Stockholm, Sweden Day 2

This is our hotel, the Best Western Time Hotel.

So for the last day of our trip, we did another 18 000 plus steps through the city. We are not agreeing on Copenhagen verses Stockholm as the best cities on our trip. I liked Copenhagen, but I think Stockholm is much more beautiful. They’re both expensive and neither city seems to be able to agree on what identifies their culinary style, but we’re pretty much used to that in Canada.

Water plays a dominant role in Stockholm as there are threads of waterways through most of the downtown area. We didn’t make it on a boat trip, but we were totally satisfied that we did all of our sightseeing on dry land.

Today’s major attraction was the Changing of the Guard at the Royal Palace. We found a spot along the viewing route early enough to get a prime position from where the Marine Band, that was prominent in this ritual, centred their concert. The whole ceremony took the better part of an hour and when the band came to perform in front of us, one of the numbers in their repertoire was ABBA’s The Winner Takes It All. PERFECT!


For lunch, we chose a nice outdoor café on the very picturesque Gamla Stan square of the Noble Museum. The girls had pizza and Tony & I had Swedish vealballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberries.

Following lunch, we made our way back to our hotel, where a slow time was once again in order. We did some pre-packing and discovered that we were going to be OK with our original bags. This, actually, was not a shopping trip – quel domage!
For dinner this evening we headed out shortly after 7:00 to a restaurant recommended by the front desk of our hotel. This restaurant served Swedish cuisine and apparently didn’t need reservations. Not true!

So we set out in search of some other suitable restaurant, when low and behold, what did we wander by, but the Hard Rock Café. They had room and we all enjoyed a fabulous non-Swedish meal. I mean, if we really want to eat Swedish, we can go IKEA, right? HRC to start the trip! HRC to finish it! I’m liking the symmetry of that.
Since it never gets dark here, we felt like it was about 4:00 when we finished eating. But, we knew tomorrow was going to be a long and early one, so we returned to hotel and called it a night.

This will be the last post for this edition of Bill and Dawn’s Excellent Adventures. We had another amazing one and are very grateful for all of our travel opportunities.
See you next time!

Stockholm, Sweden

Well, all good things must come to an end and after our final breakfast in the Grand Dining Room, we bid adieu to the Marina and set foot on Swedish soil. This was a very interesting cruise. The history of the whole area shares one major common thread - the Nazis. In fact, they did a nice job of attempting to erase history, but all of these countries have rebuilt to blueprint, which is a testimonial to their spirit.
Rebuilding was not a easy task and not just from a monetary point of view. If they had photos of interiors of churches and palaces, they were black and white, which meant studying artwork in similar periods to get the colours right. Fortunately, there remained a solid body of skilled artisans in these countries capable of undertaking such rebuilding. If we tried to do this in the "new world" we'd be screwed.
Regarding the Marina, I think the jury is still out. Yes they have more restaurants and larger public spaces than our last Oceania ship. But there are potentially also twice as many annoying guests on board. The mean age on this cruise seemed to be a bit older and the mean fitness level also seemed to be a bit fatter. Also, exiting this ship always took longer. So, I think we're leaning towards the smaller ships.
Once we finally got all of our luggage and waited through a long queue for a taxi, we were on our way to our hotel, The Best Western Time Hotel. Of course we were too early to get rooms, so we left our bags and set off for the historic heart of Stockholm.


The walk from our hotel to the original old town was straight down one avenue to the island of Gamla Stan, about 3.5 kilometres. Once again we were impressed by the volume of grand buildings. The waterways threading their way through the city also make for great vistas.

One of the squares in the heart of Gamla Stan contains probably the most photographed buildings from the 14th century.

We quickly discovered that the most sought after item for tourists was the dalahorse. We actually know nothing about their origin - maybe tomorrow.

Sweden still has a royal family and in the heart of Gamla Stan is their palace. You can walk through their courtyard and freely view both chapel and the main entrance hall.


Most of Gamla Stan is in its original state, but on its periphery are some modern structures.

We noticed everywhere we've been on this trip that when small children go out from their daycares or kindergartens as they call them, that they seem really well cared for - often with reflective vests. In this case, the little ones had donned - well at least some of them - flowered garlands, in honour of today which is the Summer Solstice.

Although not hot, it was a delightful day today for our extensive stroll. We continue to be amazed by the beauty of these Baltic cities. And then there's Bill the Viking?

Helsinki, Finland

I’m not sure whether or not Denmark qualifies as a Nordic country, but Finland definitely does. They have long days at this time of year and no days in the winter. They have months of snow and persistent subzero temperatures. Sounds a lot like Canada, except for the light thing – at least in our part of Canada.

The scene above shows the Senate Square Cathedral that is surrounded by both Parliament and University. Much of this city has been rebuilt since WW2 because the Finns made an alliance with the Germans to keep themselves from being obliterated, but the Soviets flattened the city anyway. Nice!

The main railway station is an interesting building, done in the Soviet style. Of course, Finland is not far from and in fact borders on Russia, so this influence is not surprising.

When we last visited Helsinki in 1978, one of the few buildings we remembered was the National History Museum, which we passed on today’s walk.

After we’d walked about five kilometers, our guide gave us a break at a café serving coffee, tea and a “Finnish” – Danish by anyone else’s appraisal, but then we ARE in Finland.

