Tag Archives: Cruising

Long Days and White Nights

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Location: St. Petersburg, Russia

My internal clock’s taking a beating this week. First there was the nine-hour time change between home and Stockholm. Then we jumped ahead another hour in Helsinki, and another hour here, and then tomorrow night we go back an hour as we start circling back. We’ve been changing time zones almost every night since we left home. Plus of course these are the famous White Nights in Russia, when the sun never really sets, so my body’s been mighty confused.

Fortunately, a little adrenaline can go a long way. I was stoked for our visit to Peterhof, Peter the Great’s summer palace on the Gulf of Finland. It’s much smaller than the Catherine Palace but we thought it had much more interesting state rooms. The main attraction is not actually the palace itself, but the park around it: 150 fountains, several mini palaces and loads of trees and flowers make for an amazing walk, especially when you have brilliant sunshine and temperatures in the low 20s. Wow.

After a cafeteria lunch of beef stroganoff (we’re really getting into this Russian cuisine), we toured yet another palace, this one belonging to the Yusopov family. At one time the Yusopovs were among the richest families in Russia. They owned five palaces in St. Petersburg alone, plus others throughout Russia, France, Britain and Germany. (Yet it’s still not uncommon for Russians to live in apartments where they have to share tiny kitchens with other families — the gap between rich and poor is not to be believed.) The palace we were in is best known as the place where Rasputin was supposedly murdered, so of course they had wax figures depicting the dirty deed, along with documents trying to clear up the historical mystery. It was pretty interesting.

One more day in Russia…

A Real Russian Experience

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Location: St. Petersburg, Russia

Now THIS is the way to travel: a driver and guide (in our own private Mercedes) whisking us around town, moving us to the front of most lines and showing us exactly what we asked to see. I arranged this private tour a few months ago when I discovered it was better and actually cheaper than taking the ship’s tours — what an amazing deal.

And what an amazing city! We started at the Catherine Palace, built in the early 18th century for the wife of Peter the Great. Later empresses (including Catherine the Great) expanded and altered the palace, but the blue-and-white facade stayed the same. The interior is famous for the Amber Room (even Chris had heard of it), an entire chamber lined with panels of amber and mirrors. Much of the palace was destroyed in World War II but has since been restored.

After touring the palace, we walked through the surrounding royal park, which is full of canals, lakes and pavilions. At the edge of the park was a small building housing the court carriages used for the coronations of emperors, which naturally I found pretty cool.

I’d like to note for the record that I managed to go five and a half hours without food (and without complaining). For lunch our guide took us to a local restaurant, where I amazed Chris by ordering Russian borscht and potato pancakes, all of which was delicious. (Later in the day I amazed him still further when we were offered free vodka shots and I actually drank one. When in Rome…)

Everything that came after lunch is a bit fuzzy cause we were so exhausted and overloaded with information that we could hardly think straight. The one thing that stands out is our stop at the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood — you know, the one that looks like St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. This one is dedicated to the memory of Alexander II, who was mortally wounded on this spot in 1881 when an anarchist blew up his carriage. It’s one of the best known landmarks in the city.

More opulence awaits us tomorrow…stay tuned..

Fun Times in Finland

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Location: Helsinki, Finland

We’re a bit of an oddity on this ship. For one thing, all the other passengers are old enough to be our parents (the first thing our cabin attendant said to me, in her heavy Polish accent, was, “I think you are youngest person on ship, yes?”) Plus, unlike some people we’ve seen, we aren’t used to being waited on hand and foot. In the dining room last night, six different people were involved in getting our meal: one to decide which table we’d be at, one to actually lead us to that table, one to pour our water, one to look at us with disdain when we said we didn’t want wine, one to take our order and another to actually bring the food. Naturally we’ll be tipping all these people at the end of the cruise. Wow.

Nevertheless, we’re having a great time. Our tour today covered the main sights of Helsinki (i.e. churches), and then we drove out to a small town called Porvoo. It’s the second oldest town in Finland, founded in 1364, and it has a well preserved old town with colorful buildings and a quaint wooden bridge. The whole experience was made immeasurably better by the gorgeous sunny weather and our awesome guide, who was a fountain of information on all things Finnish. A great day.

