Stockholm, Sweden

Today we visited Stockholm, Sweden.  It is the home of the Nobel Prize but we really didn’t see much about it except for a museum that we didn’t have a chance to visit.  Weather wise we had overcast skies with a steady drizzle until early afternoon.  
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It was less than a half hour walk into the old city center called Gamla Stan.  There were many really nice shops and restaurants as you walked the cobblestone streets.  Also in the center of this old city was the very pretty Kalendarium cathedral.  The palace is also in this area but it is not a real pretty building from the outside.  We were unable to go into it since it is an actual palace with living royalty inside and not a museum like those in St Petersburg.  We saw some of the changing of the guard ceremony that occurs every day at noon.  As we walked out of the old city center we walked through the Parliament building which was very nice. 

We then went over to city hall which is an impressive building built with eight million bricks.  It had some nice sculptures and statues around it also.  From there we walked over to a small island that had a beautiful (Riddarholm) church on it with a steeple that could be seen throughout the city. 
We then took a very long walk along the harbor over to Djurgardev which is Stockholm’s version of Central Park.  In this park are a great number of museums including the Vasa Museum which houses the recovered remains of the battleship Vasa which was built in 1628.  On its maiden voyage outside the harbor it sank in a bad storm.  It was salvaged 333 years later almost totally intact and extremely well preserved in the cold waters it had rested in.  It now is the centerpiece of the maritime museum about the Swedish Navy.  There was also another very nice looking museum (Nordiska Museet) at the entrance to this park.  We stopped at a small café in the park and enjoyed a beer and cider with a few pastries before heading back to the ship.  Sweden is known for good beer!

Stockholm was a nice city to visit and had a lot of very interesting buildings to view.  Many of these buildings were very colorful but unfortunately the overcast and somewhat foggy weather dampened the view of the city.  We still had a great time and walked 12.5 miles viewing the sights.

Berlin, Germany

Our ship actually docked at Warnemunde, Germany, but since we have never been to Berlin and it is the primary attraction from this port that is where we decided to go.  Our excursion left at 6 AM and it was a 3 hour bus ride into Berlin and then another 3 hours back.  Once again we took a tour with the SPB Tours and it allowed us to see most of the Berlin sights in a short period of time.

We arrived at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium which was built for the 1936 Olympics.  This was a very famous Olympics because it was a showcase for the Nazis and attended by Adolf Hitler.  The most dramatic moment of the Olympics was when Jesse Owens (a black athlete) won four gold medals much to Hitler’s dismay.  It was funny to see all the driving schools using the parking lot of the stadium for driving practice (both motorcycles and cars).  Every person in Germany must go to a driving school to get a license and these driving schools cost over $1000 but they are probably better drivers because of this.  The bus drove us by Charlotteburg Palace for a quick picture of one of the few remaining palaces in Berlin.  It also took us to Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church which was built by Wilhelm’s son as a Memorial for his father.  The interesting thing about this church is they built a brand new Lutheran Church right next to it and although it is not large, it is certainly very unique inside with thousands of blue translucent tiles on the walls.  It is quite a unique comparison of old versus new Lutheran churches.    We took a ride to Reichstag which is a uniquely designed building and is the home of German’s Parliament although most of the actual work is done at a building just next door.  It has become a much more symbolic building and is where Hitler gave his acceptance speech when accepting the position of German Chancellor.  Like many of the buildings in Berlin it was destroyed in World War II and rebuilt.  Most of Berlin has been rebuilt after World War II.  Although it is a very old city with history that goes back more than a thousand years, most of its buildings are not older than 50-60 years because of the devastation from World War II on this city.  We also visited some other popular sites such as the  Brandenburg Gate and Holocaust Memorial.  The Holocaust Memorial is very strange and consists of hundreds of concrete blocks of varying sizes on a city block.  There is no real symbolism to the blocks and nothing is written on the blocks.  The people of Berlin where disappointed in the memorial and eventually an underground museum about the Holocaust was added so the people really understood what had happened during the war.   After having a quick lunch at a local restaurant, we took a ride over to Museum Island which contains Berlins only Cathedral which is actually a Lutheran Church (called a cathedral because of its size) and some of their largest museums. 

Our trip ended with a quick stop at Check Point Charlie and a viewing of some of the remaining portions of the Berlin Wall.  Check Point Charlie was one of the points in the American portion of Berlin after World War II that people had to come through if they were going from East Berlin to West Berlin.  This was back in the Cold War when relations with the US and Russia were very poor and people in East Germany were doing anything to escape into West Germany.  It was amazing to see how the wall was built and to learn how it was used to keep the people from leaving East Germany.  Before it was erected almost three million East Germans defected to West Germany when nothing prevented them from leaving.  The people that left were the well-educated and younger people that Russia could not afford to lose.  The first wall (barbed wire) was erected overnight in the city.  When people woke up the next morning you could not go between the East and the West any more without showing paperwork to prove that you were allowed to do this.  Eventually the barbed wire was replaced with two separate walls with various other defenses (barbed wire, land minds, machine gun look out towers, etc.) between these two walls.  Even after the walls were built people were very creative in finding ways to get over the walls and into West Berlin.  People pole vaulted, created homemade “airplanes” or hand gliders, and found other unique ways to get over the walls without being shot or blown up.  Some made it and some didn’t.  Anyone that made it was given a West German passport and was helped to get started in a new life.  We then took our long ride back to our ship.
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Copenhagen, Denmark

