Cruisin' Around Part 1

If you've never been on a cruise before it's an interesting experience, somewhat similar to summer camp for adults, or in the case of this cruise, retirees. But being honest who else has the time to take 12 day cruises in the middle of May? Cruises have all sorts of scheduled activites, an upscale version of a mess hall, the jovial social atmosphere, and of course the overly enthusiastic staff. I think we were most grateful for the last one because it gave us some people our age to talk to and because they were working they had to be nice and put up with us. Some of the activities and shows were kind of fun as well, there was a magic show that was surprisingly good and a Tango show. There was a funny Love and marriage game show as well as a talent show where these Filipino girls did a cool dance routine with water glasses balanced on their heads and a woman made animal noises, seriously. Once you get over the kitsch of it, it can actually be a lot of fun.

The itinerary of the cruise was actually really interesting as well, I've never been to 5 different countries (7 stops) in 12 days before. You only get a little taste of the places but it is definitely a different way to travel. The stops we made, in order, were; Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, St Petersburg (2 days), Tallin, and Gothenburg, the only annoying logistical problem is that they all use different currencies so you're constantly exchanging money. We did a couple of tours, in Copenhagen and St Petersburg, but mostly we just walked around and checked out some of the recommended sites, grabbed coffee, whatever.

Copenhagen was the first stop and we decided to do a biking tour because its such a nice biking city. It was nice as well because our tour was only six people so it was much better than those massive bus tours. Copenhagen is literally FULL of bikes they actually passed legislation saying they wanted to have 40% of the population biking as their primary form of transport, you see whole families biking around together. It was a relatively nice day when we were in Copenhagen so the streets and parks were full of people, it's amazing how in all of those countries, as soon as its a bit nice outside there is a flood of people. That being said though, we had all of 2 sunny days out of twelve the rest of the time it was grey and rainy.

The second stop was Stockholm where we just walked around, there was a really nice old part of the city with those token European cobblestones. Adrienne, my grandparents and I walked mostly in the older section and got to see a changing of the gaurd before we went to a museum that had an exhibit on Rubens. Adrienne was a kid in a candy store and she gave me an ongoing art lesson throughout the trip. She was excited to see real art after all of the 'art' auctions and such on the ship that were all really just prints of bad paintings.

The next stop was Helsinki, Finland where again we mostly just wandered trying to navigate our way to various tourist sites. We found our way to this fish/souvenir market that was on the waterfront which had an alarming amount of animal products, like giant antlers and full mounted heads and an exceptional amount of fur. I guess that comes in handy in such a cold climate but I just don't see myself wearing an entire fox as a scarf. There was also this really cool old stone church that was carved right into the rock.
I have put some pictures up already but I will come back to write about the rest of the places as well as upload the rest of the photos.
http://picasaweb.google.ca/nheasmandagg/CoppenhagenDenmark?feat=directlink
http://picasaweb.google.ca/nheasmandagg/StockholmAndHelsinki?feat=directlink