with samples shared by vendors and amongst us, we put together a light lunch on the go. That was from 1:10pm to 2pm. Finally we drove to Old Town, we got there around 2:15pm. Jennifer told us in the van to take 15 minutes there to spread out amongst the 3 coffee shops there and get some coffee/drinks and snacks to go on a walk. To take only 15 minutes. She told us again we got there and pointed out the 3 cafes/kiosks. Clay and I went straight to the closest one and got a Coke and pastries. When we finished our transaction, the whole group was standing around Jennifer having some kind of complaint fest. I think maybe they were looking for restrooms because one of our party had an upset stomach and they finally all went across the street again into a museum for restrooms. Then Jennifer had to recall the driver to get a guy who didn’t want to walk. I’m not sure how that worked because he sat in the van all afternoon when our tour supposedly only paid for 3 hours of a van with driver. Reading the itinerary, I understood that the driver would leave us and come back for us later to drive us back to the ship, but since he had a passenger, I don’t know. He was sitting next to me and said he sat on the van reading the entire time. Anyway, later they were all hungry and thirsty and asking for their free time/snack break. Jennifer kindly did not point out to them that they didn’t use the time for that and it was over now, but she set them free to meet up later at the van and skip the last 45 minutes of the Old Town walking tour. We probably should have cut out too as I don’t think we really gained anything in the final walk around but we stuck it out. So we walked through Old Town and saw probably all of the important highlights from 2:20pm to 3:45pm. We also took a detour through a still standing medieval restaurant called Rosengrals. We went downstairs and inside on one side of the narrowest street and through a dark and winding candlelit tunnel to exit on the other side of the street! We were back to the ship before 4:30pm and all aboard is 5:30pm

It was supposed to be in the mid-60sF and raining all day today according to all the forecasts. I think it was probably around 65F all day, but it was mostly sunny all day with a nice breeze. So, it was too cool in the shade but just right in the sun. So, it was a pleasant day and we enjoyed it. It was an interesting former Soviet bloc city, like Tallinn, but larger in area it seemed to me. Our Charming Riga tour today cost us $75pp. Oceania had a similarly named tour that only lasted 3.5 hours and cost $119. It definitely did not do the market or Rosengrals and they were the coolest.

We are ready to sail away now, a half hour early so everyone must be aboard. We have 6:30pm dinner reservations at Polo Grill tonight, so it was a good day to skip lunch. We’ll skip the show tonight. It is Hayden Smith. No idea. We don’t get to Klaipeda, Lithuania before 11am tomorrow and we plan to get up early and do a last load of laundry before we arrive. Fingers crossed on that!

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Return to Tallinn, Estonia

Sunday, July 12, 2015

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We are back in Tallinn today. We were both slow getting up this morning. It is the latest we have been up on this trip. Even though Clay is sick, he was still up earlier than I was. It may have just been so he could cough up a half pound of snot. I found it all over the soles of my feet after my shower! I heard him coughing and tried to just sleep through it but I didn’t realize he was exploding in the bathroom until much later. I am certain there is no way for me to avoid the same fate.

