Category: Uncategorized

Contributed by: filbert Thursday, December 15 2011 @ 11:46 AM CST

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Five

August 19 (Friday, Day 12, St. Petersburg, Russia) –

In the Hermitage

The tour group met at 8 AM. The day was sunny and looked 100% different than yesterday. We drove to a boat for an hour-long boat ride along the rivers and canals with room temperature champagne and chocolates. Filbert joked that in Russia the vodka is cold and the champagne is room temp. (That didn’t stop him from drinking several glasses of it, though!) We passed most of the places we drove by yesterday, but today we could actually see them. Snookums found a 10-kopek coin on the boat, too, keeping intact her skill of finding money in foreign countries. After the boat ride we went to the Hermitage Museum for a 2-hour tour. The Hermitage, or Winter Palace, was built for Elizabeth, one of Peter the Great’s daughters, but she died before the lavish mansion was completed. The gold-trimmed, green and white palace houses one of the world’s most massive art collections (more than 2.7 million works) and our tour ended in the French Impressionists’ area, which is considered to be unmatched by any other museum.

We ate lunch at a different restaurant and had a tasteless salad that was made of mushrooms and diced chicken in mayonnaise, followed by a broth-based mushroom soup and chicken Kiev (with white rice and raw cabbage). Dessert was two crepes with strawberry sauce. Snookums noticed a lot of signs that said “pectopah” and asked Olga what it meant. Snookums thought she was kidding when she said “restaurant” and pronounced the Russian version like “restora” but then realized that a “p” in Cyrillic is like our “r” and a “c” is like our “s”.

Pectopah

We drove to Peter and Paul fortress and toured the cathedral. At the end of our tour, Olga rushed into a room and then five Russian men sang a church song for us in order to try to sell their CD. It was a nice and very unexpected finale. Peter and Paul fortress was the first building in Peter’s capital, built in 1703 (when St. Petersburg was founded).

The next stop was Yusupov palace. By now Snookums and Filbert were totally tuned out and Snookums only remembered seeing a square room that was decorated to make it look round and she also remembered the home theatre, a 100-person theatre complete with stage, orchestra pit and royal boxes.

Another extravagantly gilded and decorated room. Yawn.

We were given 40 minutes to shop at a souvenir store and this is where we also paid for our tour when the boss of the tour company showed up. (Yes, the tour was paid for at the end of the two days and credit card information was never requested. No one knows what would have happened to someone that only made the first day!) U.S. dollars were the preferred payment method and cash meant a 5% discount. No problem, cash it was. When Snookums paid, the woman asked how things went and Snookums told her that she was a bit disappointed since via email Snookums was told that Filbert would receive a typical Russian birthday cake on August 18 (two days after his birthday). The woman said that the office realized their mistake and she apologized and kept going on and on and Snookums finally said, “Please just let me pay.” Snookums was disappointed that the cake never happened, but that was that. When everyone was done paying, we got on the minibus and that’s when Olga said “It’s Filbert’s birthday and here are some presents for him from the tour company.” She gave him a bottle of vodka and a set of three St. Petersburg shot glasses. Both items were sold at the souvenir store and Snookums knows that the boss bought them right then and there. Filbert was very happy since this was a much better birthday surprise than a cake! (The vodka is as of this writing several months later, still chilling unopened in our refrigerator. How much longer this unusual state will persist is anyone’s guess.)

We got back to the ship around 5 PM and decided to order room service for dinner. Snookums was starting to come down with a cold (compliments of Gary and Charlotte, she thinks!) and after turning the clocks back one hour (yippee!), ended up falling asleep well before 10 PM.

Enormous flood gates protecting St. Petersburg

August 20 (Saturday, Day 13, Helsinki, Finland; €1 = $1.43; $1 = €0.70) –

Downtown Helsinki park

We took the $10 per person round-trip shuttle into Helsinki and walked around. It was very windy and around 70 degrees and sunny. The last shuttle to the ship was at 3:30 since most of the streets of downtown Helsinki were closing at 4 PM due to the marathon. First we had to deal with the triathlon in Copenhagen and now we had a marathon in Helsinki! We had plenty of time, though, to wander around. After we looked at the farmer’s market near the harbor area, Uspensky Cathedral, and Senate Square and Cathedral, we stopped at Stockmann, one of Helsinki’s two flagship Finnish stores. We enjoyed browsing in the large grocery store in the basement. We bought Puffs Plus for Snookums’s nose (54 total tissues in six pocket packs for $2.75 and Snookums could not find a box of tissues at all. Only pocket packs are sold!), canned reindeer meat ($10.18), canned reindeer soup ($7.12), 1.5-liter Coke Zero ($2.14 plus $0.58 deposit) and four cans of Finnish beer (around $3.60 per can plus $0.22 deposit).

Helsinki wedding

Cathedral

Senate Square

We were invited to a Cocktail Reception before dinner. We think we were invited since we are 4-star Mariners. Anyway, it meant shaking about 35 hands (way too many people were in the receiving line and it should have just been the captain, hotel manager and a couple of more people) and getting free drinks. Snookums walked away with two unopened cans of soda and Filbert walked away with a very full glass of red wine. Even Gary enjoyed a Coors Light.