Our last stop for this cruise segment was Copenhagen, Denmark.  We had been here over 10 years ago and had spent a couple of days visiting this beautiful city.  We elected on this trip to take an excursion outside the city to Northern Zealand.  Zealand is Denmark’s largest island and is only a few miles from Sweden in the northern fort of Kronborg where we first visited.  The fort/castle was interesting to view and at one point it had the largest ballroom in Europe and was used to entertaining Kings and Queens from all European countries.  Because this fort was positioned at a point that it could sink any ship that passed between Denmark and Sweden, Denmark began charging a fee for any ship that wanted to go between the Baltic and Northern Seas.  The country became rich with these charges to all the merchant ships that passed through the channel.  This charge remained in effect until the 1800’s and Abraham Lincoln negotiated an end to this charge.  Why America played a huge role in this fee is unknown to us.  From this fort we went a little south to see the summer palace of Denmark’s royal family.  It was big but actually pretty ugly.  The stop was not all wasted though because we found a small pastry shop not too far away and bought a snack for our bus ride to the next stop.  Before heading back to Copenhagen we had one final stop at Frederiksborg Castle.  This castle was very impressive and had some beautiful gardens and fountains.  We walked all around the outside of the castle and this was certainly the highlight of the excursion.

We then made our way to Copenhagen and viewed some of the key sights in the city.  We saw the new Opera House which was nice but we had seen more impressive buildings.  We saw both Christianborg Palace and Amalienborg Palace and both of these are impressive buildings.  Our highlight of this part of the tour was a stop at Nyhaven which is a large cobblestone walking area along a big canal with restaurants lining the road.  When we visited here 10 years ago we had several meals and beers along this very active area.  It brought back good memories of the area and city.  During the tour of the city we passed by an area called Christiania which was a part of the city with abandoned naval buildings that became inhabited by hippies who claimed the area as their own sovereign city-country.  Copenhagen seemed to allow them to govern themselves and leave them alone.  In this area it is legal to buy, sell and smoke marijuana and basically live as you want as long as you don’t bother other people in the area.  Occasionally the city has a few incidents that the police get involved but in general this arrangement seems to work out.  We also visited the Little Mermaid which is a statue in the harbor created based on Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid book.  It is certainly one of the icons of this beautiful city.  Now we are off to Amsterdam to complete this segment of the cruise and to do a short land tour of Holland before boarding our Princess cruise to Norway, Iceland and back to New York

Happy Cruising,
Greg and Sharon

St Petersburg, Russia

Well, we finally made it to St Petersburg!  This was expected to be the highlight of this trip.  Our first day was a little overcast with some very light rain at times but the second day we were there was a beautiful sunny day.  It was one of the 60 sunny days they get every year in this Russian city.  We were very lucky to get one of them!

We had arranged a 2 day tour with SPB Tours including a night tour for our stay in St Petersburg.  Going through immigration here is a little more intense than other stops you go through.  You must have a Russian visa to enter the city but many of the tour companies such as ours provides this service.  The first day getting off the ship takes some extra time and there are long lines with everyone getting off the ship at the same time.  We boarded our tour bus a little after 8 AM which only had 17 people for our two day tour.  Our guide was a local professional Russian tour guide that spoke good English.  She was extremely friendly compared to the people you see along the streets and in the tour attractions and she told us that in general Russian people do not smile at you unless they know you.  Our first stop was a Russian subway to get a taste of what the local people experience.  It wasn’t that much different than other metro subways in other international cities except there isn’t any English translation to where you are going so it would certainly be much more difficult for non-Russian speaking people to use.  From our short ride we went into a Farmers Market to see some of the produce and souvenirs sold in the area.

Our next stop was Peter and Paul’s Fortress, which was built to protect St Petersburg from the Swedish back in the 1700’s.  This was a very opulent fortress with the highest steeple in St Petersburg on the church.  The “small” angel at the top of the steeple had a wing span of 20’ but you could not have guessed that looking at it from down below.  It is amazing how much gold you see in all the churches, cathedrals and palaces throughout St Petersburg.  Outside the walls of the fortress are some small beaches on the Neva River which runs through the city.  Starting in March, people (mostly men according to our guide) will start sun bathing even though they are sitting next to snow and ice. 

Our group then boarded a hydrofoil boat for a 40 minute ride out to Peterhof Palace which was built by Peter the Great as his summer residence.  Peter was one of the earlier House of Romanov Czars and built St Petersburg back in the early 1700’s.  Originally it was the capital of Russia and is now the second largest city in Russia behind the current capital, Moscow.  We did not go into Peterhoff Palace but took pictures from the outside of both the building and the gardens.  What was most interesting about the gardens was all of the fountains constructed without any use of pumps.  All of the water shooting up in the air is strictly by gravity and is quite an engineering feat.  There are literally hundreds of fountains all “powered” by gravity.  Once again the gold that adorns this palace and the fountains is quite amazing.  The tour included lunch which provided us the opportunity to partake in some Russian staples such as borsch and beef stroganoff.  We also had the traditional vodka to start the meal. 

