Farewell Queen Victoria

Well all too quickly we have finished out cruise, and thus morning woke to find Southampton from the balcony.

Not before we visited Kristiansand in Norway. Another beautiful Baltic seaside postcard existence - it boasts the most sunny days of any of the Baltic cities.

We did another Jones self guided tour, with the help of the free map handed out dockside. It was a truly lovely day, sunny and warm, and with lots of free wifi ! 

Before you apply to migrate let me assure the cost of living is quite steep. Like most Scandinavian countries, their taxes are high but this evidenced in the pristine streets and public areas and free education. I had US$30 in Norwegian Kroner, but two coffees and cake wiped that out, and A$24 for a beer and a cider made our walking tour an expensive exercise !

The last day at sea was spent packing and I'm sad to say NOT winning the snowball bingo jackpot ! 

Back to this morning, off the ship, into the hire car bound for London's St Pancras station and the Eurostar to Paris and TGV to Bordeaux. After some anxious moments in the traffic, we made it, and collapsed into our seats. By Paris our luck had runout - we missed our connection to Bordeaux (through no fault of our own - just a geographic impossibility in the limited time available).

Wayne negotiated against the odds (at no additional cost) tickets on the next service.  

The Baltic

ROSTOCK - GERMANY

We arrived in Germany, on what started as a clear crisp morning, the pastel coloured houses along the canal in Warnemunde held such promise. By the time we had disembarked, boarded the coach and headed out of the port, the rain started.  

We toured around the historic town, one of the Hanseatic Ports of the ancient Hanseatic League. More recently this was part of East Germany, and venturing away from the port, evidence of the GDR architecture became evident (varying shades of grey).

We took a tram to Rostock, the sister city to Warnemunde. The term 'sister' sounds friendly enough, but history tells us, this too involved fighting - the Baltic countries are historically very aggressive.

Rostock is a beautiful university town.  It was heavily bombed during world war 2 because it was the home of the Heinkel aircraft factory, just a small part of the wall of the old factory still remains... thankfully though, the allies didn't inflict much damage on St Mary's cathedral which is the home of the only intact and working astrolabe clock in the Baltic (yep, we had no idea what that meant either; it's a huge, enormously complicated astronomical clock that is still wound by hand every day by the church sexton - see photo, which doesn't do it justice).  A RAF pilot on a former tour had pointed out to our guide that St Mary's was probably left intact intentionally by the RAF so that it could be used as an orientation point when bombing the aircraft factory!

Our guide Yvonne, was around 35 or 40, and talked comfortably and at length about the recent past; she talked about the time under "national socialism", and the time as the "GDR" - much more interesting than the "ancient" history!

With 40 minutes of free time in the heart of Rostock and in the pouring rain - we decided to seek the comfort of a coffee shop, where I had a beautiful iced coffee and Wayne succeeded in his mission to have at least one German beer in Germany - a "Rostock Pilz".

  

We took what should have been a scenic boat ride back to the ship, but ultimately it was a way of transporting wet cruise ship passengers en masse to a bigger vessel. We were fed afternoon tea: black bread with cheese - so practical.

COPENHAGEN - SWEDEN

Beautiful weather in Stockholm, beautiful tour, and a beautiful guide, Karen.  Michelle woke feeling giddy (vertigo), as she had the day before.  Determined not to miss a thing she punched through... but unlike the day before in Rostock, poor old M didn't get better as the day wore on, she got worse!!

At one stage Karen and I were both steadying Michelle, one on each side.  At the end of the tour Karen gave Michelle a beautiful hug and a kiss!

Our guide again happily acknowledge those parts of Danish history when they were pretty universally disliked, even after the Vikings they were continuously invading/ruling their Baltic neighbours, Sweden and Norway.

But now they are a quiet contented people.  With a great system of social support (all of our guides, in Sweden, Finland and Denmark remarked on the high taxes but great system, free education, health care....) and they even seem to love their royal family too!  Mary is extraordinarily popular and apparently her Danish is pretty good as well.  The Amelienborg palace is in four parts, and you can walk up to the front door of each.  The door below is the front door to the quarter that Frederick and Mary use...  the flag flying indicated they were home whe we were there, and amazingly, this is the door that either could appear from at any time - off for a bike ride or a jog!!

Copenhagen is incredibly compact, bright and clean.  But we have to remember that this was a beautiful autumn day - apparently things get a bit dark and depressing during the winter months (which is true of all of the cities we visited - temperatures in St Petersberg during winter are typically -25 Celsius)!  What that means is that WHEN the weather is fine the locals make the most of it... the outdoor spaces are full of people enjoying the fine weather...