August 21 (Sunday, Day 14, Nynäshamn, Sweden; 1 SEK = $0.16; $1 = 6.41 SEK) –

Sittin’ on the dock of the bay

We woke up and Filbert had an idea that we should eat breakfast on the local economy. That sounded good so we took the tender in and walked 15 minutes to town. (Nynäshamn was a 70-minute train ride to Stockholm.) Unfortunately, in Nynäshamn on a Sunday things don’t open until 11 AM, noon or not at all. At 11 AM we decided to buy a picnic lunch from the grocery store. Filbert bought a chicken wrap, a Coke Zero and two individually wrapped packages of Wasa crackers with pasteurized process cheese in the middle of them and Snookums bought a ready-to-eat salad and a savory cheese roll from the bakery. The grocery store had more varieties of Wasa (dry, flat crackers) than any stores at home have. But, Sweden is the land of Wasa! Our picnic lunch cost $22 which wasn’t too bad, considering we were in Sweden. (Bing cherries were $10/pound and some kind of meat [probably a pork loin] cost $20/pound.) We took our lunch to the harbor and ate it while sitting on the harbor wall. The rest of the town (population 20,000) seemed to be there, too. It was a sunny day and in the low 70s which is probably a hot day for Sweden.

Filbert didn’t buy any beer at the store since all of the Swedish beer was only 3.2% alcohol. (Okay , he said he didn’t buy any since we were still going to walk a long ways!) On the plus side, while checking out with her credit card, Snookums asked the cashier to charge her for the cheapest currency coin and the woman gave her a Swedish krona and didn’t charge her for it. Snookums did see a coin on the ground on the walk to town, but it was behind a chain link fence and she couldn’t get to it.

Swedish fish

August 22 (Monday, Day 15, At sea) –

Vikings! Pirates! (eh, probably not . . .)

At last, a sea day! We both woke up kind of early and enjoyed a room service breakfast – two pots of coffee and a pot of hot water for Filbert (for his high protein instant oatmeal) and two raisin buns for Snookums. Holland America makes the best raisin buns and this ship uses the largest raisins Snookums has ever seen. She has been eating oatmeal from the buffet for most breakfasts since she can put the huge raisins in it.

Filbert went to the 30-minute morning lecture about the history of Nelson and Trafalgar and also the afternoon one about the history of the Vikings.

Around 12:30 we entered an area off the coast of Copenhagen that is very shallow. A pilot came on board and we traveled six knots for about two hours. At one point the bottom of the sea was just two feet under our keel. That is very shallow! The day started cloudy and foggy, and the ship even blew its foghorn several times, but by the time we passed by Copenhagen, it was sunny.

1,800 of the 2,100 passengers are getting off in Dover on Wednesday. The 300 that are staying on to New York are doing what Holland America calls a Collectors’ Voyage. HAL puts some cruises back-to-back and prices them a bit cheaper and calls them Collectors’ Voyages. We got an invitation today for a free dinner in Tamarind, the pan-Asian restaurant, since we’re on the Collectors’ Voyage. We weren’t expecting that so it was a nice surprise.

Snookums spent most of the day reading, watching TV (Shanghai Noon, Black Swan, Duke vs. China basketball live from Beijing) and Filbert spent most of the day on the balcony before napping around 4 PM. He might be catching Snookums’s cold.

Tonight the six of us enjoyed dinner at Canaletto. This is Holland America’s free Italian restaurant on the Lido deck. It is formal night but on Lido formal attire is not required so we made reservations especially for tonight for this restaurant. It was very good and we all agreed to eat here again during two of the remaining five formal nights.

August 23 (Tuesday, Day 16, At sea) –

Filbert’s cold is pretty bad but Snookums’s seems to be getting better. However, we’re both having an enjoyable time, but don’t necessarily have a lot of energy. We did manage to attend the 2 PM Collectors’ Voyages presentation. We received an invitation for this and since it wasn’t in the daily program, we decided to attend. It was a brief overview of what would happen tomorrow as all but 370 of us would disembark. We learned that a special gangway was being set up for us so that we wouldn’t have to stand in line like the others getting off for the last time. We also found out that a shuttle bus would be available to go into Dover’s town center for $6 roundtrip. Free champagne and mimosas were handed out so it wasn’t all bad.

Tonight’s dinner was the “Master Chef’s” dinner where the waiters do a bit of singing and dancing. None of us really cared for it and the food wasn’t that good, either. On the way out Snookums asked the maitre ‘d the date of the dinner on the upcoming segment and was happy to be told that there wouldn’t be one. In fact, the maitre ‘d said that the ship hadn’t had one of these dinners for a couple of months. We had one on our Alaska cruise and would be happy to never have one again!

