Covent Garden, or what to do on a free afternoon in London

We knew we would have to get off the ship eventually, so the
expectation of an afternoon in London filled that hollow feeling I
always get on the last morning of a cruise.

We had booked a post-cruise excursion to Canterbury and Leeds Castle
for Monday, but it was cancelled, so we found ourselves with more time
in London than we originally were expecting.

So we ditched plans to spend the whole afternoon at the British
Museum. Instead, we trekked the ten minute walk to Covent Garden.
There are lots of shops and an open market, several restaurants, and
throngs of people to watch. We found a Disney Store which was a
wonderful surprise, so of course we had to go in!

Today started out overcast in London but by the time we were at Covent
Garden, the skies had cleared. The temperature was mild, much milder
than when we were here two weeks ago. It was a perfect day to people
watch. DH said it had the feel of New Orleans and I agreed.

Days at Sea

Our 12 night Northern European Capitals cruise included seven days in
ports and four full days at sea. The sea days on this itinerary were
spaced out in such a way as to provide a day of rest and relaxation
between intensive port days.

The first day at sea was the day after boarding. As many guests had
been traveling several days prior to embarkation, as we had, we were
glad for a day to get settled in. For those who arrived the day we
left or just before, it was a much needed day to get through their
jetlag.

The second day at sea came between our day in Germany when many people
spent five to six hours traveling to and from Berlin and our days in
St. Petersburg.

Our third and fourth days at sea have come at the end, just in time
for resting and relaxing before the chore of packing.

Days at sea offer plenty of activites as well as the opportunity to do
absolutely nothing. The youth programs are scheduled in such a way as
to keep the children occupied giving parents time for their own
pursuits. There are movies, including the just released The Sorceror's
Apprentice, Toy Story 3, The Prince of Persia, and Alice in
Wonderland. While we had seen two of these in the local theater, we
had not seen them in 3D so we were able to experience that. They
showed the more recent releases on the big screen in the Walt Disney
Theater which had good attendance. Other movies, like When in Rome,
were shown in the Buena Vista theater.

In addition to movies, there were entertainment classes, port
lectures, art auctions, shopping guides, and game shows such as Who
Wants to be a Mouseketeer? and Mickey Mania.

Dinners each evening were themed and had a decent variety of food,
usually with a choice of fish, chicken, beef, or vegetarian entrees.
If you didn't want to eat in the main dining rooms (you rotated
between the three each day), you could still get table service in
Topsiders with mostly the same menu that was served elsewhere. A
couple of nights, Topsiders was opened as a buffet, but usually it is
not a buffet in the evenings, although many people have put that on
their comment card to offer a buffet at night.

The Disney ships have self-service laundry rooms on board so this
makes packing easier. However, they can get really busy on a sea day.
I lucked out and woke up early enough two sea mornings to get ours
done without a wait. You can meet some wonderful people in the laundry
room, especially on the first day or two when people are arriving with
a suitcase full of dirty laundry from pre-cruise travel. Of course the
cruiseline also offers a laundry service.

Our first two sea days were beautiful and most guests were outdoors.
The third one was a bit cooler so a few less people braved the
weather, and our last day at sea was chilly and had a strong wind that
could easily toss a small child around. There was a rainshower too
that drove everyone indoors. You could tell that we had left the
Baltic region with its record-breaking temperatures for the more
normal temperatures of the North Sea.

Re: Stockholm and Sigtuna

> This is our last port day and we got an early start on our tour of
> Stockholm and Sigtuna. We rode around the main areas of Stockholm
> and, after a photo stop at the "balcony" where we had a beautiful
> view of eight of the 14 islands that Stockholm is situated on, we
> went to Old Town which was interesting.
>
> Next we boarded the bus for the ride out to Sigtuna. It was a 45
> minute drive to the small town that is several centuries old. We
> took a 20 minute guided walk through the town and searched for
> runes. We visited St. Olaf's church which was very cool.

> We had a group lunch at Stora Brannbo which is a bed and breakfast
> near Sigtuna. We had a chicken lunch that was very good. Then we
> made our way back to the ship.

After we set sail, a local guide from the archipelago preservation
society narrated our passage through the fjorden.

Next stop, Dover on Sunday. This will be my last post from onboard but
I will have more on Sunday after we are back in London. We still have
a tour of Canterbury and Leeds Castle.

Our day in Helsinki

As you may remember, I was most excited about our stop in Helsinki as
my third cousin lives there and we had plans to meet him and his family.

After being in St. Petersburg for two long and hot days, it was nice
to have a bit of sea before porting again. We arrived near Helsinki
around 8 AM when the pilot came aboard to guide us in. I happened to
be on the verandah and watched him literally walk into the side of the
ship. That was so cool.

