Our Viking River Cruise

I thought maybe you’d like to hear a little more about our ship – – the Viking Sea.  So we’ve taken some photos and I’ll spend this post showing and telling a little more about the ship.

Viking is know for its river cruises, and the ocean ships are new for Viking, having begun excursions only in the last couple of years.  Our ship, the Viking sea, is only a year old.  At 745 feet in length and 930 passengers, the Viking ocean ships are much larger than their sister river cruise ships which carry about 200 passengers.  But they’re not nearly as big as the Princess and Disney cruise ships that are so popular. (Actually I think we’re being stalked by a Disney ship. Every port we come into, a Disney ship follows closely behind!) However, our ship has all of the services offered by the bigger ships, maybe on a little smaller scale, but it doesn’t have the crowds and the lines.

Of course all cruise ships are known for their food. It’s possible to eat at any time during the day and people pretty much do.  There’s a huge double buffet that serves wonderful food of all types for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Their gelato is amazing. Or at least that’s what I’ve heard. 😉 In addition, there are 3 other excellent gourmet restaurants with table service, 4 snack bars and 6 lounges and bars plus a separate restaurant that serves high tea every afternoon at 4.  And if that doesn’t cover it, room service is available 24 hours a day. Chuck has even managed to figure out where he can get one of their oversized sugar cookies any time of the day or night.

There’s a main pool with a retractable dome as well as an infinity pool and jacuzzi. They’re probably smaller than those on the Disney ship, but we have no kids on our ship and we’re old, okay, so we don’t swim as much. There’s a sports deck with exercise equipment and a jogging track (4 laps = 1 mile), 1 large performance theater + 2 movie theaters, a large Scandinavian spa, and shipwide wi-fi.

Below are some photos of our room and typical areas of the ship.

Our ship, the Viking Sea

This is our room. All rooms have king size beds, mini bars, coffee service, and private verandas. There’s more closet space and drawers than we can fill. Large TV and a darling steward who comes in twice a day while we’re gone and cleans our room, restocks the mini bar with sodas, and replenishes our ice bucket and water pitcher and would cheerfully do anything else we ask. He’s adorable.  I’d like to take him home with us!

This is the bathroom. Big shower and lots of storage space. Did I mention that the floor is heated? It’s heaven!

There are endless places around the ship to sit and have a glass of wine, read a book or meet and chat with new friends. You can go to the theater and see a current movie, or listen to a Ted Talks, or hear a port talk with information about an upcoming port.  Or you can just watch an incredible sunset from a comfy lounge chair on the deck or your veranda.

There are many, many areas to sit and chat, or pay cards, or read a book or whatever and stare at the beautiful ocean.

This is the pool area.   The top is retractable and on nice days it’s open.

Here’s another view of the main pool area.

This is the smaller infinity pool and the jacuzzi.

And there are lots of places inside and out for dining.

This is part of the outdoor recreation area.

There’s lots of original artwork around the ship. The art is numbered and the headsets that we use for our shore excursions are also keyed to giving information about the artwork.

These hand sanitizers are found at the entries to the ship and outside of all restaurants, and passengers are asked to use them every time they see one in order to prevent illness aboard ship.  You just put your hand in and it squirts enough onto your hand to “wash” both of your hands.  (Please don’t tell me these things are everywhere.  I know I don’t get out much…)

Well I’ve only broadly covered what’s here, but suffice it to say that it’s a very nice place.

Any questions?

We didn’t get to spend nearly enough time in Gdansk but fortunately we did have enough time to take a bus down to Old Town where we took a 3-hour walking tour and it was delightful.  Most fascinating was the fact that this area was extensively damaged during World War II but, through the use of photos of the area, they were able to completely restore the area to its original look. It’s a splendid mix of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles.

Along the way to Old Town we saw these stately houses. There’s just something so pleasing about them.

These rain water drain spouts were so cleverly done. And there was a huge variety of them.

