Aug 21st and 22nd–Stockholm and home

 

We arrived in Stockholm at 9:30am, on the 21st.    The ship provided a bus into downtown Stockholm, which took about 20 minutes.    We started our Stockholm tour with a walk through Gamla Stan, the old part of the City.   The first building is the Parliament (Photos 1 & 2) and then the Royal Palace (Photos 3 & 4).

We then wandered the old streets, toured a church, and launched our previous blog from an internet café.

 

We are fans of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo books and movies, so we went to some of the sites in a newer part of the city.  (1st Photo – Lisbeth Salander worked for Milton Security at this building, 2nd Photo – the Millennium Magazine Office, 3rd Photo – Where Mikael Blomkvist lived, 4th Photo – Lisbeth’s new 21 room penthouse apartment.

 

After touring the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” sites, we took a ferry to an island with an amusement park, an aquarium, and some museums.   We went to the Vasa Museum.   The Vasa was a state of the art , for its time, ship that the Swedish King, Gustavus Aldolphus had built, it was completed in 1628.  It was one of the largest and most ornate ships built at the time, with 64 cannons.   The day it was put into water fully equipped, it sailed out of the berth, fired its guns in salute, hit a gust of wind, keeled over, and sank.  It rested on the bottom until recently, when it was found and raised in 1955.  It turns out the cold fresh water had remarkably preserved the oak ship.

Computer analysis of the ship, which is huge, found it to be top heavy, and that it only took a little wind to push it over.

After seeing the ship, we had lunch took the ferry back to catch the shuttle bus back to the ship.

In the afternoon, we packed our suitcases, watched a last show in the main ship lounge and had dinner.   We had to put our suitcases out by 10pm to be collected for the trip tomorrow.  All totaled, we walked about 8 miles today.

On the 22nd, we got up at 5:30am to get ready to go ashore for the last time.  It is raining in Stockholm today, a perfect end to a vacation that started with a rainy day in London.  We had breakfast and at 6:30am waited with other departees in the main lounge for our bus to the airport.   Our Scandinavian Airlines flight left at 10:25am, for the eight hour flight to Newark, arriving at 12:55pm.  We left Newark at 2:30pm and arrived at Boston at 3:36pm, finally arriving home at 6:30pm after our two hour drive from Boston.  The kitties welcomed us with open paws, happy to see us again.

We had a great vacation, and enjoyed all the ports and history.   But it is great to be home!!!!

Aug 20th–Helsinki

 

We docked at 9:30am, and headed out on our own to tour Helsinki at 10am.   I had found a self guided tour using the cities electrified trolley system they call the tram.   We purchased a 7 Euro day pass, and rode the system for about an hour, looking at the various sites, and communing with the locals.   We made a stop to see a Lutheran Church nick named the Church of the Rock.   It is built into this massive rock, with a band of windows near the roof, and a circular roof.

We reboarded the tram and stopped back near the port where we started.   We stopped in to a nice restaurant/Café/Nightclub to use the internet, and ended up having an excellent lunch.  After lunch we took a look at the Lutheran Cathedral.

The Cathedral was on one of the main squares in town, and there was a South American group playing flutes and similar wind instruments on the square.

We headed back to the ship, through a street market that had crafts for the tourists and fruit and vegetables for the locals.  We got back to the ship in time for a nice nap.

The ship left about 5pm, and we took photos of the islands that guard the entrance to the harbor.

We had a nice dinner in our favorite ship restaurant, and than went to the ships grand finale show.  At the end a substantial number of the crew staff and the Captain marched in to say farewell.  

After the show we went up to the Horizon lounge to dance in Swedish waters to the Swedish band Abba, who’s songs are featured in Mama Mia…

Tomorrow we will be touring Stockholm, including some of the sites featured in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Books and movies, as well as the old town and the historic ship the Vasa. 

We will be home soon, and will need to go back to work to rest after our vacation…..

St. Petersburg Addendum

We forgot to mention a few things…

St. Petersburg addendum:

Here are a couple of items that we forgot to mention.

 

Several guides mentioned that St. Petersburg has about 60 sunny days a year.    We were fortunate to have clear weather in Moscow, but it poured on the rest of the ship that stayed back in St. Petersburg.   We brought sunny weather back with us from Moscow, and had a clear day the last day in St. Petersburg.  It is beautiful here in Helsinki, breezy, like an early fall day.