After lunch we went to Catherine’s Summer Palace which is located in Pushkin outside the main city.  Once again you are stunned with all the opulence throughout this palace.  The Amber Room is inside this particular palace and was a room built in panels of Amber jewels that literally were priceless.  Unfortunately during World War II the Germans destroyed this palace and stole the Amber Room which has never been seen again as it was originally created.  It is unknown whether it still exists in some buried vault in Germany or moved off to South America someplace.  The room was recreated over many years by master jewelers.  The entire palace was rebuilt with the Amber room being reconstructed starting in 2003.  No pictures can be taken in this room and the pictures shown in our blog are taken from outside the room looking in.  Almost all of the palaces that you view today have been reconstructed by the government and turned into museums.  Most all of this reconstruction occurred after the Soviet Union was abolished back in 1992.  It was interesting listening to the many stories from our guide about the difference between Russia today and how life was in the Soviet Union with the KGB.  She told us one story of her being called into a room shortly after she attended college and was found talking to some foreign people she had just happened to meet.  She was asked many pointed questions by the KGB and told not to talk to foreigners again.  Now she makes her living talking to foreigners in the new Russia.  This was the end of our first day’s tour.

We arrived back on the ship around 6 PM but by the time we cleared immigration and dropped off a few souvenirs we had no time to grab any dinner before going back outside for our 7 PM night tour.  Our tour was named “See St Petersburg as a Local”.  We started the tour on the bus by being given four samples of different tasting vodka.  Since we are not vodka drinkers, none of these really tasted good and two of them were down right disgusting!  I guess we will never be a local.  The night tour took us down to Nevsky Prospect which is the main road through town.  We walked a mile or so looking at some of the sights and being provided some of the history.  Much of the history focused around the siege of the city when it was then called Leningrad and the Germans surrounded the city for almost 3 years but never gained entry.  They bombed the city and destroyed many buildings.  Over one third of the population of the city died of starvation during the siege.  After our walk we boarded our boat for a night canal tour.  It was nice to see the buildings lit up at night and you got an interesting perspective from seeing them from the water.  Bottles of vodka were passed around and you could drink as much as you wanted during the boat ride.  Based on the samples we had on the bus, we elected to pass on the vodka and just admired the sights.  It was an enjoyable boat ride and the rain held off.

The next day we had to rise early again to catch our 8 AM bus tour and what a beautiful sunshine day!  We started off with a 1.5 hour canal boat ride but this was on a great sightseeing boat with a very good narrative of what we were seeing.  The boat dropped us off at the Hermitage which is a museum created from Catherine The Great's Palace.  This was another amazing example of all the wealth these Czars had when they ruled.  This palace had all original paintings collected over the years by the Czars.  The artwork in this palace is supposed to be comparable to the artwork you can find in Paris’ Louvre or the New York City Met.  There are works by all the masters including Michelangelo, Rafael, Leonardo Di Vinci and Rembrandt.  They must have really liked Rembrandt because they had 25 of his paintings including the Prodigal Son Returns which we have provided you a picture of in the blog.  There are thousands and thousands of original paintings and sculptures in this Hermitage which consists of 6 different buildings and three million individual exhibits than you can see.  They only put ten or twenty thousand on exhibit at a time and change these out every month.  After leaving this amazing museum we headed to see the Spilled Blood Cathedral.  This was actually more of a memorial than a cathedral.  It was built in spot were Czar Alexander II was killed by terrorists.  He was a much loved Czar and they built a memorial to remember him.  This could be considered one of the true icons of St Petersburg.  It is a very colorful Russian orthodox style church.  When we think of Russia, many of us have a picture of this type of church in our minds.  As pretty as it looks on the outside, the inside of the church is just as nice with beautiful mosaics adorning the walls.  The ceiling is painted in gorgeous murals.  We were amazed that there was a lot of discussion to tear down this church to improve the traffic in the city.  What a loss of art if they would have done that!  During the war this church was severely damaged and it wasn’t until the 1990’s that they restored it back to its original beauty.  You notice that almost all the restoration of churches and palaces were done after 1992 (i.e. post-Soviet Union).  The soviet government did not allow religion other than communism.  People were not allowed to go to church.  It wasn’t until Russia became its own country outside of the Soviet Union that you could once again go to church and all of these grand palaces and cathedrals of their past history were restored.  That is also why all of the city’s cathedrals are really museums now and you have to pay an admission fee to view them. 

After viewing the Spilled Blood Cathedral, we went to lunch and had a really great meal at a very interesting little restaurant.  The desert was the best part!  It was a layered honey cake that everyone wanted to get the recipe for after we ate it (secret recipe)!  After lunch we went to the Yusupov Palace which was where Rasputin was murdered.  Felix Yusupov tried to poison him and eventually shot him many times before he was eventually thought to be dead.  He was then thrown into the river and when an eventual medical exam was done of the body it was found he actually drowned and neither the poison nor the shooting killed him.  Rasputin was extremely close to Czarina Alexandra and it was thought he was killed for having too much influence on the Czar.  The Russian revolution to overthrow the Czars occurred only a year later.  You can see a recreation of the murder scene with Felix Yusupov and Rasputin in one of the blog pictures.    In this palace there was a beautiful theater and we were given a brief show by four Russian singers who sang a Russian folk song that was really great to listen to.  It is amazing to see so many of these huge palaces around this city.  Most of them now are just used as commercial or residential buildings and the people occupying them probably don’t even know about the history of their building.  Our last stop on this tour was St Isaac’s Cathedral.  This is another iconic building in the city that you see from many different places.  It is once again a very beautiful building on the inside and supposedly very similar to the Vatican in many ways.  You can also walk around the cupola like the Vatican but we didn’t have time to do this.  It was a real engineering effort to build the cathedral.  A very large scaffold was built to hoist the huge columns that were placed around the cupola.  It is also amazing to see renderings of the three previous churches built and destroyed to build a larger church on the same ground until this huge cathedral was eventually built.  The conclusion of our tour was a quick stop at Starbucks so that on some folks could get a Starbucks cup in Russian.  Included in our blog pictures is Starbucks in Russia.