Another memory we had of Helsinki was the next stop on our walk – The Church in The Rock. This Lutheran church, as are most churches in Finland was cut out of granite. The exterior is simply a rock formation, but the interior has been finished in a very Nordic fashion, with very little ornamentation and pomp.
Although Finland relied in the past on its natural resources, much in the same way Canada has, today they are into high-tech thanks to home grown companies like Nokia.
The Finns consider themselves very shy and quiet, but fortunately we had a very gregarious and humourous guide today, which made the day even better. Despite a dire forecast of rain, today was a fabulous weather day, perfect for a ten thousand step walk.

St. Petersburg, Russia

We are now experiencing “White Nights”. This phenomenon, particularly noticeable at this time of year on clear nights, means that it barely gets dark at night at all. We thought this might mean spectacular sunsets, but so far not really. This one was taken at midnight off our balcony in the direction of our friendly downtown Nuke plant.

We docked at the St. Petersburg pier fairly early this morning and after a quick in-room breakfast, left the ship in the rain to meet our Red October guide. Since you cannot travel unguided in Russia and there were few of us with private guides, we beat the Oceania masses off the ship, which was nice since it took a while to get through passport control.
Our guide Irena was there to meet us with our driver Alexander, a big guy who had to crouch over to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling in the van.


Since we were a little early for the Hermitage, we stopped at a Russian Orthodox Church to pray for a stop to the rain. That happened, but only by mid-afternoon.

We were quick once again to appreciate the benefits of a small group tour as we whisked to the front of the line at the Hermitage and began our tour. From the moment one sets foot in the Hermitage, it is clear why a revolution was necessary in Russia. The main entry staircase was the height of decadence and it only got more so from that point onward.

Like similar palace museums in Europe, it’s difficult to decide whether to look at the walls, the ceilings, the floors or the paintings and sculptures. They are all equally spectacular works of art.

Although there were works by many masters including Michelangelo, da Vinci, Cezanne and Picasso, my personal favourite featured animals that had been the prey of hunters and had turned the tables on them by stringing up both hunters and their dogs. The section of the painting I’ve highlighted below, shows a goat in particular, doing the “happy dance”.

Following a quick lunch at the museum, we boarded a hydrofoil for a trip down the choppy Neva River to Peterhof, a summer residence of the Tzars. The sun started to break out at this point, which made the viewing of some of the one hundred fountains in the gardens more enjoyable.



Then we donned cloth booties for an interior tour. This place is serious overkill and the crowds here reminded me of Versailles, which is not a good thing. But, other than some German tourists, everyone was fairly orderly and the tour flowed as well as could be expected.
We then drove back to St. Petersburg where we were given a driving tour of the old town. There are thousands of absolutely gorgeous buildings in this city. I don’t remember this from Leningrad of 1978, so they’ve been clearly working at it.

The main drag of St. Petersburg is Nevskiy Prospekt that boasts the most high-end stores and hotels.


Although St. Petersburg and I guess Russia in general has cleaned up substantially in their post communist years, there are still lots of subtle reminders of days gone by, like the abundance of over-the-hill Ladas still on the road.

We got back to the boat around 6:30 after a fabulous first day and had an equally fabulous meal tonight in Red Ginger, the ship’s Asian-styled restaurant.
Tomorrow, we see more of St. Petersburg, including the Church of the Spilled Blood.

It is now Sunday June 18 – Father’s Day – and we’re still in St. Petersburg. After another early breakfast, we headed towards Pushkin and the Summer Palace of Catherine. Because we’re always on time, we made our first stop at a typical Russian grocery store. Guess what? Superstore, Walmart, Auchan, whatever you want to call it – the store, products and prices were very familiar to us. So, the Russian are NOT starving and not short of any consumer goods. And according to our guide, if there’s a Russian Mafia problem, they’ve exported it. It doesn’t exist in Russia.


In Pushkin we saw more of the Tzarist decadence at Catherine’s Palace. This place like a lot of the surrounding area of St. Petersburg was razed by the Nazis and has had and is still having extensive renovations.

The photos below show the restoration of the Grand Dining Room and the state it was in following the departure of the Nazis. They are very careful to refer to the nasties that were done to them as by the Nazis, not the Germans - a fine line I know, but an important one if you don’t want to hate the Germans forever.


On the way back into St. Petersburg, we were reminded that the Nazis were held outside St. Petersburg – then Leningrad – for 900 days. Of course they still did serious damage to the city with artillery, but they never actually made it beyond this Memorial on the outskirts.

Our next destination was the Resurrection Church on the Spilled Blood, which has the classic Russian Orthodox cupolas. The entire interior of the church has been restored with every surface covered with mosaic artwork.


Although there is clearly much prosperity here, reminders like the local bus below make you realize that they still have a ways to go.

For lunch today we ate in a typical restaurant, not for tourists. We had salad, borscht, a kind of sausage tortellini and apple strudel. It was great!

Our last activity in the city was a cruise of the canals and the Neva, Fountain and Moshka rivers. This afforded us another fabulous view of St. Petersburg buildings and bridges. The cruise took us as well, past the battleship Aurora that was significant in the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1917.



For the passengers on the canal boat, a young Russian boy who ran along the canal beside us and showed up on every bridge passed under, entertained us. Needless to say, by the end of the cruise he got some nice tips.

So, for us, this was the end of Russia and everyone found it amazing. Our two day private tour was especially wonderful, in part because we lucked out and got a great guide, but more so because we didn’t have to follow the hordes. We learned a lot about the Tzars and in particular, Peter the Great and it is little wonder that the Tzarist lineage has been erased.