It was after 8am and the ship cleared announcement before we got into Terrace for breakfast. We still couldn’t find a 2-top. We waited and one got cleared at the back door. They had blintzs today and since it was Sunday I had 3. It is only supposed to be in the 50sF today and rainy. Since we had been here before and the weather was so bad and Clay feels bad and I am exhausted, we were in no hurry to get ashore. We talked about what we wanted to do here and after breakfast went to check with the tourism lady in the atrium. We asked her about the KGB Museum at the Viru Hotel. She said she worked there and we could only go with a reservation at 11:30am but she could call and see if we could go. She spoke to someone and spelled out our last name more than once to get us reservations. She told us where to go about 10 minutes early to pay for and pickup our tickets. We set off and got on the next shuttle bus. It is just a little more than a comfortable walking distance, so we were glad for the bus. Plus it was raining! Today we saw Segways where they were supposed to be by the big balloon on the pier. They weren’t there before but they didn’t appear to have any raingear so it was just as well. There were 3 cruise ships and 3 ferries in port this morning and everything was crowded. On the bus ride in, I saw a poster for the Old Masters exhibition at the Old Town Hall that I had forgotten about. I knew we wanted to do this. It was great and out of the rain and we needed to kill a couple of hours before our 11:30am KGB tour. The price was 14 Euros each and it was spectacular to see all these paintings displayed in a building from the same time frame. Art Rules runs until 5 October 2015. When we came out of the town hall, the church bells were ringing and a market had been set up on the square. We wandered the stalls. We tasted and Clay bought a small smoked cheese and an elk sausage. There was still some time to kill so we browsed a few shops on our way down to Viru Hotel. When we got to the tour desk in the lobby, the woman did not have our reservation and she told us the tour was already oversold. I got a little upset but she agreed to sell us tickets and take us on the tour anyway. I am glad we went as it was very interesting. I recommend it. The tour lasted an hour and had the best views over Tallinn. Afterwards, we walked back up past the Town Hall to return to the Beer House for lunch because we enjoyed it so much the first time. I had the goulash in bread bowl again. Clay went another way. He ordered crispy fried pig’s ears followed by lamb sausages. I tried a bite of the pig’s ears since he said they were good, but I was grossed out and had to spit it out. My goulash and bread bowl were as good as remembered. On the walk back to the shuttle bus, we went down the wool street along the medieval wall and I found a linen/cotton blend sweater with amber decorations. I tried it on and bought it for 55 Euros. We missed the next shuttle bus and lined up for the next one. We waited 10 minutes or so. When the next one came, 2 came at once. When we got back, one of the cruise ships had already left. Marina left on time at the new shortened schedule of 4pm. We watched a movie on TV this afternoon. We have dinner reservations at 6:30pm tonight at Red Ginger. I am certain we will not go to the JAR show tonight, Backstage Pass as we saw it with this cast during our last cruise segment onboard Marina.

Tomorrow we should be in Riga, Latvia from 10am to 6pm. We have an Alla Tour here. This is a new port and a new country for us.

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Last day in Saint Petersburg

Saturday, July 11, 2015

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We were both startled awake by the alarm. We had fallen off to sleep immediately and hadn’t stirred all night. We set off to breakfast and then got ashore to be on time for our 9:30am meeting with our guide. His name was either Dimar or Dmitri. Our driver was Slava again from Thursday. It was pouring rain when we left the ship, but it slacked off and only sprinkled or misted the rest of the day. The good news was that we had museums scheduled all day, so we weren’t out in it much.