It was quite an amazing trip to St Petersburg.  There are so many beautiful things that we saw and many interesting stories we were told.  This dialogue in this blog has gotten quite long and we apologize for its length but there is so much to say about this city.  As one last funny story to tell you, we have included a picture of a Russian car.  No one in Russia wants to buy a Russian car because they are too expensive.  They are not expensive to purchase.  They are too expensive to operate.  Our tour guide says that a Russian built car might need to be repaired once a week to keep it running.  Almost all the cars you see in the city are built in different countries.  I guess you need to be a mechanic to own a Russian car.  There are so many great Russian stories that we were told, that we wish we had time to tell you. 

When we got back to our ship an hour before we were set to leave this port we were amazed at how strong the winds were.  The waves were pounding on our ship in the port.  An hour later when we were supposed to be sailing off to Helsinki we were advised from the captain that we were being forced to stay another night in St Petersburg because the strong winds it was unsafe to leave the port.  Unfortunately this has caused us to miss Helsinki (our next planned port). Regardless we are at sea now heading for Stockholm and actually appreciated the rest after two long days in St Petersburg.

Happy Cruising, Greg & Sharon
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Oslo, Norway

This was our second trip to Norway.  We had taken a ferry over to Norway 10 years ago when we stayed a few days in Copenhagen just to say we had been to the country.  This visit to Oslo allowed us to really see a little more of the country and its capital.  Our ship docked right in town next to Akershus Fortress where we started off the day taking a walking tour in the fortress providing some of the history.  We moved on to City Hall which was really an interesting building.  There is sculpted artwork around some of the outside walls of the building that tell the mythology of the region.  The walls inside the building are painted with more traditional stories about the history of Norway and the city.  There are also many pictures about Nobel Prize winners inside City Hall.  We were unaware that the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo and not Stockholm like the other categories of Nobel Prizes.  The winner of the peace award is actually determined by ex-politicians from Norway.  We saw pictures of past winners such as Barrack Obama and Jimmy Carter.  Outside City Hall is the Nobel Peace Prize Museum that shows all past winners and what they did to earn the award.  The most interesting building in Oslo is their new opera house.  It is a very modern looking building where you can walk on the sloped roof of the structure.  It was built to be an iconic building of Oslo and have a similar affect for the city like the Opera House in Sydney has done for that city.  We didn’t think it had that type if impact to us but it certainly is an interesting building.  Outside the building in the harbor is a unique glass sculpture (looking like an iceberg).  We finished up the tour walking over to the cathedral and then down the main city walkway that goes all the way to the Royal Palace.

After the tour we continued walking around the shopping area and found a harbor walkway where we came upon a very interesting old fashioned 3 masted ship (Americo Vespucci) from Italy that was used for sailing instruction.  It was an extremely well maintained ship and combined both the past ship design with modern naval use.  We walked down the harbor viewing many of the ships and ferries.  The area has been built up very nicely and there is a large shopping area along one side of the harbor.  On a subsequent trip to Oslo we would like to visit the Viking museum which requires a ferry to get to.  This museum contains three Viking ships that were dug up in pristine condition because they were found in clay that prevented any damage to the wooden construction of the ship.

Aarhus, Denmark

Aarhus was a new stop for this ship.  Even though they had been doing the Baltic for a while this was the first time they had stopped here.  Aarhus is the second largest city in Denmark behind Copenhagen where we stop on our return from St Petersburg.  Although it rarely receives cruise ships, it did a marvelous job of helping the tourists get the most out of their visit.  They handed maps out to everyone and had a trailer brought into the port to act as a tourist center with plenty of local people inside to help answer questions about their city.  They provided homemade rye bread treats with Denmark butter – so good! There were people located on the walkway into town to help answer questions and provide guidance to where people wanted to go.  They even had someone asking you to fill out a survey when you were walking back to your ship to see what they could have done better.  It was a very impressive effort by their tourist bureau to work with cruise ships now and in the future.  They had some vendors inside the port selling crafts from the area.  Some of these vendors mentioned that our ship was much better for their business than the German cruise ships they normally see.

We started off our walk in Aarhus to Den Gamle By.  This is open air museum that has many small buildings reconstructed to represent three timeframes in Denmark history: 1864, 1927 and 1974.  Michelin rates this place a 3 star international museum to visit.  It takes about a half hour to get there from the cruise port (1 ½ miles).  The majority of the facility is focused on the 1700 and 1800’s.  There are people walking the streets and in the buildings that depict the era that they represent.  It was really enjoyable spending a few hours seeing how these people lived.  There was even some information about Hans Christian Anderson and where he grew up.  He is the famous author of children’s books such as the Little Mermaid.  The more modern areas of this open air museum were not quite as interesting but it was nice to look at the contrast in Danish history.  The highlights though of the museum were certainly viewing the people dressed up in the style of the era and watching them perform the tasks that were performed hundreds of years ago.
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After visiting this museum we walked around the city taking in the views.  It was harder to recognize what you were looking at as you walked around because the maps provided were in Danish with not much English available.  The cathedral was certainly an impressive building and we went inside to view it.  There was also an art museum that is quite unique because it has a colored 360 degree walkway on top of the building.  We were able to visit a small Viking museum along the way which depicted the findings of a small Viking village found while constructing a modern building in the city.  They maintained the area and built this museum in the basement of the building where the village was found.  They reconstructed one of the Viking houses that was uncovered and marked the outlines on the floor of the museum of the other houses that were found.  All of the relics found during this dig were presented in this museum.  When we were walking around in the morning we saw a long line of people waiting in line for Starbucks, couldn’t imagine until we learned that today was Starbuck’s opening day and they were providing a nice goodie bag.  There were some nice shopping walkways in the city but the only things we purchased were at the vendors in the port.

