Wednesday, July 8, 2015
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
2nd 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.