When we got back to our cabin we were disappointed that we hadn’t received the daily “Explorer” (the daily program) or the Dover map that we always get at night and the night before a port. Snookums called to the front desk to make sure that they knew that we were on the ship for the next 17 days and they said that the papers would be delivered right away.

Medary.com – The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 5 of 9
http://www.medary.com/article.php/dover2011-05

Contributed by: filbert Tuesday, December 13 2011 @ 11:39 AM CST

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Four

August 18 (Thursday, Day 11, St. Petersburg, Russia; 1 ruble = $0.03; $1 = $29.14 ruble) –

Eurodam, rain, St. Petersburg

Snookums arranged to take a tour with an independent tour company. We normally don’t like tours, but Russia requires a $250 visa unless you are with a tour group and then you don’t need a visa. So, we signed up for a two-day St. Petersburg tour for $256 with http://st-petersburg-tours.ru/. (The ship was charging $400 for the same thing and took people in big buses. Our tour group was limited to 16 people.) Our tour guide was Olga and our driver was Leonodis. Olga’s English was excellent and she frequently used idioms and made jokes. She didn’t even have a heavy accent. She studied linguistics in college and teaches during the winter when there aren’t tourists.

It was raining most of the day but wasn’t too cold so we all managed to still have a decent time. We started at 7:45 with a city tour with a few photo stops in the rain, including St. Nicholas Cathedral. Then we took a hydrofoil to Peterhof. Peterhof was the summer palace of Peter the Great. During our 30-minute hydrofoil ride, we couldn’t see anything due to the rain so that was a bummer. We got to Peterhof and waited until 11 AM to see the fountains come to life. Even in the rain it was neat since Russian music played. We toured Fountain Park (Peterhof’s gardens) for about an hour and then we went to lunch.

Statue-petting

Peterhof

The gardens

The fountains

unch was at a restaurant and consisted of a tossed salad, borscht, two crepes that contained ground meat and a scoop of vanilla ice cream with strawberry sauce. There was also a plate of white and brown bread slices. We ate it all.

The group got back on the minibus and headed for Tsars’ Village. Then we had an inside tour of Catherine’s Palace with its famous room completely covered in amber (the “Amber Room” – no photos allowed). Snookums was in St. Petersburg around 20 years ago and visited Catherine’s Palace. At that time every tourist had to put handmade wool booties over his/her shoes in order to protect the marble inlaid floors. The wool booties were all different sizes and most of them had holes in them and barely stayed on the shoes. Russia has modernized and now every tourist is given disposable surgical booties to wear.

Outside Catherine’s Palace

Catherine’s Palace is a Russian baroque-style structure built in the first part of the 18th century. It was rebuilt by Rastrelli and is now a showcase for period art, architecture and landscaping. It looked a lot like Versailles.

Inside Catherine’s Palace

Squirrel, outside Catherine’s Palace

After touring Catherine’s Palace we drove to St Isaac’s Cathedral and toured it. St. Isaac’s Cathedral is St. Petersburg’s most famous church and is one of the world’s largest domed structures. It is decorated with Russian mosaics.

By now Filbert and Snookums were getting kind of tired of touring fabulous palaces and churches but there was still one more to see today and it was the best of all. By now it had stopped raining which was perfect timing. The minibus pulled up to the Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood and everyone went “Wow”. When Snookums was last here, she bought a painting of this church since it was so beautiful and it hangs on her home office wall. At that time, her tour group only saw the outside of it. This time the tour group went inside, too, since it was renovated and open to the public in 1997.

St. Issac’s Cathedral, interior

The Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood has a bunch of onion domes on it that are bright gold or striped. The inside is even more spectacular than the outside. It is modeled after Moscow’s distinctive St. Basil’s Cathedral and is a museum of Russian mosaics. After this we got back to the ship around 6:45. Traffic was exceptionally bad since the Russian president was in town and many streets were closed. It was a full, tiring and wet day but a good introduction to St. Petersburg.

Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, exterior

Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood, interior

It was around 7:30 by the time we cleaned up a bit which was perfect timing for dinner. Gary and Charlotte were there and so was Roger. Margaret attended a ballet in St. Petersburg so she wasn’t at dinner. We were all very hungry and ate a lot.

St. Petersburg Sundown

Medary.com – The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 4 of 9
http://www.medary.com/article.php/dover2011-04

Contributed by: filbert Sunday, December 11 2011 @ 11:35 AM CST

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Three

August 16 (Tuesday, Day 9, Cruising the Baltic Sea) –

Show girls

Snookums woke at 7:15 and hustled to the 7:30 fitness class. Only one other person was there and the fitness instructor went ahead and held it. Snookums was on cruises before where the policy was that at least three people had to show up for a class to be held. Snookums is very impressed with this cruise so far. It was another 30 minutes of good torture and during the class Snookums found out that the instructor is from Zimbabwe and played professional rugby in Zimbabwe and in South Africa. Then he decided that his body couldn’t take the punishment anymore and he got a degree in Exercise Science before training various Olympic athletes. Now he’s on a cruise ship training non-Olympic athletes! After the 30-minute class she used the elliptical for 30 minutes and was sweating through her gray T-shirt by the time she was done. When she returned to the room after a quick breakfast, Filbert was just finishing his birthday breakfast of a ham and cheese omelet. He has been eating his high protein/low calorie for breakfast every day but since today is his 52nd birthday, he treated himself. He was also watching RedEye on Fox News. It’s one of his favorite shows and is shown at 2 AM at home. However, with the time change, it’s on in the morning. So, he was eating his birthday breakfast while watching one of his favorite shows and was very happy.