Tomorrow is the first day of our three-day stint in St. Petersburg. Adventure awaits…

Setting Sail

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Location: Stockholm, Sweden

“Hurry up and wait” has been the theme today. Wait for the bus to take us to the ship…wait to get our passports checked by security…wait for an hour to check in and get our room key…wait another two hours for the rooms to actually be ready…wait for our luggage to get delivered…ugh. I know that’s just how it goes on embarkation day, but blech.

The good news is, since we’re up with the dawn, we had time to go for a nice walk before boarding the ship. Stockholm is such a walkable city that we haven’t even had to bother with public transit — every major attraction is within about a 30-minute stroll. The streets are clean, the people are friendly and absolutely everyone speaks English, so it’s easy to feel comfortable. Chris commented that he could imagine living here, and I know what he means. We like Sweden.

So this morning we wandered down to see Stockholm’s cathedral. I’m not normally big on seeing churches, but this one is where royal weddings, coronations and baptisms take place, so that piqued my interest. The Crown Princess of Sweden just baptized her little princess here a month ago. Cool.

I must admit, the ship is beautiful. The decor is much classier than any other ship we’ve ever been on. And while the stateroom bathrooms are tiny, the beds are amazingly comfortable. Once all the embarkation stuff was done, the passengers seemed to spread out and it hasn’t been hard to find a good seat in the observation lounge.

We’re about to set sail. On to Helsinki…

A Little Slice of Sweden

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Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Get this: today I not only managed to follow a map (Chris said, and I quote, “Excellent job navigating”, which has certainly never been said about me before), but I also demonstrated that I can eat twice as much as my husband. At the breakfast buffet this morning, I had three pieces of toast, some scrambled eggs, half a dozen Swedish meatballs (yum!), an orange, a bowl of yogurt and two glasses of milk. That kept me full for about four hours. Huh.

After breakfast (and a short nap to get over jet lag), we were off to the Vasa Museum, which houses a Swedish naval ship that sank in the harbor 20 minutes into its maiden voyage in 1628. The accident was due to faulty design (too top-heavy) plus some human error (water poured in through the gun ports someone forgot to close…nice). Special conditions in the Baltic Sea kept the ship almost perfectly preserved for the 333 years before it was dredged up. Pretty cool.

Next up was the thing I enjoy most anywhere I travel: the royal palace. We walked through the state rooms and the royal apartments, then had a very interesting tour of the palace treasury, which included all the crowns, scepters, and coronation robes of Swedish kings past and present. The current king is just a figurehead whose only real function is to smile for the cameras (he has even less power than the queen of England), but it was still neat to get an inside look at his official residence. I love that kind of thing.

Tomorrow we board our ship. Stay tuned…

Settled in Stockholm

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Location: Stockholm, Sweden

We made it (only 27 hours after we left the house!) There were only a couple glitches: we were an hour and a half late leaving London, and the hotel didn’t seem to have our reservation, but that all got straightened out pretty quickly.

I’ve only been here for a couple hours and I love this place already — everything is so clean, efficient and healthy (I picked up yogurt, granola and fruit at the 7-Eleven next to the hotel), everyone speaks English and the people are super friendly. We looked a bit lost coming out of the subway and this really nice lady stopped to show us where to go.
We’re hoping to get a good night’s sleep, beat this jet lag and head out tomorrow to see some of the sights. It seems to be a beautiful city. The weather is gorgeous right now but is supposed to rain tomorrow, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

And So It Begins…

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Location: Vancouver airport

This might sound strange, but I honestly didn’t expect to be this relaxed while spending almost six hours sitting around the Vancouver airport. We had an easy time getting here, but then we had to stand in line for almost an hour to check in for our next flight, and I was tired and hungry and grumpy…but then we had a meal, I sent some email and then I watched a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory on my iPod, so harmony is restored. We still have a nine-hour flight to London and another 2.5 hours after that to Stockholm, but I think I’m ready. This is going to be fun.

Getting underway

Walking Through History

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Location: Naples, Italy

The body casts impressed me the most. Everyone knows the story of Pompeii: how Mt. Vesuvius erupted early one morning in 79 AD and buried the city under 20 feet of volcanic ash. Almost 20,000 people suffocated from volcanic gases, and many of the victims’ skeletons remained intact under all that ash. Archeologists have since added plaster to the bones to make casts of the people who died. We saw a dog, a young boy, a pregnant woman…all frozen in time. More than anything else about the site, the body casts made it all real.