What visit to Stockholm would be complete without:

... I had no idea tha Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales could be so deep and prophetic - Emmy, Fraser, I feel I let you down!

Helsinki

We did another 'jones self-guided tour' in Helsinki, mainly because again our tour involved buying a sim card and wandering around the city and not listening to the dulcet tones of a guide detailing all the historical merits, but indeed listening to Antony Green detailing the blow by blow results of the federal election. I actually didn't listen to anything just wandered taking in the simplistic beauty, while Wayne ooh'ed and aah'ed at what he was hearing, and repeated it to me. To his credit, in spite of his frustration he was still able to conduct a very good and informative tour. Helsinki is a lovely, simple and practical city. We visited the famous 'rock church' made of rock and copper - amazing (worth googling!), the beautiful Lutheran Cathedral and wandered through the open air markets at the waterfront.  When you only visit a city for one day all you can do is take a little snapshot and make your own memories. It is impossible to see everything, and there is great merit in not doing an organised tour because you can see the city in a very candid way. Just so we could fit right in - believe it or not we had McDonalds for lunch !  

For dinner we again (third time) visited the 'Verandah' French restaurant on board, to help Wayne overcome his sorrows, and because one of the lovely couples we dine with are from Perth and bat for the Libs (gloating was more than Wayne could deal with), it worked a treat I had salmon (in pastry), Wayne had pork and we both had the same entree (duck rillettes) and desert (banana something ?). Today we are at sea, sailing between Helsinki and Warnemunde !

Chees M x

Rushing in Russia

I can honestly say, (and whilst I hadn't thought about it during the 'grey zone' - the 16 years of raising children) when I was younger and dreamed of far away places that I would never have the opportunity to visit Russia. Whilst St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) was only a small taste, it was delicious, almost like forbidden fruit.

Like all the weather we have had to date it was very pleasant, (exuberance is not to be over used in Russia), the ship was docked in some sort of wasteland / reclaimed land (not exactly picturesque), the immigration process was long and intense - but once escaping into downtown St Petersburg, history unfolded like a red carpet. The Hermitage at the Winter Palace and all the treasures it contains, the amazing 'Parisian style' architecture of the city, the Church of the Spilled Blood (unusually graphic name), the performance of Swan Lake (including what I like to refer to as 'le grand bulge' - men in ballet tights, oh my goodness - and I had binoculars!), the Saint Isaac Cathedral with its gold onion domes,  the ride on the underground in 'Russian rush-hour' with 45 elderly cruise ship passengers each carrying a piece of paper with a message in Russian to hand to a stranger should they get lost- thankfully we all managed to board the train, change trains and safely exit the station - a miracle, the fresh food markets with the tastiest berries and figs, the cafe with the divine Blinis, the folk music played at the 'typical' Russian luncheon... featuring non other than cabbage and caviar and most of all the contrast of the very rich and the very poor co-existing in what is now the 'new' Russia.

By the end of the second day, we had had a lovely visit, as the ship prepared to sail for Helsinki, President Putin closed the harbour till all the G20 guests had departed the airport, so after 3 hours, just on dusk we slipped away from St.Petersburg, satisfied, intrigued and our appetites wetted to visit again. Cheers M x

Tallinn - soooo lovely

We have had a lovely day in Tallinn, we conducted our 'own' self guided tour. Probably would have been difficult to sell to other tourists as it included a visit to a telephone shop for Wayne to buy a sim card (heaven forbid he should miss 4 Corners, The Drum and Insiders - he is behaving like there is a election at home) and a visit to the Pharmacy for antihistamines for some sort of skin allergy I have developed. That bit of housekeeping aside we have had a lovely day in an old city, that has reinvented itself from its former communist Russia rule. We visited the 'high old town' and the 'low old town' (who was in charge of naming these areas ???) wandering through markets and past lovely old buildings, it was really lovely. There was a floral perfume in the air this can be credited to the flower sellers everywhere, literally thousands of blooms to be had. I have some lovely roses, "thank you Wayne".

You will note that at no time did I refer to Tallinn as peaceful thats because today there were 8,000 other cruise ship passengers - three big ships docked today! 

We have had dinner, and are preparing for an early start in St Petersburg, I guess we have that in common with Barack Obama and Bob Carr, the G20 starts tomorrow, also in St Petersburg. We have a tour lasting a full day day, followed by the Russian Ballet performing Swan Lake at The Hermitage tomorrow night. I know at Braemar it is said "you can be anything you want to be" and I have been known to say "I want to be a ballerina", I sincerely hope I don't get the call tomorrow night as I don't have my point shoes or tutu! Cheers, M xx