After Snookums took her shower, she fell asleep. When Housekeeping came in to clean the room, she went to the poolside sale of ½ price Baltic apparel and bought a Holland America polo shirt. Then she went to lunch and had a self-made taco salad. After lunch she went to the regular ship’s store and was actually impressed by what was for sale. She didn’t buy anything, but might have if the items were in her size. The good news about being on a repositioning cruise is that a lot of the merchandise is on sale so that they have room for the new inventory that fits the other cruise destinations but the bad news is that they are out of a lot of the merchandise.

Filbert went to a 3-hour $150 tour of the engine room and bridge. This is the first time on any of our cruises that Holland America offered this type of tour. Gary, being the retired Navy Lt. Commander that he is, joined it, too.

Tailors

Laundry

Engineering control room

Engine room

Galley

Bridge

During the afternoon Snookums finally wrote nine days of the journal. Filbert came back from the 3-hour tour at 5:30 (3 ½ hours!) and said that it was a tour of the entire ship – galley and galley store rooms, backstage, bridge, engine room, laundry, trash, and other places. Only six men signed up. Holland America didn’t do a very good job of describing it since women would have signed up if they knew it was a whole-ship tour and not just the engine room and bridge. He came back with a Holland America tote bag filled with all of the dinner menus, a set of six Holland America shot glasses, a Eurodam pin and a Holland America “behind the scenes” paperback book. He had a great time and the tour ended in the Crow’s Nest with free drinks for all. He enjoyed two beers. The guys were also treated to fruit skewers and champagne during the galley tour. They were also told that the current cruise has 2100 passengers on it (and 300 of these are from Australia) and 370 people will continue on from Dover to New York (like we’ll do). The Dover to New York segment will have around 1900 passengers on it. They also learned that there are three full-time tailors on board in the laundry and ALL the uniforms worn by the crew are made by these three people. Stewards get measured before getting on the ship and when they board, their uniforms are waiting for them.

Snookums spent some time on the balcony since it was sunny and in the low 70s. Today was a gorgeous day at sea and the crew said that it was one of the first nice days in the Baltic they’ve had in several weeks. We’ve been pretty lucky so far with the weather ever since we landed in London. Most days have been cloudy but we only needed our umbrellas one time in London and that was for about 10 minutes. The temperatures have been in the mid-60s and jackets have been sufficient.

Dinner was fun. Gary and Charlotte gave Filbert a birthday card and a bottle of beer in a decorated paper bag. Gary used all four of his highlighters to decorate the bag. After dinner Filbert was given a birthday cake and the crew sang to him. He requested the Indonesian version of “Happy Birthday” and he got it! And the cake was delicious, in addition to the desserts that we ordered from the menu.

August 17 (Wednesday, Day 10, Tallinn, Estonia; €1 = $1.43; $1 = €0.70) –

Tallinn city square

We left the ship around 10:45 and walked into Tallinn. From our balcony we could see Old Town with its many spires and onion domes. It looked beautiful from our balcony and we were not disappointed when we got there. We stopped at a few souvenir stores searching for the perfect painting for our travel wall. After seeing lots of identical items, we finally found a store selling unique paintings and bought a tiny framed painting of Viru Gate for €5. Now we had to find Viru Gate for ourselves.

Viru Gate

We wandered around the many cobblestone streets and saw lots of sights, including Holy Spirit Church with its beautiful clock, St. Olaf’s Church with its 400-foot high tower (and it used to be Europe’s tallest church), Alexander Nevsky Cathedral with its many onion domes and Fat Margaret Tower. Snookums saw a babushka (an elderly woman) silently standing near a street corner holding baby booties and realized that she was trying to sell them. She didn’t buy any but gave the woman €2 and got a huge toothless grin in exchange.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

Lots of people were congregating on the square in front of Jaani Church. Snookums asked a military guy what was going on and was told that the Dalai Lama was going to speak at 2:00. We walked around some more and at 1:50 walked to the top of the hill above the stage and sat on a bench and decided to only wait until 2:15. At 2:15 we got up to leave and wandered over to the edge of the hill and that’s when the Dalai Lama was escorted to the stage. We DID see him and then left and continued our sightseeing! Snookums doesn’t think any of our friends can say that they’ve seen the Dalai Lama in Tallinn, much less seen the Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lama pep rally

On the way back to the ship we stopped at what seemed like the world’s largest liquor store. People were pushing shopping carts around and they had rolling suitcases and collapsible luggage carts in their carts in order to tote their purchases home. We only had the shopping bags that we always carry with us so we couldn’t buy too much. Filbert picked out 15 cans of Estonian and Russian beer and cider (and many were actual U.S. pints) and six 2-liter bottles of Coke Zero and “only” spent $35. The cashier asked where we were from and when we said the U.S., he said “God Bless America”! That was totally unexpected, but very nice. Estonia is by far the cheapest country we’ve visited so far but the cars and people look wealthy and healthy.

