Lori's Travels

We were scheduled to meet TJ Tours this morning at 8:30 for the first day of touring St Petersburg just after going through immigration at the cruise terminal. So we exited the boat about 8:00 after getting breakfast in the buffet at 7:00. But immigration was so painfully slow and frustrating! The lines didn’t look so long and they had plenty of immigration officers. But it took FOREVER. It was especially frustrating when, as we had nearly reached the front of the line, to have the immigration window close in front of us. We had to go to the back of another line. It took us 1 hour and 15 minutes to get through. Thankfully, TJ Tours, being a Russian company, knew the situation and had reassured us via email when we made the reservation that they would wait for us no matter how long it took. And they were there when we finally emerged.

Our guide is Vadim, a young man in his mid to late 20s, and our driver is Konstantin. There are 13 of us tourists total in the van and we’re all from the Royal Caribbean ship. One other family is from South Africa and there’s a couple from Italy. Vadim speaks quite good English and is a good guide. The weather was overcast, which is evidently typical for St. Petersburg, and in the 60s.

Here are the things we saw and/or experienced:

• The Neva River and it’s many bridges and additional canals, which make St Petersburg the “Venice of the North”
• St Isaac’s Cathedral
• The beautiful gardens, buildings and fountains on the huge grounds of Peterhof, on the shore of the Baltic Sea
• Riding the metro subway and seeing two of the beautiful subway stations
• The Church on Spilled Blood
• Lots of statues commemorating different Russian war victories and czars
• One of Vladimir Putin’s homes, which was quite large and on spacious and fenced grounds (which Vadim jokingly called “Putinhof”).
• The downtown area
• The FIFA Fan Fest before tonight’s Belgium-France World Cup match, taking place in front of the Church on Spilled Blood
• A lunch of traditional Russian dishes in a quaint downtown restaurant.

We returned to the cruise terminal about 7 p.m. being fairly worn out. We had to go through immigration again, which should have been a snap, but of course it took much longer than that. Back on the ship, the Danielson Bar opened in our stateroom, but drinks were limited to the remaining 2/3 of a bottle of the rose wine. We went to dinner at our assigned 8:30 dining time in the Reflections dining room and then crashed. We have an earlier reporting time for tomorrow’s second half of the TJ  Tours trip, and we have to through immigration yet again. So it will be an early wakeup tomorrow!

Today, our departure time from the ship was set for 11:30 a.m. to see the sights of Helsinki. The ship was still sailing through calm waters into port when we got up and dressed. We ate breakfast about 10 a.m. in the buffet, among a huge crowd of people. We ended up sitting outside since there were no more inside tables. It was sunny and in the 60s, pleasant weather. On the outdoor deck, we were greeted by a throng of aggressive seagulls continuously flying around, looking for bits of food. As soon as people would leave a table, the gulls would land to eat any food remaining on the plates.

Sometime before 11:30, we joined our 2400 other shipmates to leave the vessel. Most of them got into waiting tour buses, while we walked a ways to the nearest street to catch a city bus. The bus took us through the middle of town and beyond. We got off near the Rock Church, a circular church that was constructed by blasting it out of solid rock in 1969. We paid a small admission to go inside and look in the sanctuary. Underneath the church is a bomb shelter that holds 6000 people.

Then we went on Rick Steves’ walking tour of the city, seeing the Finlandia concert hall, the Esplanade shopping area, and the waterfront. We also stopped near the downtown central square for a coffee break in a coffee shop that was on the 2nd floor between a hotel and department store.

On the waterfront, we saw several different sightseeing and ferry boats, as well as the city hall, Swedish embassy, and the presidential palace.

We took two buses to return to the cruise terminal about 4:30. We had wanted to eat an early dinner then, since we hadn’t eaten lunch, but only one very small cafe was open on the ship and it had a huge line and no remaining tables. So we waited until 6:00 to get into the Windjammer buffet. We were the first ones and it never got really crowded. Most people probably went to the formal dinner that was scheduled in the regular dining room, but we hadn’t brought the formal clothes for that. So we enjoyed eating inside, with the ship just then pulling away from the pier.

Later, Gary and Halie went to a musical show featuring Broadway music, while the rest of us hung out in the cabins. We wanted to go to bed for an early start in the morning to see St Petersburg.

At last, our cruise is beginning. On this, our first day of the cruise, the weather was sunny and warm again. We ate a late Hilton breakfast at 10 a.m. since we knew we wouldn’t be eating again until sometime well after our 1 p.m. boarding time. Then we arranged a 12:30 checkout and large taxi arrival at the hotel front desk.

We arrived at the cruise terminal just before 1:00 p.m. to check in, after a comfortable 15-minute taxi ride to the terminal. The lines to drop off our luggage, go though a security screening, and check in weren’t long, and we were onboard a little after 1:30. We were questioned about our 4 bottles of alcohol during the security check, but were allowed to bring them all aboard. We found our two adjacent staterooms on deck 8 and settled in, figuring out how we were going to store our clothes and suitcases, etc. so that we could still walk in the small cabins.