It turned out that we couldn’t get into our first museum, the Treasure Gallery #2 Gold Room in the Hermitage until 10:30am. Also, he didn’t have our tickets yet. We drove to meet someone to get them as we had on Thursday with Anya. Then we made a bonus visit to Holy Trinity Church. This is a blue domed church with golden stars on it and a gleaming white building. I had seen it numerous times in the distance but we had never driven near it before. It had cannons and an obelisk built of cannons out in front. I forget what war they were commemorating. Inside it was under restoration so we couldn’t see a lot of it. But, they were singing a service when we entered and the altar was open. They were having confession and lined up for communion. There were at least 4 priest at or on or around the altar and all wearing golden regalia. The guide explained it was a Russian religious holiday most closely related to our St. Valentine’s Day. That was special. We still needed to kill some time, so I asked the guide about finding a patch. He took us to a special needle crafts store and they had a Russian flag patch. I had seen one of these at a souvenir place when we were here before and didn’t get it because it didn’t say a place name on it and I wasn’t sure I’d remember where I got it. I bought this one because. They also had a big selection of cross-stitch kits and I looked through them but I didn’t really like any of them. We went on to the Hermitage in the hope of finding the guy selling paintings outside again, but alas it was not to be. We looked all day for those outdoor painting vendors with no luck. I guess a rainy Saturday is a good day to take off for painting vendors. We went inside to learn that we would have another private guided museum tour. He came with us and translated since today’s specialist spoke Russian. It was pretty awesome. The ancient gold and diplomatic gifts were amazing. Especially the ancient gold. I recommend it! We still had the Impressionists in the Hermitage and the Faberge Museum to do. Faberge was scheduled for 3pm. It was 12:15pm so I chose lunch first. We reclaimed our raincoats and went outside. The guide suggested Stolle and we declined. It was not our favorite meat pies. It turned out there was a Teremok about a block away and we were happy to go there. He bought his own lunch while we looked at the menu! Clay had the same cold summer soup he got for himself and which wasn’t on the menu since it is seasonal. Clay must have liked it, at least he ate it all. We ordered an order of dumplings to share. We liked them. They were like small steamed Chinese dumplings but with sour cream on them. I had a bacon and cheese blini and a condensed milk dumpling. I had a fermented rye soda drink, Kvass, which is a local favorite. Didn’t love it! Clay had another Russian beer. Both guides disparaged it as a Soviet-era evil thing, but Clay liked it Okay. We like this chain of pancake restaurants! We walked back and went through the entire New Hermitage building. It was a bit of a work in progress still, but the stark modern interior was a surprise and sometimes the unfinished concrete surfaces were not attractive. But, overall we liked it. The glass ceiling over the entire roof was nice as were the glass walks and stairway. It was an amazing collection in a special setting. Recommend! Our last stop was the Faberge Museum. The guide told us he had to take another couple through with us because there was a couple that wanted to go through and their guide wasn’t licensed there. It turned out to be Zack and Cheryl again. They had other plans for the rest of the day (1 hour or so) and so we did a condensed tour of the highlights of Eggs and then wandered most of the rest of the collection. Spectacular. Recommend. It was another good day. I highly recommend Alla Tours for St. Petersburg tours. I think the private tours here are a particularly good value. We saw a lot on the first time through with group tours for 3 days, but it would have been a better idea I think to stay with all private for the value and quality of experience. Either way, I recommend Alla Tours for St. Petersburg.

We got back to the ship way before the 5:30pm deadline. Clay counted his rubles and said we had to shop it out in the terminal. We bought a matryoshka pepper mill and a matryoshka small scissors. I love the idea of twisting that doll’s head for pepper! The scissors are pointing and I really need a pair that are blunt ended for travel but it satisfied Clay’s monetary desires. It left over a 100 ruble note that Clay told me to put in my souvenir paperwork as it was worth about one $.

We sailed about 10 past 6 just after one of our neighboring ships departed. The captain came on the PA and announced we would sail past Kronstadt in about an hour. We wanted to see that. We saw a lot more of the island that we couldn’t actually see from the ground on Thursday. We saw the ship Aurora that she told us about. We saw a lot of people out where I stepped in the Bay of Finland. We saw a submarine. We saw cadets marching in formation again. We saw the big white swing arms that can close the little slot with a road tunnel under it that is the opening for ships to enter the bay to St. Petersburg. It is part of their dam’s flood control. They don’t really get tides here, but have a flooding problem in the city from the wind pushing the shallow Bay of Finland back up into the arms of the Neva River.

We need to go to bed early and sleep in! Tomorrow is Tallinn which is another repeat port for us and we have no firm plans so that is good. Especially since the weather forecast is bad. Temps in the 50s F and rain all day. If it is that bad, we may have a sea day.

In other news, we got a letter last night announcing a new schedule due to operational reasons. Whatever that means. I know it means more shortened port times aboard Marina. We will lose an hour at the end of the day tomorrow. We will lose an hour in the morning in Riga. We will lose 2 hours in the morning in Klaipeda. We will lose an hour in the morning in Warnemunde. We will lose an hour at the end of the day in Copenhagen. We will lose an hour in the morning in Amsterdam. That left only 2 ports unaffected. We are still scheduled to arrive in Southampton on time.