We walked back to the ship (Filbert carried the six 2-liter bottles of Coke Zero and was sore the next day!) and on the way passed a sidewalk café where “Russian” music was playing. Two middle-aged men, just café customers, were dancing, arm in arm. One of them didn’t even have his shirt on, and he should have, but it seemed like a typical folk-type dance and it was neat.

Tonight was formal night and we ate at Lido since we didn’t dress up. Clocks were turned forward so it was an early night for everyone since St. Petersburg’s tours were going to start early on Thursday.

Contributed by: filbert Friday, December 09 2011 @ 12:16 PM CST

The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

August 8-September 10, 2011

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise (from Holland America)

The Holland America Eurodam (from Holland America)

This is the table of contents for the online version of our trip journal. Here are the chapters:

Part One – To London

Part Two – Dover, Copenhagen, Warnemunde

Part Three – Tallinn

Part Four – St. Petersburg

Part Five – St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Nynäshamn

Part Six – Dover, Amsterdam, Bruges

Part Seven – Dublin, Tórshavn

Part Eight – Greenland

Part Nine – St. John’s, Halifax

Contributed by: filbert Friday, December 09 2011 @ 11:31 AM CST

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part Two

August 12 (Friday, Day 5, Boarding ms Eurodam in Dover, England) –

Suite, sweet suite

We woke up, packed what little we had in the roll-aboard and enjoyed our last full English breakfast. We took the tube to the coach station in order to take the coach (i.e. a Greyhound bus) to Dover for $14 per person. (Holland America’s charter bus was $70 per person.) During the 2.5-hour ride we went through various parts of London that had shops with boarded up windows from the riots. We also stopped in three towns, including Canterbury. Most of the people on the coach got off at Canterbury. The people left were going to the cruise ship. The coach was supposed to drop us off in “downtown” Dover, but the driver realized that all of the passengers were cruise ship passengers so he took us directly to the ship. That saved a cab ride and got us there faster. Due to all of the Holland America cruises we’ve taken, we are 4-star Mariners so we get priority embarkation. We zipped through the line and boarded the ship and by 12:15 we were in our category SS Superior Verandah Suite, 6068. (We didn’t get an upgrade.) Our cabin is 398 square feet with a verandah. The bathroom has two sinks, a full-size whirlpool tub/shower and a square stand-alone shower. The room has a king bed, 8-foot sofa, two armchairs and a desk chair. The verandah comfortably holds a round table with two chairs and also has two larger chairs, a footstool and a side table.

Our luggage wasn’t in the cabin yet so we decided to go to lunch. After lunch we took a self-guided tour of the ms Eurodam. It’s the biggest Holland America ship we’ve been on. It holds 2,100 guests, 800 crew and has 11 decks.

We returned to our cabin around 2 and our luggage was there. (Thanks a lot, Gary and Charlotte!) We were 99% unpacked by the time we had to attend the 4:15 safety drill.

We finished unpacking and enjoyed a little quiet time before dinner. This seemed like the first time that we had been able to totally relax since before we left KC. Dinner was at Pinnacle Grill. Pinnacle Grill is the $20 per person steakhouse but we got it free due to using a certain credit card to book our cruise. Filbert and Snookums have never had good experiences at Pinnacle Grill, but since it was free, we went. We were absolutely stunned by the great service and outstanding food. Filbert had the surf and turf and his two 6-inch prawns were huge. Snookums had the turkey and chicken kebob and it was good. The star of the night, though, was the homemade raspberry cheesecake. Snookums isn’t even a cheesecake fan but when she saw this at another table, she ordered it (along with her usual Pinnacle Grill order of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia baked Alaska). Both Snookums and Filbert thought it was outstanding and can’t wait for their next Pinnacle Grill dinner on September 4. (The September 4 dinner will be free, too, and will be explained in the September 4 entry.)

Dover, white cliffs of

Dover Castle on top of the cliffs

The ship’s captain is Captain Darin Bowland from Canada. He seems very personable and his great attitude seems to be permeating the staff and the entire ship. We’re very happy and have no complaints.

August 13 (Saturday, Day 6, Cruising the North Sea) –

Filbert set his alarm for 6 AM. He went to the gym and rode the bike and lifted some weights while Snookums slept until 10 AM. Snookums showered and then napped until lunch. After lunch she read her book and napped some more. Filbert did the same.