These old graneries houses (left) are being converted to modern hotels (above).

These buildings along the river look centuries old. It’s hard to tell which are original and which have been restored.

We saw this this before and after photo in one of the shops. It shows how the burned out buildings have been restored.

This building tells it all. It looks like it’s from centuries past but it shows a construction date of 1954.

St. Mary’s is the largest brick church in the world. It holds 25,000 people. It was originally a Lutheran cathedral but after WWII it changed to Catholic.

Inside St. Mary’s.

This is the Old City Hall with its beautiful clock tower.

Here’s one of the street lamps in front of the old City Hall. Actually I guess it’s a post lamp.

This too was in front of the old City Hall but we have no idea what it was for.

Here’s the front of the old City Hall. Why is this door so short?

A beautiful Neptune fountain was nearby the old City Hall.

There was a little car ride under the bridge where we crossed the river. This Despicable Me sign was advertising the car ride.Looked a little out of place.

Don’t these look like great fun?

What a pretty scene along Gdansk’s Motlawa River. The tall structure to the far right is a human-powered medieval port crane made of wood and stone.

Visitors could take rides on these long ships and it looked like a lot of fun.

Gdansk’s beautiful old train station.

Locals call this the amber donut but it’s actually the soccer stadium.

There are lots of these pipes around the area. Apparently they carry steam, an industrial bi-product, to heat their homes.

This is Westerplatte, the historic site where WWII broke out on September 1, 1939. We can see it from our boat.

Yum!

So let’s end this post with a few Polish doors. We saw so many interesting doors in Old Town that I wished I could have had the time to just walk around and photograph only doors.

Tomorrow we’ll spend the day in Berlin. Looking forward to it. By the way, thanks so much for your comments. We enjoy hearing from you.

Although we knew it would not be possible to top Olaf’s Soviet Flashback tour, nevertheless our afternoon walking tour of Tallinn’s Old Town area looked promising. Tallinn has one of Northern Europe’s finest medieval Old Towns. It has cobbled streets filled with charming squares, gabled houses and colossal cathedrals.  Its hillsides with their abundance of red-roofed buildings can be seen from our ship.

There were lots of tourists out (okay, okay, it was wall to  wall tourists), but then this is a touristy part of town and it’s June.  But our guide, holding his red Viking lollipop skyward, managed to forge ahead.  First, a look at some of the things we saw in Old Town, most of which need no explanation (and because I have none).

We were allowed about 25 minutes after the tour to do a little shopping before the bus would take us back to the ship.  And there was LOTS of shopping available in the Old Town area.  We could have easily spent the afternoon there.  But 25 minutes it was.

Amber seems to be the local jewel here with parts of shots or entire shops devoted to it. But I see I didn’t manage to get a single photo of one.

These lifesize “dolls” are everywhere in front of the shops. Some have girls’ faces and some look like animals. They’re all different and they’re all adorable.  That man, not so much.

And then just a few more photos from our bus ride to and from Old Town.

You know how much I love the old streetlights. These have the added attraction of looking like they have candles on top.

An interesting Lutheran Church. Again, Christianity is the major religion, with Lutheran the predominant denomination in Estonia, although he also claimed that Estonia is the least religious country in Europe. The Viking spirit and nature are what most residents worship.

This is some kind of a “sculpture.” It looks to me like a spider made out of wood, but I don’t know if that’s what they had in mind.

I guess you would have to call this a “tree office.” Odd.

Another grocery store. This one looks a bit more inviting than those in St. Petersburg.

I was struck by the perfect reflection of the old buildings on the side of a very modern, glass building across the street.

At the pier next to ours, a huge Disney Magic ship has pulled in. When it blows its horn, it plays “When you wish upon a star,” (just that first line), several times, in several different keys. At one point, there were hoards of people standing on the pier near the entrances, looking like they want to break and enter.

