Cruisin' (the Baltics) Together

From Gothenburg, we headed across the Øresund straight from Sweden to Denmark. We spent about 24 hours in Copenhagen before boarding the Vision of the Seas, but that time will be grouped with the 4 additional days we spent in the city after our cruise.

Quite unexpectedly, we were among only 9 passengers on our coach tour who continued on to the Royal Caribbean cruise of the Baltic Sea. We boarded on a Saturday afternoon, feeling very odd about leaving our fellow group members and guide behind on the bus. For the first time since leaving the States we would be sleeping in one place for not one or two but SIX nights in a row! It may seem a small pleasure, but in this situation unpacking our things and hanging our clothes in the closet felt like luxury.

Charlie & Bert made a new friend!

On the ship Alicia, Manuel, Joe and I were again among the youngest passengers. Still, our evenings mostly looked like this:

A bottle of wine and Euchre? Don't mind if we do... every night, all night.

September 1: Day @ Sea

We got to sleep past 6:30 am! We didn't have to pack our suitcases or board a bus by a certain time! The sunset was amazing!

September 2: Tallin, Estonia

We weren't sure why we'd never heard much about Estonia in our history classes until our free tour guide informed us that Estonia has only been a country since about 1990. Tallin is quaint and rather quiet. We were told that it would be in the mid 60s, but instead it was quite cold and POURED rain on our completely unprepared heads. Despite a rather disappointing visit in other aspects, Tallin delivered on food and drink in such an extraordinary way that we could forgive the bad weather and conventional sights and in fact remember it as a great day overall.

Town Square 

Rain water pouring down the street.

Rataskaevu 16 restaurant: The BEST lunch of the entire 30-day honeymoon

This meal was so good that we would both go back to Estonia for the sole reason of dining in this restaurant again. As many times as possible.

 warmed, savory pumpkin seed bread with honey butter, beer, and cider - comfort food in cold weather

elk stew that was AMAZING 

Hearty forest mushroom soup that was so delicious we drank the broth and wanted to lick the bowl.

After this delicious meal, we could've gone back to the ship completely happy with our experience of Estonia. We had several hours left, though, and the rain wasn't stopping so we headed to Porgu, a beer venue with a comfortable atmosphere and acceptable draught beer list.

Overall, a positive experience of Estonia.

Charlie likes Estonia. So do we.

September 3: St. Petersburg, Russia

Of the four cities on our cruise, we were definitely the most excited about St. Petersburg. We had heard stories of the ways Russia would amaze us and we were eager to get out and explore the city. We knew that we couldn't get off the boat without booking a tour through Royal Caribbean (Russian rules - American tourists must have visas) and we also knew that this would be, by far, our longest touring day of this leg of the trip, but we were still excited. What we didn't know was that at no point during the city tour would we be allowed to stray from our guide or enter any buildings besides a souvenir shop. We also did not realize that since we had booked our morning and afternoon tours separately, we would be ushered BACK TO THE SHIP for lunch and would not be allowed to eat ANYTHING in Russia.

Needless to say, we were incredibly frustrated with our morning tour. Our guide was okay but had some verbal ticks that drove me absolutely insane (like dragging out the "ummms" and "uuuhs" in between her words like she was savoring them in her mouth). We also accidentally booked the wrong major sights and ended up listening to gruesome stories about Peter the Great watching as his son Alexei was tortured for treason and died from his injuries. Not really the kind of conversation you want before 9 am.

What do you mean shopping in a warehouse full of kitschy trinkets and miles from ANYTHING else isn't your ideal way to spend a day in St. Petersburg? Royal Caribbean clearly thought that's ALL we Americans want in a city!

Still, St. Petersburg did deliver two particular highlights. They happen to be the exact highlights we were expecting.

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

I was surprised to discover that this name is not metaphorical or due to some unusual translation, it is completely literal. I thought that the "spilled blood" might be the name of the river that runs near the church but no, it's literally built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated and there's a spot inside where they left the cobblestones on which you can still see the stains of his blood. Crazy.

It's so Russian is makes me think I'm on It's a Small World at Disneyland. (I can't help that
I'm a California girl and most places are judged relative to their representations at Disneyland...)

The mosaics inside this church are the most intricate I've ever seen anywhere. They run from floor to ceiling and cover every inch of every wall of the interiors. It's truly incredible to imagine the labor it took to place each of these tiny tiles into such detailed patterns.

Every inch. I mean it.

I think God is supposed to be giving her light, but it really looks like he's spitting light at her.

Straight up from underneath a chandelier. 

We did have to pay an entrance fee to enter the church, but it was completely worth it. We were actually shocked to see how many of our fellow tourists were satisfied to just get pictures of the outside and did not venture inside at all.