We ordered room service for an afternoon snack and enjoyed the shrimp cocktail and cheese plate. Dinner was formal since it was the welcome aboard event. The four of us wore our Holland America medals that we got several cruises ago for cruising 100 days. We figured that we have them so we might as well show them off! Dinner was in the Rembrandt restaurant and we met our other table-mates. We had a table for six and met Roger and Margaret and hit it right off. They live in Australia and Roger is British and Margaret was born in the Filbertippines and came to the U.S. when she was 12. She has an American passport and he has a British one. Their three grown children each have three passports!

We set our clocks forward and went to sleep. It wasn’t a tiring day, but we were very tired. Sea days are hard.

August 14 (Sunday, Day 7, Copenhagen, Denmark; 1 DKK = $0.19; $1 = 5.21 DKK) –

The Little Mermaid

Snookums woke up early and attended the 7:30 AM Total Body Conditioning class. It was 30 minutes of hard work and she sweat a lot and was pooped. It was the hardest shipboard workout class she had ever had. She commented that she was disappointed that there weren’t any free classes on August 13 since they weren’t listed in the daily program (but were listed in the fitness class schedule that she picked up at the gym the first day) and the instructor told her to go by the fitness class schedule and not what’s in the daily program. After a leisurely breakfast of oatmeal and Holland America’s delicious raisin rolls, it was time to get ready since we were meeting Gary and Charlotte at 10 AM.

It was around 63 degrees and the day looked like it was going to rain so we packed Snookums’s backpack accordingly. We were warned that a major triathlon was happening in Copenhagen and that some of the streets would be closed. We decided to do the hop-on/hop-off bus anyway and bought a combination ticket for the bus routes and a canal cruise ($33 per person for the combo ticket). It took about 40 minutes for the bus to actually leave and when it did, the narration didn’t match the sights at all since the driver had to drive on different streets. Then the bus stopped and we thought it was just a normal stop. After about 10 minutes the driver announced that everyone had to get off and walk two blocks to board the other bus. We didn’t understand it, but we all got off. The other bus was fully packed (just like the one we got off) and Filbert and Snookums decided to just walk around. Gary and Charlotte boarded another bus and headed back to the ship. Filbert and Snookums went to the Info Center and found out where the canal cruises boarded and also found the location of a grocery store.

As the day went on, the weather improved and the day turned into a sunny, beautiful day. We walked to the canal cruise and in the process saw some sights, like Tivoli Gardens, the 100-year old amusement park. We also walked the entire length of Stroget, the pedestrian-only shopping street. Since it was Sunday not all of the stores were open. The cheap stores were open, but the fancy ones were not. And, the cheap stores were on one end and the ritzy stores were on the other end.

Stroget

We got to the canal cruise place and got on a boat. 10 minutes later Gary showed up and joined us! We all enjoyed the hour-long canal cruise and saw a lot of the triathletes. We think we saw the male leader two different times while he was running and we think we saw the female leader one time. Each one had a police escort while the other participants did not.

Canal boat, departing

After the canal cruise we walked back to the ship and stopped in the grocery store. Filbert bought $5 1.5 liter bottles of Coke Zero and three different cans of $2.00 Dansk beer. Denmark is ridiculously expensive. We also stopped in a bakery and Filbert told Snookums that she had to buy a Danish but we didn’t see anything that looked like our idea of a Danish. We bought a $5 flat round roll with melted cheese on it, similar to what all of the German bakeries sell for $1.50.

We continued walking back to the ship and saw the famous statue, “The Little Mermaid”. As soon as we boarded the ship, we went for lunch since it was 2 PM or so. The triathletes were running right by the ship so that was neat to watch while eating lunch.

More reading and afternoon napping occurred before having dinner with the gang.

August 15 (Monday, Day 8, Warnemunde, Germany; €1 = $1.43; $1 = €0.70) –

Warnemunde

Snookums woke up first and showered and had breakfast. She came back to the room and Filbert had just woken up. He showered but didn’t eat breakfast and we walked around Warnemunde. It is a resort town and is known for its seaside beaches. Many fishing boats were moored in the Alte Strom. We were there too late to see any of the fresh catch being sold, but the many fish restaurants were doing brisk business selling the various fish that each restaurant smoked.

Snookums had to go to the bathroom and used one of the €0.50 units near the beach. It was clean and had a sink and a hand dryer, but it was small. Much to Snookums’s chagrin, Europeans charge for toilets and don’t serve tap water. But she knows this and deals with it (sort of).

We walked to the grocery store and bought liter bottles of Coke Zero for $1.30 and wanted to buy cans of beer, but the grocery store only sold bottles. Snookums visited two different bakeries and bought a $1.90 cherry “Danish” at one of them. Filbert bought a $2.85 Rostock bratwurst on a hard roll and enjoyed it. It was very mild, though. It’s interesting how every German town/area has its own wurst or mustard and they really are all different. Our favorite remains the Nuremberg sausages that we had in June.

On the way back to the ship we stopped at the souvenir store by the train station since it had cans of German beer. Filbert bought seven ½ liter cans for $15.