Before we leave Estonia, let me pass along just a couple of things that the tour guides shared with us. Estonia is one of the 3 Baltic Republics: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It’s located between Sweden and Russia, just across the Bay of Finland from Helsinki. The country’s area is just smaller than the states of Vermont and New Hampshire combined. The population of the whole country is only about 1.3 million people. Our guide says that personal taxes are made up of several pieces and total 66%. However, that pays for items such as medical coverage, pension, and education. So in effect, the taxes are very high but then everything is free. I have not confirmed what our guide said, so I may be passing along incorrect information, but I hope not.

Saturday will be a day at sea and then on Sunday we’ll arrive at Gdansk, Poland, for a day’s visit. And hey, that hour we lost by crossing a time zone a few days ago reappeared when we crossed back into that same time zone last night. Yay, I think.

This morning we arrived in Tallinn, Estonia, about 8 am. to beautiful weather.   And today’s tour in Tallinn, Estonia, was the funnest tour we’ve been on yet. It was entitled Soviet Flashback and we were taken back to the 1980’s, the time just before the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.  Our guide grew up in Estonia under Soviet rule during this time so lived through the history he described.  The history junkies among us were beside themselves.

This was our ancient rattle-trap of a tour bus.  The guy in the Soviet Union uniform is Olaf, our tour guide.  Olaf was such a hoot, with his wry sense of humor, in the beginning he really got into character.  Most of us were initially unsure what to make of all this.  Above, Olaf is interrogating 2 of the Capitalist passengers before allowing them to get on the bus.

Passengers were told to stand on the line while Olaf searched their bags, inquiring about various items he found in purses.  This woman had a tube of lipstick that Olaf felt quite certain was a hidden microphone.

Next he checked passports, hurtling insults along the way.  We were surprised he was checking passports – at that point we really weren’t sure what was going on.

Passengers were instructed to march and when unable to do so correctly, were given instructions on the correct methods and told to practice. While lined up, we were directed, in the Estonian language, to turn left and then right and when we failed to guess the correct direction, we were again berated.

Even before getting out of the parking lot, the bus stalled and the driver was unable to get it started, so all of the men were instructed to get out and push until the bus started again, which it did with a loud backfire when he popped the clutch.

It was very hot in the bus so the guide checked  the air conditioning, that is, he opened the hatch and declared it working.

Olaf reviewed previous Soviet Union leaders by holding up photos and asking us to identify them.  If we failed to do so, he threatened to handcuff us and turn us over to the KGB.

In fact, a couple of passengers were so suspicious looking that Olaf had to call the KGB to see if they were on “The List.” Fortunately they were not but Olaf still had his doubts.

Olaf offered us a refreshment of small glasses of vodka and sweet gherkin pickles. (Eeew!) Later he offered us samples of local coca-cola.  He said local people did not like real Coca-Cola, so Coca-Cola bought the local coke plant and resold it as a “Coca-Cola product” with a completely different label.  He passed around samples so we could try it.  It smells like molasses and tastes medicinal like cough syrup. In a word, it’s gross!

Midway into the tour, we made a pit stop at the site of the sailing event of the Olympics that was held in Estonia as part of the 1980 Summer Olympics at Moscow. He handed out toilet paper, 2 sheets per person,  until he realized that toilet paper could only be used on Saturday and Sundays and since it was Friday, passengers were required to use newspaper.

It was a beautiful day, clearly a rare event in Tallinn.  When asked how many sunny days Tallinn has each year, Olaf replied grimly, “4 or 5.  Mostly it rains. ”  He then went on to briefly describe the climate in Tallinn.  “Tallinn has only 2 seasons each year: shitty weather and very shitty weather.”

But Olaf could be very serious too.  He was passionate about the transition of Estonia from Soviet rule to becoming it’s own independent country. We made a stop where he showed us rusted cannons and this abandoned prison where both his grandfather and next door neighbor served time during Soviet rule.