The Hermitage Museum

Our guide for this tour was much better! There are over 3 million pieces in the Hermitage. It is said that if you spent only 1 minute contemplating each piece, it would take 15 years to see them all. We had about 3 hours. Here's some of what we managed in that time:

This guy, in a hall with hundred of similar portraits, has the most awesome hair.

Different colored rooms. Yellow to blue to green to red.

Mary Magdalene by Antonio Canova

The fabrics in this painting looked completely REAL. You could FEEL the silk, velvet, and fur.

Joe with two Monets

Sarah with a Picasso

September 4: Helsinki, Finland

We had planned to book the "Helsinki by bike" tour on the ship but got to it too late and it was completely full. Instead we decided to do it on our own. We had a couple of sights in mind in the city so, with maps in hand, we ventured out to find them ourselves.

Welcome to Helsinki Harbor!

Our first step was to go the long way out of the harbor and then realize that we could've cut across a parking lot. We also probably should've hired a taxi to take us into town, but I digress. Eventually (about 1.5 hours after we disembarked when it could've been 20 minutes), we found the bike hire and tested our bike legs a bit before heading off in the direction of the Sebelius monument.

It took a bit longer than expected to locate the park where we would find the monument to the Finnish composer Jean Sebelius, bike towards it, try not to get run over, try not to lose each other, re-locate the park because we took a wrong turn, realize we were on private property, realize that the water we were supposed to bike along was in the OTHER direction, and finally arrive only to find busloads of Asian tourists crawling all over the thing. (Visit the wikipedia page on Sebelius if only to see his AWESOME hair in 1889.)

Then we didn't know where else to go, so we got lost again.

I didn't bother looking at a map since I have horrible spacial intelligence
and because I figured we had that covered.

Then we headed to Temppliaukion Kirkko, or Church of the Rock, an interesting but sadly underwhelming site. While the construction of the church into a rock face is cool, we'd actually seen it done better in other locations (Rocamadour in France for me).

At that point we had to return our bikes and get back to the ship. We enjoyed the sliver of Helsinki we did see, but since we had to rush through the seaside farmer's market without really exploring and barely learned anything about Finnish history or culture, we left feeling as though we'd seen only the postcard version of Helsinki.

Berries, Berries, everywhere! Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and lingonberries!

My view of Helsinki. (Although in order to get the picture I had to borrow Alicia's right arm...)

September 5: Stockholm, Sweden

We visited Stockholm at the same time as President Obama so the whole city was all done up in American flags. The game of the day was delays. With only 5 hours on land we were thwarted in every effort we made to make good use of our time. Joe and I will definitely try to go back since we enjoyed the city so much and barely scratched the surface of the many sights to see there.

Alternating Swedish and American flags that say "Welcome, Americans!"

We tried to go to Storkyrkan, the cathedral near the royal palace, but it was closed until 11:30. Then we tried to go to the royal palace, but it was closed until noon. So we wandered across a bridge to the old town area known as Gamla Stan and found Riddarholmskyrkan, another church with a particularly notable open iron-work steeple.

Inside we found a bizarre short, wooden Jesus, made friends with him, and
took pictures that will probably offend people. We liked him, though.

We went back the cathedral and Royal Palace, at which point a huge crowd gathered to watch the changing of the guard at the palace at exactly noon. It included a marching band on horses (HORSES!), some tricks with weaponry that would make our former-pageantry friends proud, and LOTS of pomp and circumstance. It also took over half an hour and we were kind of trapped in the crowd - couldn't get in to see the palace or get out to see anything else.

We gave up and headed toward the only site in the entire city of Stockholm we had actually researched and planned to visit ahead of time: the IceBar.

Joe and Sarah

Manuel & Alicia

For the cool price of $30 per person we spent a total of about 45 minutes in a room that was purported to be -7 degrees Celsius, drank one (kind of gross) Absolut Cosmopolitan out of a block of ice, and enjoyed every minute of it!

No choice on drinks in the middle of the day on a Wednesday -
just take your cosmo and be happy about it.

Eskimo kisses!

Alicia and I look like a two-headed person in one giant plastic coat...

At this point we actually had to head back to the ship. Farewell, Stockholm! We barely saw anything at all but it was fun anyway!

Charlie likes Sweden!

September 6: Another Day @ Sea

To be honest, we weren't impressed with Royal Caribbean. The boat was dated and the excursions weren't well planned. Our servers and our state room attendant were great and anticipated our needs perfectly (from bread and 7 desserts to fresh wine glasses and LOTS of extra ice for our contraband beer). The best part (besides the locations we visited) may have been the tables we found in the back of the ship for endless hours of card-playing and wine/beer-drinking. We enjoyed staying in one place and not having to find a new restaurant for every meal, but we were all ready to be back on land and able to stay out in the city as long as we wanted.