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Moscow!

Friday, July 10, 2015

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Moscow! This was a very, very long hard day of tourism at its worst or perhaps highest form. We got up at around 4am to be ashore by 5:30am so we would not miss the high speed Sapsan train to Moscow from St. Petersburg. We found that breakfast was not being served anywhere onboard. This is weird because we both thought we clearly remembered O having early breakfast for their tour guests going to Moscow on day 2 here. But I guess that was just collective wishful remembering. We thought because we have access to the Concierge Lounge that we could get something there. I got a cappuccino and a plain yogurt with a jam to flavor it and I was fine. The guy that got there 1 minute after me found the coffee machine being serviced! He was in his bathrobe so it is unlikely he was going to try up in Horizons Lounge which is the only other place I would know to try without calling room service. There was nothing for Clay but some cookies left over from the evening before and that is what he had. The only real problem with the Moscow tour was finding food to eat when you wanted to eat. That didn’t seem possible. The good news is that since we never had a port bag check, Clay decided to take Nabs, Oreos, and a protein bar. We ate it all plus what we were able to find along the way. We also took 2 bottles of water off the ship before we left which was a good thing because we had a hard time finding anyone without gas elsewhere and Alla Tours did not provide any on this tour unlike all the others. Shortly after 5:30am we met our tour partners for the day, Zach and Cheryl. They were from LA and were much younger than us. They were in First Class on the train, so we only saw them during the tour and on the transfer to and from the train. We were in Economy, or whatever the masses use is called. Our car, 3, was filled with a large group of Asians traveling together with a lot of luggage and it was a bit of a nightmare. The other problem was that half the seats travel backwards at any point in time. We were in 1 and 2 outbound on the right side and facing backwards for 4 hours of over 200 kmh travel. Coming back the car was not as crowded and we were in 43 and 44 again facing backwards and now on the left side of the car so we were looking at the same side of the tracks traveling in the opposite direction. Coming back we also had 2 stops that we didn’t have outbound which extended the trip by about 15 minutes or more.

We arrived in Moscow about 10:25am. By the time we met our Alla guide, sounds like E-ah, and the van picked us up it was 11am.  The van reeked of cigarettes and either the A/C didn’t work or the driver just wouldn’t turn it up. Every time one of us complained he would touch the controls and it would get a bit cooler for a few minutes and then it would heat up again. The temperature hovered just under 30C according to his overhead display. E-ah asked if we had any special requests so I asked her about a quick stop at a Starbucks if we were near one during the day. She said no, she didn’t think so. Within the first 5 minutes in the van there was one visible sitting at a stoplight. She apologized at the end of the tour that we never found a Starbucks, but that I should know she remembered and that she had told me there weren’t any. Whatever. She said no and she meant no. I just think all 4 of us thought we had booked a private tour and that we could and would be accommodated if possible and not just get lip service about it, but E-ah had an itinerary and schedule in mind and she had no intention of deviating no matter what.

