#5 Helsinki, Finland

Hmmm...not really sure what to say about Helsinki other than "been there, done that". There isn't much to see in Helsinki, and we were a little disappointed with that city. It's a fairly newly built area and no real historical buildings to speak of other than the "church in the rock" and the Olympic stadium. They did have some cute shops though - Marimeko is from Finland so lots of her cute designs.
One funny thing that happened was that when we were walking through the outdoor market area we came across a jewelry maker who took coins from around the world and cutout the background of the design and sold them as pendants. We were looking at them all and finally picked one up that looked like a US coin except NONE of us were familiar with the coin. Had never seen it. I think it was a John Adams coin. Really made us realize how long we had been living outside of the USA that we couldn't identify our own currency.
In the end, we were all glad to get back on the ship and move on to the next city.

#4 White Nights in St Petersburg, Russia (formerly Leningrad)

I never, never, never thought I would have the opportunity to visit Russia. How cool is that? My kids have a Russian stamp in their passport - crazy - and on the 4th of July. The other ports we visited have a open border with the cruise ships (no passport stamps), but Russia is a major pain to enter. The visas are so expensive. The tours are expensive. It is really difficult to do by yourself, so you almost have to go on an organized tour. Just getting through immigration alone was a huge ordeal. I think we probably got about 10 pages of instructions on how to enter, what to have with us, how to fill out the papers, etc. Our tour guide even met us right at the immigration desk to help us get through.
Our tour took us around the city, and it looks like nothing I ever imagined. In my mind Russia is a dirty, old, run down, grey city. However, St. Petersburg is a "palatial city" that reminds me of an old Paris with shades of Venice too. The guide told us that it is more sophisticated than the rest of Russia and that even 100 km outside of the city, they still use outhouses and such.
St Petersburg is made up of 42 islands that are all connected by bridges. Something I never knew about the city. We crossed the water over and over. It is also made up of several brightly painted palaces. Very picturesque.
The Summer Palace just outside of town was impressive (aka Catherine Palace). It was basically destroyed by the Germans in WWII, so we were even more overwhelmed that it had been so painstakingly restored. It's known as the Russian Versailles. If you've seen the kid's animated movie "Anastasia", it is based on Catherine Palace and the Alexander Palace.

The Ball room - hall of mirrors. So beautiful.
Getting inside the Summer Palace was a real pain. We were happy that we had a Russian tour guide that got us in without waiting in the 4 hour line. We saw the bureaucracy and corruption of their system at work!!!! Major bonus that our guide was a pit bull as far as getting things done. We would have been lost without her.
I got a kick out of the Russian McDonald's sign.
Lunch was at a great restaurant (not McDonald's). The food was surprisingly really tasty. The kids even found something they liked. B had the chicken cutlets and L ordered Russian meat dumplings. I was proud of them for trying something outside their comfort zone. No pasta today!
We also had a 2nd day in St. Petersburg where we saw more of the sites withing the city. The Hermitage (Winter Palace of the Romanovs) is beautiful - and HUGE. We walked through the palace part and the art museum part. Massive, massive museum with some of my favorite impressionist paintings included.
My favorite site in St. Petersburg was the "Cathedral on the Spilled Blood" which is gorgeous inside and out. It's only been open without scaffolding for the last 12 years, so relatively few people have seen it (built in the early 1900s immediately before the revolution). The outside is so neat with the onion domes covered in glazed tiles. Even better is the inside which is 100% covered in mosaics. So, so pretty. We thought it was actually a cathedral (hence the name), but religious services have never been held there - it's really a memorial building.
The one unexpected thing we saw were wedding parties. I bet we saw over 100 bride and grooms all over the city. They have a tradition where they get dressed in their wedding gowns and tuxes on their wedding day and go around the city to all the memorials and lay flowers in honor of soldiers and leaders - which is exactly the same spots we were visiting. Brides and grooms were ev -er -y -where! And limousines - crazy amount of limos. Lots of Hummer limos too - even pink ones. so funny.
For lunch we had the traditional Pirogi (pie). They had both savory and sweet pies. We ordered the mushroom pie and the minced meat pie. They were delicious. The sweet pies tasted just like regular pie at home even though the crust is different. The pies are very similar to the "pasty" that they sell in England. They became popular as a quick, easy way for cooks to serve left over meat the following day after a good dinner - meat enclosed in pastry.

We were in St. Petersburg at the end of their White Night season. It never gets totally dark during the night. So weird for the sunset to be around midnight and then the sky just stays a light grey the whole night long - like a rainy day in Texas. That is until the sun rose again at 3:30am. The kids really had a hard time going to bed. Seems like you are just taking an afternoon nap.

Our heads were spinning though about dealing with currency. We would convert from Russian Rubles to Euro to US dollar to GB pound (that last conversion to GB pounds because that is our most familiar currency and it would let us know how much something REALLY costs). We had all those currencies in our wallets and some vendors would accept either Rubles or Euro and since ATMS are NOT AT ALL readily available in Russia, we would borrow cash from one another and then repay in pounds and dollars. Trust me. It was a currency mess. Sounds silly, but I think we spent LOTS of our time doing conversions.