This was really a nice surprise port to visit.  We had extremely low expectations and we were very happy with what we saw in this city.  We still look forward though in visiting Copenhagen in another week.

Another interesting point as we were leaving Aarhus is the Great Belt Bridge (entrance to the Baltic Sea).  Our ship went under this bridge just after sunset and it only cleared this bridge by a few feet.  We were up on the top deck watching and it was really quite a sight.  We had had a beautiful sun set that day and we could still see a little of the orange from the sun set as we viewed the bridge.  It was a nice little extra sight of this cruise.

Tallin, Estonia

This is almost our first trip to Russia.  Tallin is in Estonia which was part of the USSR until 1991 when it declared its independence.  It is supposedly one of the most technological advanced countries and much of the internet technology we were told comes from here.  We saw none of that and only saw the old city of Tallin.  In the fourteenth century St Olav’s Church was the largest building in the world.  Today not so much but it still is an easily seen sight throughout Tallin.  We did our own walking tour in this city.
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Once again we had beautiful weather.  Temperatures got up to the low 70’s after starting out in the high 60’s.  You could not ask for better weather to walk around a city and explore.  The old city is only about a 15 minute walk from the port and your first entrance into the city is in a very picturesque guard gate with a large cylindrical defensive tower by it.  It is actually one of the icons of the city that you see in every souvenir store.  A short 5 minute walk from the entrance is St Olav’s Church which actually looks very plain except for the very high steeple.  From there we wondered the city until we decided to go see the main city square.  In the square was a symbol of  a snake wrapped around a glass indicating that this was one of the first pharmacies in Tallin dating back to the 1400’s.  Around one of the corners was the Old Hansa which is a restaurant with people dressed up from the 1200’s serving you food.  There is no electricity in this building and you eat by candle light.  There are many stores around the area that sell the famous Russian dolls and Faberge Eggs.  After spending a few hours roaming the lower city we walked to the upper city and viewed the magnificent St Nicholas Church.  This is the patron saint of seaman and was built back in the 1200’s.  It is a very pretty and different looking church like the typical Russian Orthodox churches you see.  Right across from the church is the Toompea Castle which doesn’t look like a castle at all until you walk around it and see some of the lookout towers and old rocks that were used to make up the castle.   The building structure across from the church has been rebuilt into more of a palace looking structure and is not used for the Parliament.  After looking around a few of the lookout points at the top of the upper city, we walked back down to the city square and found a place off of the square to have a little Russian beer.  At this point, we visited a few more places and headed back out of the old city back to our ship.  This was a great city to view before our visit to St. Petersburg tomorrow.

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Inverness

Scotland is usually an overcast and foggy country but we seemed to arrive with clear and sunny skies.  This is the only stop that we had a ship excursion scheduled because the 3rd party companies had sold out of the excursions we had wanted to go on.  Our excursion took us to Loch Ness to get a look at Nessie (the Loch Ness monster).  We saw plenty of Nessies around town created by the town’s people but none in Loch Ness.  Oh well! The lake itself was very pretty and it is amazing how few homes and buildings you see around this large lake.   We visited Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness and it had an interesting history of being constantly overrun by enemy armies.  Eventually one army left in fear of being overrun again and decided to blow up the castle when they left so they wouldn’t leave it for their enemies.  It was a pleasant trip and allowed you to see the countryside of the Scottish Highlands.  We also went through the city of Inverness and had an opportunity to view the castle in this city and the cathedral.  This would have been a nice town to spend a little time walking around.

When we arrived back to the ship we took a walk around the port town of Invergordon.  This was a very small town with very little to look at although it had a nice church and there were a lot of wall paintings throughout the town that added a little character as well as beautiful flower arrangements.

Edinburgh 

We spend two full days in Edinburgh and could not have asked for any better weather.  Each day we had 70 degree weather with no rain and sunny skies.  This was a special stop for our cruise ship because of the Tattoo (military show) held in Edinburgh Castle.  We elected not to attend the Tattoo but attend the festival activities.  If we ever go back to this city again in August, we will get tickets to see the show.  This city also has the Fringe Festival that goes on throughout the month of August.  This brings a lot of tourists to the city to see the street performers and actors.  Throughout the city there are many plays going on in the afternoon/evening time frame.  Some of these are very strange plays and the actors are walking the streets prior to the shows trying to entice people to come in and watch their play or musical.  Some of the street performers are very good and attract large crowds.  Some of these performers make good money while others don’t look like they make very much at all.  It is certainly a very colorful time to see this beautiful city.