We took a quick drive around Moscow as she pointed things out at speed. I wish I could tell you our route, but Alla and E-ah provided no tour maps or other informational handouts. E-ah told us she would at some point show us our route on a map so we would understand where we’d been and what we’d seen, but that never happened. Our first stop was outside the back side of the Kremlin. We got out and walked through a park with a weird statue about the corruption of children. Then to a bridge with lock trees on it and along a canal or river embankment. In the distance we could see a huge weird statue honoring Peter the Great that looked like Peter Pan on a flying pirate ship. Our next stop was at Moscow Cathedral where we walked all the way around and through it on an extensive tour that was not listed on our program. We spent at least an hour between these 2 stops and we have no idea why really. The cathedral was a 1994 recreation of the one that historically stood there and was blown up under orders to Stalin. E-ah said there had been a swimming pool there most of her life without a word about the old church or Stalin until construction and fund raising started to remove the pool and rebuild it. When she was asked by Zach why we spent all this time on things no one requested and were not on the itinerary she never really answered him. I have to assume because that was what she wanted to do for whatever reason. Next stop was at the ski jumps for a look at them, the University and a view over the city. This was on the itinerary as “City introduction tour incl. KGB headquarters.” When E-ah was asked about it, she said she did point out KGB headquarters when we drove by it. I agreed that at speed among 100 other things she did point it out, but that didn’t explain why it was featured in our programs. She said she didn’t know why either because it is closed to the public, not an open place. It was misleading and frustrating at best. Anyway, at 1:15pm the van left us for good in front of the Bolshoi Theater. The program had this part of the day lasting until 2:30pm. But there was no arguing with gather your belongings and don’t leave anything behind because this is where we part with our driver. Now this was not spelled out on the program at all. I should note that later I saw canal boats and thought to myself that would be better than the van for less than 2 hours and on foot for the rest of the day. Our guide today (Saturday) asked us about our day in Moscow and told us the best way to see Moscow in a single day is from the HOHO river/canal boats. He confirmed what we did was the worst. We were never offered anything else and didn’t know. We trusted Alla to only offer the best and we were mistaken. We walked around to glimpse what we would be seeing the rest of the afternoon. We were all pretty hot, bothered and annoyed by then and ready to see something that we had come for instead of circling it first by van and now on foot. E-ah said we had timed entry tickets and we needed to have our lunch stop now. She led us to a walking district/outdoor mall food court and into Sbarro. She promised me my long awaited toilet stop there. Alas, it was not to be. The restrooms were out of service, they had no still water, etc. We ate there but Zach gave E-ah a good tongue lashing about it. She was unrepentant and said this is where she always brings her tours. She did lead us directly to public restrooms after about a 30-minute meal. Then we finally entered the Kremlin and crossed Red Square, but this was not our photo stop which frustrated everyone again. We walked all the way around the Kremlin Palace and through Cathedral Square and heard all about every building as we did. Then we got in line at the Armory. This was our timed entry ticket. It was on our program as “Excursion in Kremlin: Cathedrals and Armory Chamber (tsars regalia, diplomatic gifts, Faberge eggs)”. This sounded interesting. It was overwhelming. We had traveled hundreds of miles and walked a few more and now we were on a speed walk of endless, mind numbing details. I appreciated the effort, but it was too much. Zach just wanted to see Red Square. I just wanted to see St. Basil’s on Red Square. No. E-ah had to show us the cathedrals. All 3. Each and every one with a full history and details pointed out. I was ready to weep. I don’t know how the others felt but it was not a happy group. After the Tsar’s bell, she led us to Red Square and Zack perked up. We were all happy to see St. Basil’s. It is too bad we couldn’t go in there, since of all the 4 churches that we had to tour none of had ever heard of them while St. Basil’s is iconic of Moscow and I know it is what I was expecting. Anyway, she led us to GUM, now a shopping mall and insisted we go inside so she could show us our meeting point in one hour. Zach balked and told her he could find a fountain in a mall. Off they went, to an outdoor bar/café that she could see. We let her lead us to the fountain and point out her suggestions for us in the mall. We took them. We went through the grocery store and bought Clay a sandwich for the train ride back. We had some delicious ice cream and a frozen Coke each. We used the restroom and sat around on the edge of Red Square and then our hour was up. At 6:30pm, we left Red Square and started our tour of subway stations back to the train station. (This is the problem with our itinerary. It did not indicate that we’d only have transportation for less than 2 hours and walk and subway our way back to the train station!) Anyway, on Friday of a Russian holiday weekend at 6:30pm, we started our public transit commute across Moscow. I don’t know how it could have been any more crowded. It was interesting to see the richly decorated stations. E-ah got us back in time to walk right onboard the train and take our seats with little wait for departure. I am glad I got to see Moscow. But, I wouldn’t recommend anyone repeat this experience. It could certainly be done better. Our train tickets cost about $100 pp according to Clay’s translation of our tickets. That means that we think we actual tour cost was about $580 pp. That was outlandish for what we got compared to here in St. Petersburg.