We stopped by this monument and had a little picnic on the bus.  Olaf offered us little sausages in pastry (pigs in blankets), which he said he made in a factory as a youth (well, not those particular ones!). Occasionally the blankets had no pigs, he said, because workers took out the little sausages and took them home with them. Olaf says this is the last remaining Soviet monument in Estonia and it will be removed soon so that this park area may be renovated.  The unattractive monument is made of ordinary concrete blocks.

Olaf”s English was excellent, although accented, and that’s because he lived in the US for a few years, in Michigan.  He later worked with a U.S film company to facilitate making a B movie in Estonia starring Chad Lowe and Hilary Swank, before either of them were household names.  Olaf and Hilary stayed in touch for several years after that but once she became  famous,  he says with a sad twinkle in his eye, “she never wrote, she never called.”

Today we got to spend over 3 glorious hours in the Hermitage.  One of the oldest and largest museums in the world, it was founded in 1754 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the pubic since 1852. Its collections comprise over 3 million items including the largest collection of paintings in the world.  The collections occupy a large complex of 6 historic buildings along Palace Embankment and 5 of them are open to the public: the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage and Hermitage Theatre.  Together the adjoined complex is called The Hermitage.  We got to view collections in 4 of the complexes.

The Museum has approximately 35,000 guests daily. If you spent one minute on each piece of art and visited 8 hours a day for 365 days per year, it would take you 11 years to see all of the art in the Muesum.

And we managed to get the BEST TOUR GUIDE EVER!  Our guide had a real sense for what our group wanted to see and managed to leave just enough time at the end for a brief stop in the gift shops. She was funny, always telling cute, relevant stories. And she moved us along – we covered a lot!   When she picked us up at 8:30, the first thing she did was teach us some Russian words. After we repeated them, she asked what we thought they meant and we all said “Good morning?” “No,” she replied, “I am in this country to seek political asylum.”

We arrived at 9:30, an hour before the museum opened to the general public.  Giddy with anticipation, our group headed right down to their famous Gold Room.

The Hermitage is HUGE!

One of several entrances. Originally the palace was supposed to be pink but pink paint was unavailable so they painted it green and it will probably stay green forever.

These earrings in the Gold Room are from 400 BC.

Our guide took us aside and said she wanted to show us something and we must stay calm and not show any reaction. Then she took us over to this exhibit where she was surprised to find the dog is missing. She claimed she wanted us to see it because the face of the dog looks exactly like Putin. No one managed to stay calm or not show any reaction. (I guess you had to be there.)

Tonight we say farewell to St. Petersburg and set sail for Tallinn, Estonia.

We arrived in St. Petersburg at 7 a.m. to serious overcast.  We had signed up for 2 shore excursions today, one in the morning and one in the evening, thinking we could remain on shore between the two and do some serious exploring.  That’s when we discovered we missed the fine print about visiting Russia and neglected to get Visas which would have allowed us to remain on shore by ourselves.  Unlike in the other countries, in Russia we have to show our passports every time we get on and off the boat, even for a tour. And we’ve been warned that if we’re caught without a Visa for more than 30 minutes off the boat and not on a tour, we can be in serious trouble. So we booked another tour in order to get the most out of our stay in St. Petersburg, and hopefully stay out of jail.

In the morning, we took a panoramic bus tour of St. Petersburg. The area where the ships dock is very industrial and not real attractive and while it seems very centrally located and in the city, it also seems to take at least 45 minutes to get anywhere.

Like the other places we’ve visited so far, St. Petersburg is a water city.  There are more than 200 canals and 42 islands in the city.  And there are 14 seas in the surrounding area. The area’s population is about 5 million people.  It was rainy in the morning but later in the day it cleared up, although there were still some dark clouds around from time to time.  Our guide was pleased, sharing with us that they only get 35-60 sunny days a year!

Below are photos both getting to and then on our tour around St. Petersburg.

There are blocks and blocks of Soviet-era apartments like these in the area where we’re docked, and we’ve passed them several times. Although they look okay from a distance, most of them are in need of serious maintenance.