There are so many beautiful sights in this city with the castle, churches and memorials all around.  You can walk along the Royal Mile from the castle to the palace on a very nice cobblestone road.  The pubs and restaurants line these streets along with some interesting shops.  After viewing many of these sights with a quick walk around, we headed over to Queens Ferry where we had arranged a boat tour.  The boat tour was interesting and we were able to view the old red railroad bridge that had been built many years ago.  They also had a suspension bridge like the Golden Gate Bridge that carried all of the car traffic.  These bridges spanned several miles across the bay and were quite impressive.  A new bridge is also being built that is even more impressive and is needed because there is more traffic crossing over the suspension bridge than it was originally designed for.  It is really strange to look at this bridge with three huge supports and the bridge section attached hundreds of feet outside the supports without being connected to each other.  Right now it looks like three different bridges on one support leg each which are not quite connected to one another.  During the boat ride we saw an old fort that was important to fight off the Vikings originally when it was built and later used in World Wars I and II to protect the city against the Germans.  The first bombing of the UK by the Germans was actually done in Edinburgh when bombers flew over and sunk some naval ships in the bay.  We also saw a monastery on one of the islands which was several hundred years old.  There were a few sea lions visible as our boat made its way around the bay.  It turned out to be a very nice tour.  
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The next day we walked over to the ocean terminal to view the Royal Yacht Britannia which was used by the Queen to tour the area many years ago.  There was a nice mall there and we actually did a little shopping.  We took a public bus into the city and stopped off at Calton Hill which provided a wonderful view of the city!  On top of this hill is an old observatory and a memorial that was built to look like the Parthenon in Athens.  After taking many pictures we walked down to the city and went into Edinburgh Castle to tour this impressive structure.  This is the largest castle in the world and is really much more impressive inside the castle than looking at it from the outside.  Inside you can see why it was an impressive fortress that was difficult to conquer while still being an eloquent residence for kings and queens.  It currently has a large memorial inside the castle for Scottish soldiers that were killed during various wars.  It also has a prison that has been used for 100’s of years up to World War II that you can walk through.  There are at least two museums within the walls.  From the castle you can get some great views looking down at the city.  After leaving the castle we walked down the Royal Mile to the palace which you cannot enter and is not overly impressive from the outside.  We viewed a few more sights and headed back to the ship on a public bus.  This was a truly enjoyable city to visit and we hope we will make it back here again sometime.

Bruges 

​Bruges was someplace we had never been but we were anxious to try some Belgium chocolate.  We actually docked at a port called Zeebrugge and took a shuttle bus to Bruges which was a beautiful little town with many medieval buildings and churches.  It was a great little city to walk around with some many different shops to visit.  When we first entered the city you were greeted by the many swans that swim through the canals.  The churches were truly spectacular with some very tall spires on two of them in particular.  There are several canals that go around the city and we were going to take a boat tour but we decided that we were walking along the same canals the boats were going on and could see everything and more that they could.  The main Market Center was really amazing with their city hall and other ancient buildings surrounding the square.  We stopped at one of the street vendors and got some twice cooked french fries which were a specialty of the area.  Supposedly fries were invented in Belgium.  Who knew?  Not long after we ate the fries we couldn’t help ourselves when we (Greg) passed this shop that sold waffles on a stick dipped in any sauce and topping you wanted.  We had one dipped in dark chocolate with coconut sprinkled on it.  It was great!  We had to stop at another street side vendor selling his own waffle specialties that was recommended by a local walking tour guide we ran into.  We had a waffle with ice cream and chocolate this time.  Of course after that we had to sample some of the chocolate.  It truly was a unique little city and a lot of fun to visit.  This was the last port stop of this cruise and tomorrow we start our next leg of the journey doing the Baltic itinerary up to St. Petersburg.

Cork - Ireland

We had never been to Cork and had prearranged a guided tour.  The tour took us to Blarney Castle where we both had the opportunity to kiss the Blarney Stone.  We now have the gift of “gab” or at least we are supposed to be a little more eloquent in our talking.  The Blarney Castle is located in a large area with gardens and other interesting areas to visit around the castle.  Our tour took us through Cork where we stopped at the English Market and tried some pastry and coffee.  The tour ended with a trip to Kinsale which is a small fishing village at the southern tip of Ireland.  It had some nice shops and restaurants to visit.  We also learned that Disney had made a lot of road improvements in the area because of all the movie production work being done in the area to produce the various Star Wars movies.  When we arrived back at our ship we decided to walk into the town of Cohb which was very colorful and well kept up.  We saw some women who were dressed up in turn of the century outfits.  It is amazing how beautiful the flowers are in these port cities.  The cool and moist weather must be really ideal for flower growth.  Everywhere we go we seem to see flowers in bloom and on display.

Dublin - Ireland

Dublin is a city we have previously been to but we got to see a lot more of the city center on this trip.  Unfortunately it was a cold and rainy day but the rain stopped later in the morning.  We had a free walking tour scheduled early after arrival of our ship but we found this tour to be more of a history tour than a sightseeing tour.  After a short time on the tour we got very tired of hearing the opinionated talk of our tour guide.  All we did was to stop at uninteresting parts of the city to listen to more of his rhetoric about Ireland’s history and revolution.  As soon as he provided a short break for the group we left the tour and went off on our own.  This is the first free walking tour we have found to not be very good in all the cities we have visited that offered tours.  Once on our own we went to Grafton Street to check on the primary shopping area of the city and then went off to see St Patrick’s Cathedral (the most famous Irish saint).  We visited the Medieval Viking Area which has Dublina (a visitor’s center to show the origin of Dublin), Christ’s Church Cathedral and Dublin Castle.  From there we took a walk to the Guinness Storehouse and Brewery.  We elected to not go on the Guinness Tour this time and we were a little surprised you could not even go to their souvenir store without going through the tour.  By this time we had walked over 10 miles and decided to take a break in the Temple Bar area on our way back to the ship.  This area of Dublin has many of the more famous and popular bars and restaurants.  We stopped at the Quay Bar and Restaurant and had some cheese bread and vegetable soup along with some Irish coffee and Guinness.