Pompeii is larger than you might think. The site covers 125 acres, and although we walked around for two hours, we barely scratched the surface. We saw entire streets lined with the remains of old shops, including a bakery with its original oven. We saw the gladiator barracks, the forum and city hall, the law courts…and let us not forget the red-light district with its 25 brothels. The buildings in that area actually had carvings of penises on them to lead prospective patrons to the right place. Classy.

There are sites here in Naples I wouldn’t mind seeing, but I have vacation fatigue and all I really want to do this afternoon is relax by the pool. Tomorrow morning we dock back in Civitavecchia and are scheduled to fly out of the Rome airport just after lunch. I hear volcanic ash is causing problems in the Atlantic, but I’m crossing my fingers that our flight to Toronto won’t be affected. Wish us luck!

Adventure in Africa

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Location: Tunis, Tunisia

It’s easy to forget this is Africa. Tunisia encompasses a lot of cultures, but the place is primarily Arab, and you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve landed in the Middle East. I can’t make heads or tails out of Arabic writing, so it was nice to see that most signs were also in French (since Tunisia is a former French colony). I always try to speak the local language a bit when I travel, but we were addressed in Tunisian, Italian and French at various times today, so I basically gave up.

We started our tour in the ruins of Carthage, ancient Rome’s great enemy. Carthage was utterly destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, but there are a few original structures remaining, like the Roman baths from the second century AD and the aqueducts that brought water to them. We also saw the Punic cemetery that was here before the Romans ever were — it’s the oldest part of Carthage and dates from 814 BC. Cripes. That’s. Old.

We also walked around the marketplace in the city centre, called the Medina. Medina literally means “hidden city,” so named because the Romans built it to protect against incursions from the sea. It was also supposed to protect people from the insufferable heat (summer temperatures here can get to 45 or 50 degrees), so the buildings are placed extremely close together, providing more shade from the sun. Tunisia is famous for handmade carpets, so naturally we were led into a carpet store, and despite the very pushy salespeople we managed to escape without buying anything. Pushy salespeople were endemic in the Medina — if you showed the slightest interest in anything, a merchant would appear at your elbow and offer you their best deal. Bartering is common and acceptable, but I suck at it and didn’t bother trying. Tanya got a mosaic plaque for a third of the marked price, though, so good for her.

Next was the Bardo Museum. The building was more interesting to me than the displays of Roman mosaics inside — the museum is housed in the former palace of the kings of Tunisia, and we all know how I love anything to do with royalty. It was after 1:00 by this time and we still hadn’t had lunch, so I was too tired and hungry to focus on what the guide was trying to show us, but I was still impressed by some of the rooms in the palace.

After a lunch break the tour continued to a wealthy suburb of Tunis called Sidi Bou Said, a little village full of white houses with blue roofs. We didn’t even bother following the guide and instead plunked ourselves at a little cafe to try the local beer (which apparently tasted like horse piss, but I don’t drink beer, so this is just what the others reported). Coca-Cola tastes the same all over the world, and I’m grateful for that.

I have to go dress for dinner. On to Sicily…

Sailing on the Open Sea

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Location: Somewhere in the Mediterranean

I’ve never been good at doing nothing — excuse me, at “relaxing.” Even at home, when the boys spend a morning at Grandpa’s, I fill the free time with shopping or running errands, cause I need to feel occupied. I need to feel like I’m accomplishing something. So spending a whole day on the ship is a bit of a challenge for me. I was starting to get bored and a bit frustrated — but then I read an email from a mommy friend of mine who reminded me to enjoy being able to eat a meal in peace, go to the bathroom by myself and not have to base my whole day on someone else’s schedule. Point taken.

So how have I spent my day? I slept in, for one thing, but for me that means 7 a.m., so there were still many hours to fill. I sat by the pool reading the book I borrowed from the ship’s library while Chris relaxed in the hot tub (he chatted with one woman from New Zealand who explained that her journey to Europe involved 24 hours just in the air, which made our trip seem like nothing). We browsed the shops on board, sat for a while watching the sea, and went for an early lunch. There’s a magician’s show this afternoon and then someone’s giving a presentation on the ancient Mediterranean, so I might check those out, and then tonight there’s another sing-and-dance number on the main stage. Life could certainly be worse.

And at last the weather is improving! The sun peeked out of the clouds and I think it’s about 20 degrees outside, so I can put away the fleece jacket I’ve been wearing and think about summer again. Tomorrow will be my first time in Africa — it should be an interesting day.