All in all, St Petersburg was a real highlight. So happy and grateful to have the opportunity to travel there.
(one note for the average historian. St Petersburg is named after St. Peter the apostle, but it is confusing to some because it was Peter the Great who built the city. Common misundstanding - some people think Peter the Great was called St Peter)

#3 stop - Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn is not a place I had ever heard of until I booked this cruise. Estonia was a former member of the Soviet Union. I had low expectations, however Tallinn is so charming. Especially the Medieval part of town. That area is a UNESCO World Heritage site which is a good clue that it is something special to see. Tallinn was a highlight, and if you ever have a chance to visit there - go. It's worth the time.
Cobblestone streets and lots of medieval costumed locals working in the town. It is so perfect looking - charm, costumes, folk music, decent food and beautiful weather. The real deal Medieval town.

Baltic Cruise stop #2 Warnemunde, Germany

Warnemunde... otherwise known as the stop for Berlin. I tried to learn how to pronounce this name, but I still butcher it.
We traveled to Berlin recently so we decided just to explore the port towns of Warnemunde and Rostock instead. Cute seaside towns with lots of boats and shops along the boardwalk. The kids manly liked the beach area. Rostock had some great photo ops. and pretty buildings. Just a quick train ride between the 2 towns.
There were millions of jelly fish on the beach and in the water. I was a little freaked out at first, but once we saw kids picking them up, playing with them, stacking them into pyramids, etc, we realized that these jelly fish are not the stinging variety. If you're a Spongebob cartoon fan, - the designs in the jelly fish we saw look JUST LIKE the background in the Spongebob cartoon. The kids got a kick out of that. Guess that's why Spongebob is always going jelly fish hunting!

Baltic Sea 12 Day Cruise

ah...what an awesome way to end our tour of Europe before moving home - a cruise of the Baltic Sea. Two other families we know took the same cruise, so we all had fun hanging out. The kids really liked having school friends on the boat.

Our ship, the Norwegian Jewel (NCL)

Our rooms were behind the little life boats with "an obstructed view"! The life boats are the red and white small boats hanging across the side of the ship.

My kids love cruising because 1)endless ice cream, and 2) the independence they have picking when to go to kids club, when to swim, when to go to the shows, etc. They love it.

We left out of the port in Dover, England. I really appreciated not having to fly before we boarded the boat. Just drove right to Dover and hopped on.

The "white cliffs of Dover"




The fun area of the ship. Pools were so heated that they felt like a "hot tub".
Note the winding steps of the yellow slide. L fell on those on our last day and busted his knee. Needed stitches but through a complicated situation, L refused the stitches and instead chose to have knee bandaged and has to keep it straight for 10 days to let wound heal. Had I been in that room, he would have stitches in that knee!!!




Leaving port in Dover.




First stop, Copenhagen, Denmark.


We chose to do a bike ride in Copenhagen. It was different than our other city rides in that the leader wasn't at all concerned with us keeping up with him. Made for a much more challenging ride. It was also about 20 miles (we think). The kids were really worn out and had not eaten a hearty enough breakfast to get them through that ride until 2:00pm. They just about revolted to escape to a 7-11 store we saw. I think they thought a slurpee would be tasty.


Copenhagen is famous for being the home of Hans Christian Anderson. We rode by his grave site. It's in a less than wonderful part of town. He wrote the story of the Little Mermaid, so there is a very famous statue of the little mermaid by the sea.

It's a little strange because she sits with her back towards the sea. There is some story about Denmark "having it's back to the world" and it's associated with this statue, but our guide had such a thick accent that we didn't really get the whole story about it.


Lunch at the Hard Rock. Of course the kids bought t-shirts. L wouldn't smile here, he was too hungry.
Town Center

Here we are trying to figure out the public bus system. There's a problem in that there are 2 bus #26s and only ONE of them goes to the pier where our ship was docked. We got on the wrong bus and really, really, really cut short our time getting back to the boat. We had to run the last 1/2 mile and that was after our long bike ride. I believe there were only 2 other people out of 1800 that got on after us. That is cutting it too close.

PS. the boat will leave without you!

Happy 150th birthday to Big Ben

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8145668.stm

Hopefully we will be able to get into the city tonight to see the "festivities"

Farewell to our stuff

As of today, our stuff is officially on it's way back "home" on the slow boat to the Americas (sounds better saying "slow boat to China", but that might jinx our stuff to get on the wrong ship!) The truck pulled away at 3:00. Tomorrow we transfer the Mini Cooper to the new owner. I will hate to hand over those keys.
Sold all our other UK electronics so we are just about down to the clothes in our suitcases and papers we have to keep with us.
Some of our sweet, kind friends have either fed us, offered use of their car or letting us stay in their home since our beds are gone. Very, very generous people.
We are taking care of some last minute business on Friday and then off on a cruise on Saturday. I'm looking forward to relaxing a bit on the cruise. 2 other families who are good friends of ours are going on the same cruise. It should be fun.
Life in the UK is winding down.....
(think we have time to get to Wimbledon tomorrow? our last chance)