We got back after midnight and the passport control and guards were jovial for the first and only time! We were in bed and asleep by 1am with an alarm set to wake us by 7:30am on Saturday.

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Private tour in St. Petersburg, Day 1

Thursday, July 9, 2015

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Clay was up first again. I don’t know if he’d been to the gym or not. He says he is getting a sore throat, so maybe not. We thought we were in no rush this morning. We arrived in St. Petersburg Ocean Terminal about 8am. We were not the first ship in and by the time we were docked, all 6 berths were occupied. I don’t think we ever went past the place on the Neva River where we saw 3 ships docked before. We went to Terrace for breakfast and it was so crowded we were forced to sit outside. We wouldn’t normally mind that but we have only had inattentive to non-existent service out there and sometimes with a big side helping of sass. So, generally we try to avoid sitting out on the back deck. Today, it was just slow service. We ate lightly so as not to tax the service system and got out of there. We left the room about 8am and entered a world we had not previously encountered. We were out of the room as Dottie, the cruise director, was making the announcement that the ship was cleared and she was calling the O tour groups. Evidently the last time we were here we had left the cabin prior to any of that because that day we just walked all the way down the front stairs and out the gangway on deck 4 and arrived at passport control without any lines and 15 minutes later were ashore and waiting. Today we walked down and got stopped on deck 5 as deck 4 was only for O’s tour groups. We were sent aft to join a line at least 200 people long from the deck 5 gangway back past Jacques. We stood there as they released 20 people about every 10 minutes. It took us over an hour and 10 minutes to get ashore today. I am not sure whose idea it was to limit the departure of independent guests. It may have been a way for Oceania to minimize the passport control wait for their own tour participants. I have no idea if they were doing this on our previous cruise because we didn’t witness it before. It was a new day in Russia today! The other complicating factor was that we were sharing a passport control area with a much larger MSC ship that was disembarking tours at the same time even though they had been docked there when we arrived.

Today was our weird private tour day in St. Petersburg. Months ago when planning this, we knew 2 things. We didn’t want to repeat the standard Alla Tours here and it would be more crowded here now that it was earlier in the season. So, Clay picked St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral in Kronstat. It was an hour drive each way and he mostly picked it for that. So we could see something different of and around St. Petersburg. It worked. We saw some repeat stuff, but mostly we saw countryside and suburbs. We drove outbound from the north and returned from the south. We saw even more variety. From the north was the earlies road and it went over a dam. From the south was the newer road and it is part of a St. Petersburg ring road. The cathedral was built in 1906, I think, and was hardly ever used as a church since religion was outlawed shortly after it was completed. It had very recently been renovated and re-consecrated. It was a spectacular Byzantine-style Orthodox church. It was worth the drive. I picked the Kunstkamera. It is the oldest museum in Russia and was started from the private collection of biological and medical specimens of Peter the Great. It was fascinating and disgusting and disturbingly crowded. But, the most amazing thing of all was that Alla had arranged a private museum guide for our visit. So both our weird things turned out to be good things. For lunch, we went to a Tepemok. They are a chain of blini fast food cafes. We liked it. It was a very different experience too. They had toys for kids’ meals. Our guide, Anya, explained that they were Russian Winnie-the-Pooh characters from a TV cartoon show. They had Pooh, Rabbit, Eeyore and Owl. Once she explained it, I could see it, but I wouldn’t have figured it out on my own. We stopped to see the smallest statue in St. Petersburg. It is a little bird on the water side of a bridge. Pedestrians try to drop coins on the pedestal for good luck. I guess like a wishing well or something. We had seen if from the boat tour last time but Clay couldn’t get a photo. It is called Chizhik-Pyzhik and though fairly new is fairly famous for tourists and locals alike. After lunch, we took about an hour long stroll through the Summer Garden instead of on Nevsky Prospekt because we didn’t really have any souvenir shopping to do. At 3pm was our guided tour of Kunstkamera and by 5pm we were back at Marina. We said good bye to Anya as we will not see her again. We don’t know who we’ll have for Moscow tomorrow or how many in our group. On the third day and our 2^nd day of private touring in St. Petersburg, we will have our same driver again, Slava. We paid Anya $50 for our 3^rd day added visit to the Impressionists building of the Hermitage. We showed her our paid invoice from June. She seemed surprised as she was telling us we needed to pay her today. We were surprised she was expecting anything more than the $50 but she must have phoned in and verified it because later all she asked us for only the $50. We sadly did not get a receipt for it! She confirmed with Slava and with us and we thought with someone on the phone that we would need to be outside passport control tomorrow morning at 6am to go to Moscow. As I was typing this up, the cabin phone rang and it was a fellow passenger named Zach. He said he would be going to Moscow with us tomorrow and had been asked to please notify us that we had to be outside by 5:30am or miss the departure to Moscow. Clay thought in June it was even earlier. Well, stay tuned.