We drove by this produce market, one of several we saw on our tour. Wish we had a chance to check one out.

This is a very discrete grocery market. This is the only chain we’ve seen, but we’ve seen many of these and every one looks exactly like this one.

And then we drove by Beverly Hills.

Nice street signs, large, clear . . . no idea what they say. (And the names on this one were actually shorter than most!)

We passed several of these old sailing vessels parked along the waterway.

This old sailing vessel, appearing to be made up of a series of pieces that have been cobbled together, is actually a restaurant.

A typical newspaper stand. I don’t know what magazine this lady was looking for but she appeared to want to look at every one in the place.

Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral is located on its own small island.

Another of the many churches.

Costumed workers like these can be seen in all city tourist areas.

A new soccer stadium, seen in the background, is being built near the cruise ship area in preparation for the World Cup to be held here in 2018. In the foreground is a beautiful new bridge.

Lots of cute little soccer figures like this one are reminding residents and tourists of the upcoming World Cup.

Certainly the highlight of our morning tour was a stop at the Spilled Blood Church which was built on the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. It now serves as a museum and is filled with mosaics. Unfortunately our tour did not take us inside.

Do you need a Russian Nesting Doll?

In the afternoon, we explored the Russian Museum. Originally a palace, the Russian Museum is the largest depository of Russian fine art in Saint Petersburg and one of the largest museums in the country. Below are a few photos from our visit to the Museum.

The entrance to the beautiful Russian Museum.

The front of the Neoclassical museum after crossing the courtyard.

The eyes on this statue of Peter I are almost eerie. If you look closely, you’ll see that the pupils in the eyes are actually heart shaped.

I loved this graceful sculpture of a mother helping her baby learn to walk.

Isn’t this ornate frame just amazing?

This huge painting of a storm at sea captured everyone’s attention.

They even had some incredible pieces of furniture.

Our 3rd shore excursion for the day was a program of Russia’s native songs and dances in a very old but beautiful theater. The young and authentically-costumed singers and dancers were energetic and eager to please. The group had a small band behind them and the music was well-performed, punctuated with comedy and delightful to watch. It was a most enjoyable evening. I assumed no photography would be allowed, so I didn’t take my camera.  So of course photography was allowed.  Go figure.  The show got over about 10:15 and all the way back to the boat we got to enjoy a most gorgeous sunset!

Tomorrow we get to visit the Hermitage Museum. Yay!

It’s an overcast day in Helsinki and shelves of black clouds around threaten to rain at any moment. We took the Helsinki city tour and our guide was super, giving us tidbits of interesting information along the way. For starters, Finland has 188,000 lakes.  Helsinki is on the Gulf of Finland, is 2/3 water and has 300 islands and 4 harbors.  Finland has a population of about 5.4 million people and 1.6 million of them live in the Helsinki metro area.  This time of year the sun goes down at 11 pm and returns at 3 a.m.  The winters are the reverse and long. During the long winter nights, people drink beer, go to the cinema and play Angry Birds (it was invented in Finland).

Our first stop on our tour this morning was at the Sibelius Monument. Sibelius was Finland’s greatest composer and a lover of nature, which he tried to reflect in his compositions.  The Memorial was amazing, I thought, looking simultaneously like trees and organ pipes.

I believe it was Sibelius’ wife who felt the monument was inappropriate and caused this sculpture to be made and displayed nearby.

Nearby the Sibelius monument was this fruit stand which implies that prolific local fruits are oranges, lemons and pomegranates. Just my guess.

The next stop was at the Temple Square Church. This modern Lutheran church carved into rock outcrops looks like a half-buried spaceship from the outside. The sun shines in from above, illuminating a stunning interior with birch pews, modern pipe organ, cavernous walls and topped with a striking copper dome. It’s a really striking and unique place.

The unassuming entrance to the church.

The church’s amazing copper ceiling. Actually the texture makes it look curiously like rattan.

