St. Petersburg

September 9, St. Petersburg. Today we have a city tour. Its an overcast day which makes some of the buildings stand out. We visit many new sites from our last visit and we are struck by how many more tourists there are compared to our last visit.

We drive by the State Hermitage Museum, the winter palace, and the St Petersburg metro. We visit the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood and Catherine's Palace. We stop along the Neva river and the stock exchange.  It's a challenge to park, but our expert driver seems to always find a spot. We make a stop at a shopping location to satisfy the souvenir needs and it's back to the ship. We take it easy as the ship leave the Russian Federation.

Interior of the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

St. Petersburg

September 8, St Petersburg. We dock in the morning to get ready for a new logistical experience, Russian immigration. You can only go ashore if you have a licensed tour, so we booked 3 before we sailed. We have to wait in line for about an hour to get through passport control where they look at you and then finally stamp your passport and an immigration card. We meet our tour of 9 people and are introduced to Russia, yes we do our second day tour on the first day, We take a bus through the city and to the beautiful Peterhof grand palace and gardens.

Peterhof Grand Palace and Gardens

We tour the garden and get the history of the summer palace of Peter the Great. It was destroyed during WW II and occupied by the Nazi. It has now been restored. The many fountains are operated by gravity flow. We see the surprise fountain that turns a walk into a showered area that children love to run through. We take a hydrofoil back to the hotel.

Surprise Fountain 

We have a second tour in the evening, a boat ride through the Neva river and the canals. We have a wonderful guide that seems to know every building in the city. The bridges are lit and it's a completely different view of the wonderful city. Some of the canals are quite small and there is only a few feet between you head and the bridge. A wonderful evening and passport control seems to have eased up. We will see on day 2 as we overnight in St Petersburg.

Night Tour on the Canals of St. Petersburg

Tallinn Estonia

Streets inside the walled city of Tallinn, Estonia

September 7, Tallinn Estonia. Today we are at the capital of Estonia and we have scheduled a food tasting tour of the town. We are met at the exit of the cruise ship port by our guide Anne and our driver. We first go to the upper town to tour where the nobility lived and now the home to government. The cathedral and old palaces are very impressive.

Catherdral

We continue our walk to the lower town which was were the merchants lived and worked. We are joined by the other 5 people on our tour where we discover all of us are from California. Our first stop is the pepper stock restaurant where we have pumpkin and parsnip soup with honey and pepper schnapps. we proceed to the Rvel for lamb dumplings and buckthorn juice. We wash that down with chocolates. We do a bit of walking and visit the oldest pharmacy in Europe to have a bit of medicinal treats. We visit historic Strutts restaurant for spiced sprats sandwiches which have pickled herring, tomatoes and cucumber, not our taste.

Town of Tallinn, Estonia

We finish our tour by going to a local market as the sky closes in for rain we are inside. We have a coffee. At another shop we get a local lemon curd in and ice cream cone, a healthy alternative. We toured the market and are picked up for a short ride to our ship and some rest. We really enjoyed Tallinn and learning a little about Estonia.

Market

At Sea

September 6, At sea. We have one day with no ports and its a pleasant day with nice weather as we head to Estonia. We spend some time in the library reading then some lectures about the history of Estonia and Finland. It was nice to have time to nap and read. We also have tea st 4 pm.

Tea 

We have dinner at Toscana a specialty Italian restaurant which was quite good and included calamari, carpaccio of tenderloin, caesar salad, cioppino pasta, lamb chops and veal scallopini. Tom was presented with a birthday cake. It sounds like too much food but the portions are small. We had interesting conversations with people before and after dinner, which is a very nice part of this type of travel.

Warnemuende and Rostock, Germany

September 5,

Warnemuende 

Warnemuende and Rostock. We land at the port of Rostock in Germany formerly in East Germany. We chose to tour the local area rather than the 12 plus hour tour to Berlin. We first visit the charming resort town of Warnemuende and luckily is was morning on weekdays and after the high tourist season. It was very relaxing and we were able to practice our hyge that we had learned the day before. Sunny pleasant and very low key.

Rostock

We then head to Rostock and our guide also a native of the area was very informative. We visit the gothic Saint Marien Church which was built as a catholic church but became lutheran after the reformation. It contains the 1472 astronomical clock and the only one with all its original parts. We stroll through the touw and see the restored merchant house and end at the main square where the university is and some of the original medieval wall. We finish by getting a local fish sandwich, Fischbrotchen, then coffee al fresco, when the rain started. Not to worry we all huddled under the cafe’s umbrella, the rain stopped and we were off back to the ship.

Fischbrotchen

We had some down time, taking tea at 4 pm and thinking about the fun we had in an unknown area to us. We ate dinner in the main dining room again with some shrimp, lobster bisque, risotto and osso bucco. We listen to a little piano music and it's off to bed.

Copenhagen to our ship

Hans Christian Andersen the beloved Danish author.
He is best remembered for his fairy tales. 

September 4, Copenhagen to our ship. We booked a morning walking tour that is an introduction to what the Danes call hyge. Our tour guide was a 20 something native of Copenhagen. We learn that is mother is a Danish doctor practicing in Norway and his father is Indian. He had a wonderful take on things in the city and Danish life. Hyge is hard to describe and has come to mean various things but it appears to be the good feeling that one has when they are content with their life. The 60 plus % taxes because they don’t have to worry about social services like healthcare, education and retirement.

Walking through a Copenhagen neighborhood on our tour.

After our tour we collected our luggage and head off to our ship, the Nautica by Oceania. It’s a smaller ship that has about 600 passengers. We have a very nice greeting and are quickly on board and in our stateroom, which is very nice. After some rest and exploring the ship we have a very nice dinner at the main dining room. We chose the mussles, and grouper, followed by a bit of ice cream. Then off to bed as things had caught up to us.

Copenhagen, Sweden

September 2-3, Home to Copenhagen. We travel to Copenhagen through Frankfurt on Lufthansa. The trip worked as planned and we enjoyed the Lufthansa service. The transfer to our flight to Copenhagen was easy and we arrived in relatively good shape to our historic Railroad hotel the Copenhagen Plaza.

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Entrance to Tivoli Gardens

We ventured to the Historic Tivoli Gardens across the street from our hotel. The garden and scenery are wonderful for the over 100 year old park. We watched some kids on the rides and had as a goal to enjoy Smörgås, Sweden's open faced sandwiches, for dinner. We found some wonderful ones at the new food court and sat outside with some wine and our sandwiches, watching people. It was funky Tuesday at the place we got the wine so we have some more wine and listen to the 50’s 45rpm vinyls. Welcome to Denmark.

Smoked Salmon Smörgå with soft boiled egg, pickles,
horse radish sauce on pumpernickel bread