Belfast - (Northern Ireland) 

Today we visited Belfast where they built the Titanic.  Unlike Cork and Dublin, Belfast is not in Ireland.  It is in Northern Ireland which is part of the United Kingdom while Ireland is an independent country that fought for its independence against England and the United Kingdom.  In the not too distant past you used to hear about the IRA and all of the fighting going on in Belfast against the English police and military but that seems to be a thing of the past now.  In each of the tours we took in Cork and Dublin we received detailed history lessons on Ireland’s fight for independence from England but in today’s tour we heard nothing about it.

We had found a Groupon for a Segway Tour around the shipyard where the Titanic was built.  It was strange to find Groupon used in the United Kingdom and how similar it is to the Groupon in the US but we were able to get a nice tour for a very low price.  It was fascinating to walk on the same ground that the Titanic and her sister ship the Olympic was built.  There were white lines on the concrete showing the outline of the ship, the smoke stacks and the life boats, which allowed you to understand the exact size of these two huge ships.  Although they were the largest ships ever built at the time, they were very small compared to today’s standards.  The ships were actually not too much shorter than most big cruise ships today but they were not nearly as wide and had many fewer decks.  We learned about how the Titanic was built and launched out of the dry dock and read many stories about the disaster that sank her.  Belfast has built a unique building that has a museum for tourists to understand more about the Titanic.  We also saw one of the tenders (SS Nomadic) built to transport passengers to these large ships when they could not dock at a port.  This tender was very large compared to today’s tenders where cruise ships just use their own life boats.  The Nomadic transported many more passengers at ports such as Cherbourg, France which was the last port the Titanic visited prior to its sinking.

After visiting the Titanic we walked into the City Center of Belfast where we first went to St George’s Market which was a nice local market that sold fresh foods, various crafts and some flea market type items.  Some of the food we saw must have made us hungry because we stopped at a place called Granny Annie’s Kitchen.  It was an extremely interesting place that was uniquely decorated.  We had a local sandwich and chips along with a Guinness and some cider.  After our light lunch we went around the city taking a few pictures of city hall and some of the other interesting sights we saw before taking a taxi back to the ship. 

Tomorrow we have a day of rest with no port stop and can’t wait for the break.  Over the past three days we have walked 37 miles.  

St. Peter Port (Channel Islands)

​We arrived at St. Peter Port which is a channel island between England and France.  The port is in the town of Guernsey which may be most famous for having been the home of Victor Hugo.  During World War II this island was captured by Germany and used as defense against the attack from Great Britain.  Castle Cornet guards the port and is an impressive fortress.  We visited the castle when we left the ship and was able to see the firing of the cannon that is performed at noon every day.  This is done with two soldiers dressed in uniform and firing a dummy round that sounds just like the real thing.  The castle is well preserved and there cannons in place throughout and a museum.

As we walked back to the city we saw local kids swimming in the sea which must have been really cold.  We didn’t mention in our first blog but the weather here is very cool.  After leaving Peachtree City with 90 plus degree weather for a month and a half, we were pleasantly surprised to arrive in 70 degree weather in Amsterdam.  Guernsey was even cooler today in the high 60’s with a little breeze blowing.  We expect this type of weather for our entire cruise and it is such a relief to finally get out of that hot summer weather we have been having.

The city of Guernsey was beautiful with all of the colorful flowers throughout the city.  Everywhere you looked there were large baskets of flowers present with multiple types of flowers in each basket.  The shops were very nice in town and some roads were just cobble stone walk ways without the worry of car traffic.  There wasn’t a lot to see or do here and we ended our visit with a stop at local pub for some fish and chips along with a pint (Greg) and some flavored cider (Sharon).  It was a very enjoyable snack.

Guernsey was a nice place to visit but I am not sure what we would do if we went back there again.  There was an island not too far away that we could have taken a ferry to.  That might be something else to try.  Tomorrow we arrive in Cork, Ireland and have a tour arranged to go see Blarney Castle and kiss the Blarney Stone!

Liverpool (United Kingdom) -

​Liverpool is the home of the Beatles so we decided to go visit The Beatles Story.  This was a very good way to learn more about the Beatles and how they got their start and eventually what happened to them.  We were amazed to learn of the struggle of this most famous group to gain true popularity and to get their first record published.  Once they got this record published and changed their drummer to Ringo Star their rise to stardom was dramatic.  They published so many number hits in just a short number of years it is truly an amazing feat.  After their band manager died at the age of 32 they only stayed together for another 2 or 3 years.  As fast as they rose to fame it is amazing how quickly they broke up as a group and each band member went their own way.  They left an impression on the world that no other band has ever come close to attaining.  After visiting the Beatles Story we took a short walk over to the Cavern where this group got their start.  It was such a small little room several floors below street level that a bunch of teenagers came to and helped to encourage them to become the great band that everyone came to know them as.