More of the copper ceiling and natural walls.

Looking underneath the balcony toward the front.

These rhododendron and many more like it were surround the outside of the church. Rhododendron and lilacs are in full bloom here now.

This theatre is where Kiss played when they were here. Our tour guide said that during their visit, the 4 statues on either side of the entrance were costumed like members of the band.

Three-quarters of Fins are Lutheran and our tour took us to the beautiful Lutheran Cathedral of Finland. It’s stands high above Senaatintori, the huge main city square.. The cathedral itself is classically beautiful outside but very austere inside. Below are a few photos of the Cathedral.

There are about a million steps up to the Cathedral.

In the city square, an environmental project highlights the plight of the seals. More than 50 identical white seals, each with a fish in his mouth, were painted to make a statement about the cause, some messages more obvious than others.

A view of the seals from above the city square.

This seal had probably the most straightforward message.

While I thought this one had the most graphic, emotional message.

At her request, Chuck took our tour guide’s photo wearing the new Finland cap she bought in the square.

This afternoon we set sail for 2 days in St. Petersburg, accompanied by some serious June Gloom weather. We should arrive about 8 am tomorrow morning and we have 3 tours on the schedule for tomorrow. Feet don’t fail me now!

In addition to being situated on 14 islands, Stockholm is part of the Stockholm Archipelago which contains 24,000 islands.  That’s hard to even imagine.  We left Stockholm at 2:30 and got to glide among hundreds of these beautiful little islands on our way to Helsinki. It was amazing.  The islands vary greatly in size and almost all of them are some variation on the theme of rock plus trees.  Some of them are inhabited and some of them are not. Of the ones that were occupied, some of them had many  houses or other buildings on them, some had only one.  Some of them looked like the entire small island was some sort of camp because all of the buildings were the same. The further we got from Stockholm, the fewer that were inhabited, until by the time we reached the Baltic Sea none of them were and soon there were no more islands.  I suspect most of the houses are summer cottages (although a lot of them are huge and not at all “cottage”-like) because they would be too difficult to reach by boat during the winter months.

Below are a few photos I took along the way from Stockholm to Helsinki. The first of them are just a couple of island buildings that I thought were interesting.

This nice little “cottage” has to be at least 6 bedrooms, don’t you think? 😉

And then this huge ship headed right for us! It was touch and go for a few minutes but they eventually managed to miss us.

Late in the afternoon,, some really mean-looking clouds came up and looked very threatening.

But we managed to navigate around this little storm and soon it was gone.

We should get into Helsinki about 8:30 tomorrow morning and our tour starts at 9:30. Fingers crossed for good weather.

So today was our main day in Stockholm.  When we got up this morning, it was raining, and all of those people standing on that high wall behind us were carrying umbrellas! Clearly I forgot to add weather to my disclaimer list! We took a 2-hour tour in the downtown Stockholm area with a tour guide with a heavy Russian accent who insisted on holding his microphone too close to his mouth.  Other than getting us oriented with the downtown area, everyone agreed it was a disappointing tour.  After the tour, the bus stopped in Old Town and since it had stopped raining we opted to stay in Old Town and walk back to the ship.  We just needed to be back by 2 pm because the ship was leaving at 2:30.  I was grateful the weather cleared up because all of my earlier photos had huge water spots on them from being taken through rain-spattered windows. Here’s a little of what we saw around the Old Town area.

This stately old sailing vessel was in the picturesque waterway directly across from our ship.

The royal palace.

The guards at the royal palace are a little more laid back than those at Buckingham Palace. This one turned and looked at us and smiled.

These royal pots are posted on the wall around the royal palace. Very elegant. Be sure to notice the cute handles. All of the pots had strings which went through holes on both sides of the ledge which appear to be some sort of security system, although as security systems go, it doesn’t seem very robust.

Because of all the waterways throughout Stockholm, there are also lots of tunnels. This one was a little frenetic with all the red reflection going on..