After lunch on the ship, from our balcony we watched the Indonesian crew members participate in potato sack races and other games in honor of Indonesia’s independence day (officially on August 17). After that naps were in order so as to prepare for the evening’s festivities. The local brass band played for at least two hours next to the Lido pool and the kitchen staff transformed the pool deck into a beer garden. Three different wursts, various German mustards (including the famous sweet Regensburg mustard that we had in June on our Danube River cruise) and other German foods were served buffet style. There was roast pig, too, and at least two of them were consumed during the evening since we saw one of the chefs bring a new one out midway through the night. We stayed from 7 PM until the mosquitoes started biting around 9 PM. Filbert enjoyed drinking his own German beer while other cruisers bought the ship’s German beer.

Oktoberfest at sea

When we got back to the cabin we realized that live Premier League soccer was on ESPN. Snookums called Gary and Roger’s cabins to tell them since they are both soccer buffs. We saw Manchester City beat Swansea 4-0.

Medary.com – The 2011 Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, part 2 of 9
http://www.medary.com/article.php/dover2011-02

Contributed by: filbert Friday, December 09 2011 @ 11:22 AM CST

The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise (from Holland America)

The Holland America Eurodam (from Holland America)

The 29-Day Ultimate Northern Discovery Cruise, Holland America Eurodam

Text by Snookums, Pictures by Filbert

Part One

(Remember to click “read more” if you’re looking at this from the main medary.com page to get the whole article!)

August 8 (Monday, Day 1, Flying to London, England) –

We arrived at KCI just fine and found out that the flight to Chicago was delayed. We went to the American Airlines lounge and enjoyed the free sodas and chips. The receptionist made an announcement that the flight was boarding so the lounge emptied out but the gate agent then said that O’Hare was in a ground stop so we wouldn’t board for another 30 minutes. Back to the lounge we went. We weren’t worried since we had a 2-hour layover in Chicago. We finally boarded the flight and landed in Chicago and enjoyed 20 minutes at the O’Hare Admirals Lounge – just long enough to use nice bathrooms and get a quick snack. We boarded the 9:45 PM flight to London’s Heathrow and settled in for the 7 hour and 40 minute flight. Since we’ve traveled so much internationally, we didn’t even think this duration as being a long. And, since we knew that dinner and breakfast were going to be served, we weren’t sure there would even be time for a nap!

August 9 (Tuesday, Day 2, London, England; £1 = $1.63; $1 = £0.61) –

Dinner was served and Snookums watched a movie while Filbert read his book. At some point we both slept and woke up about one hour before breakfast was served. We got off the flight, collected our luggage and around noon we found the tube station.

We took the underground the whole way for £2.70 ($4.50) each. What a bargain. We were lugging two large rolling suitcases, a roll-aboard and a duffel bag and Filbert had his camera bag and backpack but we made it just fine and dandy. There was a high-speed train we could have taken, but it was around $30 per person and still required one transfer. The tube took about an hour.

Our hotel, Andaz (part of the Hyatt chain), was located next to the Liverpool Street Station. We were given a room right away and were told that we could upgrade for our last two nights if we wanted to. When we got to our room (which would have cost $382 using the cheapest rate we could find, but it was free due to using Hyatt points), we immediately decided to take them up on the free upgrade for our last two nights in London. The room was nice, but quite small.

The Andaz is known for its eclectic/boutique hotel design. It also gives everyone free internet, free local calls and free healthy mini bar snacks. These consisted of organic local juices (apple and pear), Coke and Diet Coke (in cute little glass bottles with lids that required openers), honey roasted peanuts, sugar cookies and chocolate covered nougat. Snookums wasn’t sure how any of the food items could be considered healthy, but she emptied the mini bar of them and enjoyed them and left a note for the housekeeper to restock with more of them!

We unpacked a little bit and decided to walk around since we didn’t want to sleep. We left the hotel at 3 PM and walked to Spitalfields Market. We each had a jerk chicken dinner ($105.0 each) from one of the various outside kiosks and it was very tasty and quite spicy. We got back to our hotel around 6 and went to the lobby a little while later to get the free wine and canapés that are available each night. Snookums called Gary and arranged our meeting place for tomorrow. We met Gary and his wife, Charlotte, on our 2008 67-day Asia/Australia cruise and have cruised with them several times since. This current cruise was their idea, too. They took Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 from New York to Hamburg, Germany in early August rather than flying to London like we did. Anyway, we arranged our scheduled with them for Wednesday and watched BBC on TV about the London riots (not close to us).

Anarchy in the UK

Somehow we managed to stay awake until 10 PM and both slept through the night.

August 10 (Wednesday, Day 3, London, England) –

Westminster Palace

Filbert and Snookums enjoyed the $36 full English breakfast for free due to Snookums’s Hyatt Diamond status. The English bacon was very salty like country ham. Neither of us had the baked beans, but the broiled tomatoes and mushrooms were good.

