July 3: Stockholm

As much as Kurt dreaded the thought of a cruise, he is now an avid cruiser. He truly enjoyed the ease of eating a varied, plentiful diet, going to sleep each night and awaking in a new exciting port every morning. With the right ship, the right itinerary and the right companion, there is no better way to travel. We are up, eat our final meal at the buffet and then wait in the casino lounge for disembarking. However, as easy as getting on was, getting off is a nightmare. We wait and wait, then everyone on board tries to get off at the same time. Finally we are off, we skip the line and head into the street to get a cab to the Stockholm Courtyard Hotel (points, naturally). We aren't staying in Stockholm but leave our bags at the hotel and take the metro into town. There is a triathlon going on so streets are closed and people funneled through specific corridors. We see the main sights, including the world's smallest public statute, and eat lunch at a ramen restaurant. We get tickets for the hop-on, hop-off canal boat and see Stockholm from the water. We are impressed by the beautiful old buildings along the harbor and note how much bigger and more important the harbor is here than in Helsinki. Clearly the two cities evolved differently. We walk through the park where there is a market and fair, find the subway and head back to the Marriott. We pick up our light travel bags, back on the subway, figure out the airport express train and head to the airport. We board our flight to Oslo and, after a bit of a delay, an hour later are in Norway. We take the express train to Oslo's main station and walk through the pedestrian shopping street and find our hotel, the Thon Rosencrantz.

July 2: Helsinki

After our experience in St. Petersburg, we are the first off the boat and take a shuttle bus to the Helsinki city center. The harbor is fairly small and opens to a broad avenue. We walk along taking in the sights and stop at McDonalds to use the restroom (our only stop at a Mickey Ds on the whole trip!) The Finnish greeting is "hi-hi." We enjoy the mix of old and new architecture and watch a flock of Barnacle Geese with their chicks. We have a different day planned as we meet Mateo our Italian guide who is going to take us kayaking through a small part of the Helsinki archipelago. We enjoy a great time kayaking stopping for lunch, toasting our efforts with a small glass of Sea Buckthorn (the next wonder berry with super antioxidants but tastes horrible) and then returning to town by van. He drops us off at the Rock Church, a very interesting chapel carved out of rock with an interesting copper roof. We do a bit of shopping, getting a Russian nesting doll (the ones in Russia were very expensive), a juniper trivet for hot dishes, and Kurt gets his currency of course. We take the #14 city bus back to the port. For dinner and our last night on board we eat at the Polo Grill and enjoy a delightful conversation with a couple from Australia. Back in our room we pack up, leave our bags outside our door and regrettably spend our last night on board.

June 30, July 1: St. Petersburg

We arrive at St. Petersburg, Russia, the only port that we have to go through immigration and customs to enter. We only have a group visa so we have to stay with our group throughout the tour. It takes a long time to get off the ship and through immigration so we are the last ones on our tour bus and are stuck in the back where we can't hear through the speaker and don't enjoy the AC. St. Petersburg is a big place and we spend two days seeing just the highlights of the major sights: The Hermitage (the old Winter Palace of the descendants of Peter the Great), the "Tsar's village" with the Catherine Palace with the famous amber room, a subway ride for one stop, the ornate Church of the Spilt Blood (modeled on the famous church on Red Square in Moscow), the St. Peter and Paul fortress and cathedral. After the first day we have dinner at the french restaurant on board, Jacques. Day 2 takes us on a canal tour, a drive to Petrograd (the summer palace) with its famous fountains then a hydrofoil boat ride back to town, the house where Rasputin was murdered (it turns out it was a British plot per our tour guide) and finally St. Luke's. We are back to the ship intake for an evening at leisure and bid farewell to Russia. 

We find the Russian view on the world so interesting and so different from what we think. For example, when we tell our guide (an educated woman who is moonlighting as her primary job is a professor of linguistics at a local university) that we are headed to Finland next, she says that yes, the Finnish people will tell you how grateful they are that Russia granted them their independence. Of course, Finland twice had to fight for its independence from Russia and then fought off the Russian army before WWII. As a Finnish guide responded when I told him what the Russian guide had said, he paused and said, diplomatically, "Do you know how many sides a coin has?"