Then we explored the ship, unpacked more, met our stateroom attendant, Verrol, and went to eat a late lunch at 3 p.m. We ate our buffet lunch in the pleasant outside rear deck, and then returned to our staterooms to prepare for the safety drill. A little after 4:00, we participated in the safety drill by assembling at our designated muster station down on deck 6. Then at 6 p.m., our ship left the pier and we sailed out into the Swedish archipelago.

As we sailed out into this beautiful island-studded sea, we all assembled on my stateroom’s balcony to open the champagne and wine bottles and toast the start of the cruise. We stayed out on the balcony to view the islands pass by in the setting sun as we drank our wine. It was warm, sunny, and very picturesque. Sunset was not until nearly 10 p.m.

Our dinner seating time for the whole cruise is at 8:30 p.m. So after a while on the balcony, we got ready for dinner in the Reflections dining room. My dinner included escargot, fish of the day which was barramundi, and a blueberry pear crumble, all of which were delicious.

Caroline and Emma are in the stateroom with me. Caroline is sleeping on the foldout bunk over the bed that Emma and I are sharing.

Saturday was our day to see the city. We first fortified ourselves at the Hilton’s breakfast buffet at 9:00. Then, before the sightseeing began, Gary and I went on a special mission to buy some champagne and wine at the nearest liquor store. It opened at 10:00 and was a half mile up the hill from the Hilton. We intend to bring the maximum number of bottles aboard the ship, 2 per stateroom, for our bon voyage celebration tomorrow as we set sail. We were successful in our alcohol acquisition, so then we returned to the hotel to get the kids and see the town.

We walked to Gamla Stan to get aboard the hop-on hop-off boat taking us to the Vasa Museum. There we saw the awesome 17th century Swedish warship that sank 20 minutes into its maiden voyage in 1628 because it was too top-heavy. It was raised from the harbor in the 1960s, carefully restored and preserved, and is now displayed in this museum.

After touring that museum, we walked to nearby Skansen, an open air museum displaying homes and other buildings from all over Sweden, showing how the Swedes used to live and work. We went into a farm laborer’s home and heard a little about what life was like for them, which was probably similar as our some of our ancestors’ lives. There’s also a small zoo of Nordic animals there, which we walked through. We got lunch just outside the Skansen entrance at a small burger/hot dog/fish & chip stand.

The final sightseeing event of the day was another boat ride. To get to the dock where it started, we took another short ride on the hop-on hop-off boat, then walked across a small island to the downtown pier. We used our pass to get our “Under the Bridges of Stockholm” tickets, then in the 20 minutes before the boat was due to leave, we enjoyed some delicious Italian soft ice cream nearby. The boat ride started at 4:00 and took us on a 2.5-hour cruise around the islands that Stockholm is located on, with an audio recording and headphones interpreting the sights around us. It was a very relaxing and pleasant way to end the day. After the end of the ride, we walked back across Gamla Stan to our hotel.

After some time in the hotel’s executive lounge, we walked to a Thai restaurant up the hill, near the liquor store we had visited in the morning, and had a good dinner there.

Note: Unfortunately, this blog site doesn’t enable me to upload any photos from my camera, so you won’t see any pictures for the duration. My apologies.

Friday was our day to explore the Old City of Stockholm more. At 10:00, we ate a hearty breakfast from the Hilton’s buffet. Several of us enjoyed some pickled herring and European-style (liquid) yogurt, plus cucumbers and tomatoes, which are prevalent in all Swedish breakfast buffets. Plus there were lots of varieties of breads and fruit, waffles and omelets to choose from. It was an impressive buffet.

Then we walked over the bridge, in the sunshine and warmth of late morning, to Gamla Stan. We retraced some of our path from last evening, but added in sights from Rick Steves’ walking tour as described in his guide book. With our Stockholm Pass cards, we got easy admission into Stockholm’s Lutheran cathedral, which is very old and has an amazing ebony and silver alter, as well as other sculptures and burial crypts. We also stopped outside the Royal Palace to see the changing of the guard. Then we went inside to visit the Royal Apartments, the Royal Chapel, and the Royal Treasury where the crown jewels are kept.

We decided next that we needed to take part in the Swedish tradition of “fika” or coffee break. We stopped at a coffee shop in one of the Gamla Stan squares that had several tables under umbrellas in the square. We sampled their cinnamon plus cardamom buns called “kanalbullar” with a beverage of our choice, while people watching on the square.

We returned to the Hilton about 3 p.m. so Emma could finish her final class assignment and the rest of us could rest. While the kids had been able to sleep well through the previous night, Gary and I had each experienced a couple hours of wakefulness in the wee morning hours.

One of the interesting things about Stockholm at this time of year is that the sun rises about 3:30 a.m. and sets at 10 p.m. Thankfully, the rooms have thick curtains to block out the very early sunshine.