After our experience with the Beatles we took a train to Chester which is a nice medieval village about 40 minutes outside of Liverpool.  The clock tower there was very different and many of the buildings made the trip definitely worthwhile.  The shops and restaurants along the street were unique and we stopped for fish and chips along with a quick stop at one of the candy shops.  We were very impressed with this little town and would recommend any visiting Liverpool to make this little side trip.
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Upon our return to Liverpool we walked around Albert Dock a little more and took a few more pictures before heading back into the ship.

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Greg and Sharon

​Well we have begun our 2 month cruise adventure!  Here we are in Amsterdam on our pre-cruise stay before we head out on the Celebrity Silhouette.  After flying 11 hours to get here and passing 6 time zones, we were not as fresh as we usually are to begin our adventure.  Neither of us sleep well on an airplane but we try to take a few quick naps.  When we  got to our hotel we were able to check in early and grab a quick shower before heading out to discover Amsterdam. 

We went looking for the cruise ship dock after we checked into the correct hotel.  We wanted to make sure we know where we are going tomorrow morning when we board our ship.  We didn’t find it initially although we did see all the river cruise ships getting ready to depart on their cruises.  We will be back here next year in April to do a 15 day Grand European river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest.  We did some scouting on this trip on possible hotels to stay at and excursions to take next year to view the tulips which will be in full season next year when we visit.  If anyone wants to join us on this river cruise next year, please let us know.  We have another 7 couples already booked on this cruise with us!  Although we didn’t see the cruise ship terminal for the Celebrity Silhouette we felt we knew where it was at after our initial walk.  We later confirmed the exact location right before we headed back to our hotel later just to be sure.

Free walking tours (provide a tip at the end of the walk) are often a great way to see a new city.  We had arranged to take one first thing in the afternoon and we enjoyed getting a quick walk through some of the main sights and getting a little extra knowledge about what we were seeing.  We learned about the initial creation of Amsterdam and how it was built on swamp land very similar to Venice’s origin.  Like Venice, Amsterdam has a series of canals that go in and around the city that allows a great way to see the city.  Because of how the land was constructed, the buildings on this land are in many cases leaning in various directions giving the city a unique appearance.  The architecture is very unique and the buildings are all of similar height with very nice design style.  Amsterdam was once a world dominant power because many rich merchants created a city of great wealth.  It was a major player in the discovery and development of the New World and many of you might remember that Holland built New York (originally called New Amsterdam) and sold it to England.  How Amsterdam has changed over the years!  World War II took a great toll on the city and you can now visit Anne Frank’s house to learn about some of the atrocities that the Nazis did to the Jewish community.  We have tickets to see this house on one of our other visits to this city over the next month as we come back here from our cruises.  Today the city is very unique.  The city has legalized marijuana and you will see people smoking it throughout the city as you walk around.  Coffee shops have been created to sell it and allow people to smoke it inside.  What is unusual is that the coffee shops can’t legally grow it or buy it but they can sell it???  How they get it is a mystery evidently, but obviously the police don’t care and there are no arrests because of this business.  Amsterdam also has legalized prostitution in the Red Light District where you can see partially clad women in windows as you walk along some of the streets trying to coax men into coming inside to have sex with them in a tiny little room.  Evidently the prostitutes rent these tiny rooms for $150 for an 8 hour period and can make $750 which is a pretty good earning rate.  Based on what these women look like in the windows it is pretty amazing that they can get 15 men to come in and visit them!  We learned a lot about the city, the history and the culture during this walking tour.
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After the tour we walked over to the flower market and marveled at all the tulips and other flowers they have on sale there.  Primarily the tulip bulbs are sold at this time because it is currently not tulip season.  They also sell a lot of wooden carved tulips which are very unique.  The market consists of 10 to 15 shops that are located under tents in a flea market environment.  You see these various flea markets throughout the city selling many different things.  After a visit to the flower market we decided to have a snack and tried out one of the many French fry shops in the area where they give you a large container of fries with various different toppings.  We tried ours with mayo, satay and onions.  It was very good and very filling.  We continued to walk around the city looking at the canals, flowers, architecture and unique shops.  We had gone in several cheese shops to sample the cheese which is really very good here.  We decided we were going to buy some cheese and a bottle of wine to take on the ship for our first cruise.  We did that right before we boarded the ship.  As we continued to walk we saw this very unique little cheese shop with a balcony over top one of the canals where they had 3 small tables set up.  We stopped and drank a bottle of wine with a cheese snack (pesto cheese mixed with Garlic/spiced cheese along with a little bread).  As we ate and drank our little snack we watched all the boats going down the canal. 
All in all this is a really nice city with a lot to see.  We look forward to coming back and seeing this city again in our future cruises.  We will be back here again in 2 weeks for a day stay in between our back to back cruise on the Celebrity Silhouette and then we will be back again for an overnight stay before taking a train to Rotterdam to pick up our 3rd cruise on the Caribbean Princess.  We will also come back again next April for our river cruise and may spend 2 or 3 days here during tulip season to travel around the area.  We look forward to coming back and seeing more of this city.
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We did some walking today!  We broke our old “step” record and walked just over 34,000 steps (15 miles.  Our previous high was 26,000 which means we walked more than 30% more than that!  Not bad since the 2 of us hadn’t slept for over 30 hours.