We took the tube to meet Gary and Charlotte at 9 AM by Speakers’ Corner. We noticed that the Lamborghini showroom was empty since the cars were removed in case the riots came to central London. We had decided to spend Wednesday on the hop on/hop off bus. We rode it until 2 PM. The traffic really started getting bad around noon and we were going to get off at an upcoming stop. However that stop never seemed to come so we just jumped off when we couldn’t stand it any more. We found a little restaurant/pub and all ordered fish and chips for lunch. Then we walked to the River Thames boarding point (Tower Pier) for the river cruise.

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

The boat had a 25-minute stop in Greenwich and Gary said that we needed to get off and see the Painted Hall at the Royal Naval College so we did. The Royal Naval College is no longer used but is a lovely set of old buildings open free to the public. The Painted Hall and the Chapel were very pretty and the Painted Hall was set up to host some kind of military dinner that night.

Greenwich Observatory

The Painted Hall

Gary and Charlotte rode the river cruise back the whole way but Filbert and Snookums got off at Tower Pier and walked back to the hotel. Snookums also found a British penny on the ground to continue her trend of finding local currency in foreign countries. We got to our upgraded room around 7:30 PM and really unpacked this time around.

We were tired so we went to the pub across the street and sat down. After a few minutes the waitress came and said that the chef was on his 30-minute break in order to break his Ramadan fast. We didn’t want to wait that long so we went to the next pub down the block. (Snookums had never heard that excuse in the U.S. before about a 30-minute break for Ramadan!!) We found the next one and followed the sign upstairs that said “Food” and the waiter came and said that we could order but we would need to eat our food on a lower level since the top floor closed at 9 PM. We went to a lower level to place our order but since no bartender ever showed up, we decided to try a third pub. The third time was a charm! We ordered and paid at the bar (Snookums ordered a hamburger and Filbert ordered the steak & ale pie) and sat upstairs overlooking the bar. We enjoyed the people watching a lot. Snookums noticed that when people went to the bar to buy a pint, exact change was returned by the bartender and there didn’t appear to be any tipping.

Our food arrived and we dug into it with gusto. Snookums’s hamburger was well done and a coarser grind than what we have in the U.S. Filbert said that the quality of beef was not as good as what U.S. hamburger is made from. Snookums thought it was one of the best hamburgers she ever had!! It did come dripping with mayonnaise so she asked for a new bottom bun since the menu only specified aged cheddar and bacon. (The bacon was smokier than the breakfast bacon and tasted more like U.S. bacon.) Filbert enjoyed his steak & ale pie along with two pints of beer. When we were done we didn’t know whether we should tip or not since we had paid at the counter. We asked two Brits enjoying burgers next to us and were told “No, it’s not necessary.” You don’t tip at pubs where you order and pay for the food at the bar. Although the food is delivered to you, you don’t tip. Snookums’s hamburger was $10.50 and Filbert’s steak & ale pie was $15. London is not cheap, but we knew that.

August 11 (Thursday, Day 4, London, England) –

After another filling (and free) hotel breakfast, we met Gary at 10:30 at Waterstone’s Piccadilly bookstore. Filbert and Gary are into bookstores and Snookums tagged along. Filbert had a list of three of them to visit. Charlotte planned to enjoy her day at Victoria & Albert Museum. While Snookums was sitting and reading her paperback, Filbert and Gary made various purchases at Waterstone’s. According to the sign on the wall, Waterstone’s is Europe’s largest bookstore. Then we walked to Chinatown and ate at a dim sum restaurant. Gary loves dim sum and manages to go to Chinatown in every city he visits. He was happy with his dim sum lunch and Snookums enjoyed her hot and sour soup and Filbert had a spicy beef entree.

Then we walked to Blackwell’s Bookstore. It was primarily a technical bookstore and no one bought anything. The third and final bookstore, Foyle’s Charing Cross Road, was another two blocks away. Snookums found a comfy chair and read her library paperback and Gary and Filbert shopped. Gary was thrilled to find the third book of a maritime artist’s series and he thought this was the best bookstore of the three. According to its sign, Foyle’s won “Best bookstore in London 2010”.

We went our separate ways at the tube station and Filbert and Snookums hit the grocery store right by the Andaz to get various British beers for the cruise. Then we packed most of our things since Gary and Charlotte were willing to let us put our luggage with theirs since they were taking the Holland America charter bus to the Eurodam at Dover and luggage portage was included. That meant that we had to get our big bags to their hotel. We took our two large rolling suitcases and our duffel (now mostly filled with cans of British beer) to their hotel and had to transfer one time (during rush hour!). Unfortunately, most of London’s tube stations do not have elevators/escalators so we had to navigate up and down stairs multiple times. Filbert didn’t seem too happy about this, but we succeeded. We also noticed that the Lamborghini showroom was full of cars again since the riots weren’t impacting central London. Needless to say, the walk and tube rides back from their hotel seemed a whole lot shorter.

We were tired and hungry and bought dinner to-go at M&S Simply Food., across from the hotel This is a Marks & Spencer chain that sells all sorts of ready-to-eat packaged Marks & Spencer foods. We bought sandwiches, salads and beverages and returned to our hotel around 6:30PM, just in time for the free wine in the lobby.