This government building was undergoing renovations and had some of those “phony” pillar tarps to disguise the construction.

Serious fountain.

The Opera House.

Beautiful old lamps in front of the Opera House.

I don’t know what this building is but we both thought it was very distinctive.

We discovered a huge park in the middle of Old Town where a young man and woman on a raised stage were leading singing and dancing for many groups of pre-schoolers and their teachers. The kids were adorable and enthralled..

Each group of pre-schoolers had vests of a different color. These teachers had come up with an additional clever system for keeping their orange-vested kids in tow.

That same park has a huge fountain in the middle that served as its centerpiece.

And of course the gardens are beginning to flower and they are stunning.

Lots of large flowering pots add color to the cobblestone and brick streets.

Stately trash cans!

One of the many bridges over the waterways in the city.

And for the perennial door lovers out there, here are just a few doors we ran across today.

And just in case you didn’t know…this is a big bag.

I feel like one of my Mother’s kindergartners who, when asked if he wanted to share anything for Show and Tell, put his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth before finally looking down and saying, “I don’t have nothing to tell.”

It was a uneventful but  l-o-n-g  trip.  Five hours to Newark, 3-hour layover, and then another 9 to Stockholm. It was a beautiful landing – everything around Stockholm is so green and there are lots of beautiful trees.  Once we landed, we got our luggage and then waited for other red-badged passengers from different flights to join us before we got on the bus to take us to Stockholm, about a 45-minute drive.  Several other travelers in our group discovered that their luggage had decided not to join them afterall so the long wait was followed by the filling out of the necessary paperwork.  While we waited I saw this clever SAS flight attendant come flying by on her pink scooter to claim her luggage from the adjacent baggage carousel.  I wanted to get a photo of her flying down the corridor balancing her luggage on her scooter, but in spite of how long we all waited, her luggage never arrived.  It’s good to know that the airlines show no favoritism in whose luggage they lose!

The bus that took us to the ship had its own tour guide. Amazing!  He was an adorable man from Ghana with a dry sense of humor who gave us some interesting facts about Stockholm: it extends over 14 islands linked by 54 graceful bridges, it has a population of about 2 million, and the city is very clean (and incredibly green).  The gorgeous old trees below lined a long driveway.

We saw several of these in fields along the freeway from the airport to the ship.  Anybody have any ideas what they are?  Time to do some research.  We did, however, also see several McDonalds, Burger Kings, 7-Elevens, Circle K’s, and Shell Stations. No research necessary.

Lots of public art works.  I especially liked these oversized ants crawling up the green poles.

It appears they started disembarking the ship of its previous passengers beginning at 1:30 a.m this morning.  1:30 A.M.!! We were allowed onto the boat about 10:30 a.m. but weren’t able to get into our rooms until 1 p.m.  That gave us a couple of hours to explore the facilities and have some lunch on board while staff tidied up and changed the sheets.

There are many LED “photos” in various places around the ship.  One of them in on the first level at the top of the grand entry staircase.  This particular one is about 40 feet tall by about 30 feet wide (a guess) and it just appears to glow from within and is absolutely mesmerizing.  And every time we go through that area it has changed.  I’ve included 2 of them below – the photos don’t do them justice.  You’re probably going to see more of them over the coming days.  We also saw some smaller “standard” sized “photos” in the restaurant where we had dinner tonight but I didn’t get a chance to take pictures.  Those were different yet in that the pictures didn’t change but the flowers in them went from dark to glowing in one of them and in the other, the petals fell off.  I’ve never seen anything quite like these before… but then I don’t get out much.

On one of the islands across the waterfront from where the ship is docked is an amusement park.  Cool!

There a huge wall across the road behind where the ship is docked and all day long people have stood, sometimes a few, sometimes a lot, often for long periods of time, on the sidewalk on top of the wall looking our direction.  What are they looking at?

Tomorrow is our city tour of Stockholm and hopefully things will get a little more interesting. See you then,