We agreed to meet around 9:45 as that is what tome our ashore time was
set for. We got off the ship a little earlier than that and waited for
him to arrive. The parking area was small and it became apparent that
it was not easy for anyone to get to where we were without experience
in getting there. We met a woman and her children who were there to
catch a glimpse of characters and she offered to let me call with her
phone. He was very near so that was nice. I had a pair of new DVC
caps in my bag so I gave them to her kids.

We took the shuttle into town and then walked through a central park
and up to the Senate Square. We bought our souvenirs and then went up
to see the large Lutheran church that was there and afforded a nice
view. Then we met his wife for lunch at a lovely restaurant where the
boys had chocolate cake for lunch while DH had a salmon soup ad did my
cousin, and his wife and I had Caesar salad with shrimp. They also
have an adorable son who is two and very sweet.

After lunch we walked her to her tram / streetcar stop and then back
to the shuttle. We so enjoyed meeting them and are very glad we were
able to. This was definitely the highlight of our trip. Or one of the
top ones anyway.

We had a brief rest and then were out again for the afternoon for a
bus trip around Helsinki. We saw some of the same things as before but
with additional but less personal information. We saw many of the
important sites in Helsinki.

They said yesterday hit a record high at 93.5 degres farenheit.
Highest in 76 years. Today was a bit milder and thankfully there was
enough breeze to keep it bearable. It reminded us of home.

When we got back to the ship, the family from this morning had cone
back for sailaway so we talked to them and thanked her again for
letting us use her phone. They stayed until the ship left. They spied
us on Deck 10 (well it was easy because we were waving at them) and
that was fun.

Tonight is Pirate night onboard and also at 10:45, they are premearing
the Sorcerors Apprentice. We have an early day in Stockholm so no late
movies for us.

St. Petersburg, Day 2

Our second day in st. Petersburg started off early. Especially felt
early as we have moved our clocks ahead an hour each of the last two
nights and are now eight hours ahead of home.

We had lunch at a place called Sadko. Salad, soup, bread, some weird
chicken dish, and apple cake. Afterwards we did a two hour tour of the
Hermitage. Good thing we had our tour guide to tell us what we were
looking at and keep us from getting lost among the hundreds of rooms.
We saw works of Rembrandt, Renoir, diVinci, van Gogh, Matisse and many
others. Just as impressive as the collection was were the rooms
themselves. They were ornately ornate.

The coolest thing was watching DS14 recognizing icons from some of his
war games and getting it that St. Petersburg is the same as the
Leningrad of his games.

It was pushing past 90 degrees again today and the only place with air
conditioning was the bus. And there are five ships in port bringing a
record 10,000 passengers in to tour on the same day. Good thing there
are lots of places to tour.

Tomorrow is Helsinki.

St. Petersburg, Day 1

St. Petersburg is our only port with an overnight stay, and we, like
many others, filled up as much time as possible with port excursions.

But before we could embark on our first one, we had to go through
immigration. That meant a bazillion people going through at once and
each person's identification information being scrutinized carefully.
Which took quite a while. The cruiseline sent us out in groups but
there was still a backup. But we made it through and we now have
Russian stamps in our passports.

Our afternoon excursion was a tour of the city on the way to the
souvenir shop. We were on the shopping excursion tour since we wanted
to be sure to get some specific things. We got a beautiful matryoshka
doll as well as a thimble and spoon for the boys.

We were done quickly and had time to walk around. We were at St.
Isaac's Square which is a shaded, grassy area which was much welcomed
after the temperature reached over 90 degrees which is almost unheard
of in St. Petersburg. We were only a ten minute walk away from the
Church of the Spilt Blood so we went to see it and then up to Nevsky
Prospekt because I wanted to walk along it having read about it on a
travel guide.

Traffic was bad both going and coming. There are only seven bridges
crossing the Neva River so there isn't much choice in which way to go.
We were supposed to be back at the ship by 4:45 but didn't get back
til 5:15 and then were another 15 minutes in line getting through
immigration. There were several groups leaving out for the ballet and
the ball while there were several busloads coming back from a variety
of tours.

We hurried dinner a bit as we had an evening excursion that wad a city
tour from the canals and river. It was a little less chaotic leaving
as most people had already gotten their passports stamped.

On the boat, there was a trio performing folk music for us. It was
good to hear it and DS12 particularly enjoyed it.

We were back on board after a half hour souvenir stop.

Arriving in St. Petersburg

10:30 AM Monday. We are arriving in St. Petersburg for what looks like
will be a hot day, a predicted high temperature of 91 degrees.

We passed Czars Island earlier which now serves as a Russian naval
academy. There were a couple of submarines visible this morning.

Our approach is extremely slow because it is shallow here and lots of
silt. But we have two pilots from the area who are guiding us in.

In order to disembark today, we have to fill out a landing card. As we
leave, they will take one side; when we return, they will take the
second half and stamp our passports. When the cruise director
announced last night that we would get stamps in our passports, the
entire theater broke into applause.

We are doing a shopping excursion today and a canal boat tour this
evening.