When we have been doing tours we have been given little radio receivers with headphones.  The guides have a transmitter so they can speak softly in all kinds of settings and crowds, and we can hear them when we are up to 50 feet away, so we don’t have to huddle around trying to hear what they are saying, brilliant.

We also forgot to mention the weddings in St. Petersburg, and a couple we saw in Moscow.    Most weddings take place during the three months of relatively warmish weather.  After the ceremony/registration the wedding party heads out to have pictures taken at various sites, all dressed up in their lovely dresses and suits.  Many pop the cork on bottles of champagne as well.  We saw probably a dozen brides and grooms in St. Petersburg at parks, on bridges and at palaces. We overheard someone say that one couple had their photo taken on the white line down the middle of a busy street.  They were at all the great sites, frequently via a stretch limo that costs $150 hour, with one or more photographers.  It was fun seeing them everywhere.

August 18th–Moscow

We met at 7am for our trip to Moscow.  There were 21 of us, plus an escort from the ship (Todd), a Russia based guide (Alexander), and a local guide Ludmilla, our local guide in Moscow.  We caught a 9:40am flight to Moscow, which is about 500 miles from St. Petersburg.  The airline is a local airline called S7, using an airbus plane.  The flight was fine.  We drove into the city with our local guide talking about all the buildings we saw and positive aspects of Moscow.   Our first stop was at Red Square, where we could see the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, and the GUM store.

These photo’s are of the Kremlin, which is a walled area with various buildings and a cathedral inside.

This is St. Basils, simply gorgeous.

Red Square turns out to be smaller than expected, but we may not have been able to really get a sense of its size because seating was erected for a big musical event and part of the area is undergoing renovation.   From the side we were on, you had the St. Basils off to the left of you, the Kremlin in front of you (next three photos), the History Museum off to the right (third and fourth photos), and the GUM store behind you.  Lenin’s tomb is next to the wall and used as a reviewing stand during military parades and other events.  It is somewhat controversial now and during these events a huge Russian flad is draped over the monument to disguise the tomb. 

The GUM store was the main government run store for years.   It is now filled with upscale shops, the Rodeo Drive of Moscow. The first photo is a portion of the entrance (another building far to wide to photograph).  When you go through this doorway you enter about the middle of the first of three glass covered atriums lined with stores.  There were two levels of stores, and it looked like stores on the second level could be two floors if they would like.   Each atrium was a couple of blocks long.  It looks like a very ornate mall.   What is interesting is that it was built way before the malls existed in the states.   I wonder if this is where they got the idea?

From the store we took the Moscow Metro, the subway for a couple of blocks.  The first photo is of the entrance lobby to the subway.   The second is the escalator down into the subway, which is several hundred feet deep as it doubles as a bomb shelter.  The third and fourth picture shows some of the dozens of statues on the platform of this station.  Yes, the subway is all that you have heard about it, clean and bright and filled with art.

We reboarded the bus and continued to drive around the city, passing this building, which is the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (photo), which was formally known as the KGB.  We then stopped at Gorky Park (2nd and 3rd photos).  And than we took a boat ride, for some additional views of the Kremlin and the city.

We also visited a Nunnery.   A number of the czars wives were sent here when the czar no longer wanted them around or when the czar was replaced.  It  is still in use today, and has 52 Nuns currently.   The front wall of the chapel had this entire wall of icons.   The cemetery next to the Nunnery is where all the famous Russians are buried, including this ballerina, and this comedian, whose beloved dog died shortly after he did.  We saw the graves of Checkov and Yeltsin as well as Gorbachov’s wife who died a few years ago of leukemia after founding a leukemia hospital for children.

We ended our day with a delicious beef stroganoff meal at a private club.   The meal was served with as vodka and red wine; as much as you would like.  The main dinning room was very ornate, as you can see.   We had a wonderful dinner with eight other guests at our table.

We had a fairly miserable Aeroflot flight back to St. Petersburg (the heat was on full blast and the AC did not seem to work).    We arrived back at the ship at 1:30am, in time to catch a couple of hours sleep before our 8:45am trip to the Hermitage.

Moscow was a highlight of the trip, Ludmilla, our enthusiastic guide was so excited to show us her city and shared her knowledge freely with us.  The entire Russian experience was fantastic, as was the vodka!!