We’ll have an early dinner in Terrace and an early bedtime and a long, long, hard day tomorrow on our whirlwind tour of Moscow. I will probably not get a post published tomorrow, so look for it in 2 days.

The Queen Elizabeth that was here when we arrived, left before dinner time. While we were having dinner Celebrity Silhouette must have slinked off silently because we didn't see them or hear them leave while up in Terrace.

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Porvoo, Finland

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

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We had a great sunset last night! It was the first one we’ve seen in months it seems like.

Clay was up at 6:30am and went to the gym. I didn’t get up until 7:30am and we made it to breakfast after 8am. Evidently we were not the only ones running slow this morning because there was hardly anyone in Terrace and it had been open an hour when we got there. Unlike lunch yesterday at noon when we couldn’t find anywhere to sit in Terrace.

We had to meet in the theater at 10:05am for Picturesque Porvoo. So, we got to watch the entire sail in and it was scenic like Stockholm’s without being as extensive. We traded our tour tickets for bus 5 tickets. We waited another half hour or so before we were called to go out deck 4 to our bus. We got right out and managed to get front row seats. Not that the drive was very scenic. We spent the first hour driving around Helsinki before heading out of town to Porvoo. Porvoo is an old wooden medieval city. It is the 2^nd oldest city in Finland. It was a small charming old cobblestoned town. It was hilly and really tough walking on the rounded stones. But, it wasn’t raining in Porvoo. In fact it was sunny and warm. When we got back to Helsinki around 2pm, it was cool, gray and raining as it was when we left this morning. That made our decision for us not to stay in town but to return to the ship for the afternoon. That and the fact that I had used a small nasty restroom by the bus parking lot and got my pants soaked with urine! We did walk through the dock side shops to check for Moomin and found some, but bought nothing. We didn’t hear about Moomin our first time here. They are white marshmallow looking hippo shapes that are Finnish forest-dwelling trolls. There are a series of books and comic books about them. Once they had been pointed out, we saw them everywhere.

We came back aboard and I changed and showered and we made it up to a late Mexican buffet lunch in Terrace. We left for the 3:30pm lecture about Russian urban architecture over the past century or so. We both fell asleep! The ship doesn’t leave until 7pm. The Captain’s welcome cocktails are tonight so I am thinking about an official nap. That brings me to the precious cashmere lap blankets. A pair has finally been delivered to the top of our closet. I had to look for them because I would call them shawls or pashminas. They are a cashmere/silk blend and the size of a large shawl. Clay laughed when I spread one out on the bed for him. He said you wouldn’t get much use out of that and he’s right, you wouldn’t. You certainly wouldn’t pay more for a concierge level cabin to get to use one. The sturdy blue acrylic lap blankets they have up on the pool deck are much more useful.

We’ll just go to Terrace for dinner tonight and we won’t go to the show. Last night was a standup comic and tonight are Mark and Rodi, who they are billing as 2 of Florida’s most popular entertainers.

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