Day 16 - 27 August - Copenhagen - day 12 of the cruise

Today began just after midnight.  To sail into Copenhagen we had to sail under the Oresund Bridge between Sweden and Denmark.  We sailed under it when we first entered the Baltic early last week, but that happened at around 2am.  This morning though it was scheduled to happen just after midnight, so I stayed up to watch, as did quite a few people judging by the number of people I could see on balconies around ours.  There was also a party on the top decks waiting for it.  This is because the ship has only a tiny amount of clearance; less than they get under the Gateway or Harbour bridge, so it's pretty exciting to watch.

The Emerald Princess went through right in front of us, then we did.  The bridge is definitely really close but unfortunately my camera wasn't up to photos; there's just not enough light.

We have been to Copenhagen before, so we decided just to get a shuttle into town, have a look at the shops, and then get the shuttle back.  But, when we got onto the shuttle they gave us a tourist guide which included some places of interest to Paul - so we decided we would also look at the Royal Arsenal Museum, the Museum of the Danish Resistance, and the Kastellet (Citadel).

Unfortunately, even though we had some trouble finding the Arsenal museum, it wasn't due to open for an hour, and we didn't want to wait that long.  So, we had a look through the shops and then went on to check out Nyhavn.  After this we went hunting for the Resistance Museum and finally found it after seeing some other sights as well. 

Unfortunately it turns out that the museum is currently a grassy piece of ground with temporary fencing around it, because it burned down in 2013!  They're going to rebuild it but it won't be ready until 2018 at the earliest and although they saved all the exhibits they aren't in any place where you can actually see them.  It's probably past time that the shuttle company updated their map!

However, the Kastellet was very interesting.  We took the usual obligatory photos of Paul with cannon of course:

This one gives you an idea of the sorts of earthworks involved in creating the Citadel:

Once we made it to the Citadel, we were basically back at the ship.  There is a big row of shops all along the pier - as well as the usual souvenir shops there are factory outlets.  We had a look through these and bought a couple of things, but then we realised that we still had some Danish money so we went back to the end of the pier where we had seen a small kiosk.  There we purchased an iced coffee - not the travesty that they call iced coffee on this ship (and for that matter, anywhere that Americans make coffee!!) but a real iced coffee.  Yum.

We then wandered back on board for lunch, after which I went upstairs to book a haircut, which I really needed by now.  Because it's a day in port, they had 25% off salon services today, and I got my hair cut straight away.  The hairdresser was a nice young man called Johann, from South Africa, and he has done an excellent job - he was aiming for a haircut that will look good no matter how messy - he reckons it will look ok even first thing in the morning - but we'll see about that tomorrow  :-)    And, even with a fairly generous tip added, it still didn't cost much more than a haircut at home!

We don't leave Copenhagen until midnight, but Paul and I didn't go out again after our earlier explorations.  We have since watched the Emerald Princess leave port - there were people on balconies and open decks on both ships all waving to each other and shouting farewells:  

Next time we see them will be in Southampton on Saturday when the cruise is all over  :-(

Day 15 - 26 August - At Sea - day 11 of the cruise

We told everyone at dinner last night that we planned to do absolutely nothing today, and we have pretty much succeeded.

Day 14 - 25 August - Tallinn - day 10 of the cruise

The clocks were set back an hour last night, so we got a really good rest at last. We woke up to see that the forecast for Tallinn was rain, which isn't really promising for a walking tour of a truly ancient city with cobbled streets and steep hills. However, we went anyway, and it wasn't too bad - although I had both an umbrella and a raincoat I didn't use either, although I will admit to putting on my cardigan to soak up some of the rain (which really wasn't much more than mist).

This was back to the sort of tour we did in Stockholm - 40-odd people first on a bus then on foot, going where we're told.  However, again, it was actually not too bad a way to visit the city for the first time.  I think if we ever do another Baltic cruise (ie, if we win the Lotto) we won't do so many ship's tours as there are quite a few cities like Helsinki, Tallin and Stockholm where you can easily get around by yourself, especially once you've been there once.  

Anyway, our guide was called Maia and she did an excellent job - she talked about the history of Tallin and Estonia, and showed us many of the lovely old buildings and explained their history, and she also has an excellent sense of humour. I was amazed in the Upper Town where the tour started that the old buildings we were looking at are actually current government buildings - for example the parliament house and the prime minister's office, with no protective structures and no obvious guards.  Even at home there would be more obvious security than here.

After we toured the Upper Town - which is where the nobles used to live - then we went to the Lower Town where everyone else lived.  It's all one city now of course, but they didn't always get along; they weren't always even acknowledged to be parts of the same town.  There are walls and gates between the two, which used to be shut off every night.  At least part of the problem was that a person could get to be an official citizen of Tallinn by living in the city for a year and a day.  This meant that if a serf managed to escape from one of the noble's estates, and hide in the city - and obviously it would be the lower part - for a year and a day, they became a free citizen.  This did not please the nobles!

As I said, the tour was quite interesting although it was only for 3 1/2 hours in the morning.  We thought the town was getting quite crowded with tourists by the time the tour was over, but apparently this was a quiet day!  The Celebrity Eclipse was the only big ship in port, with about 2850 passengers, but on the 21st of August for example there were three big ships with over 7800 passengers.  Plus of course there are always smaller cruise ships plus people arriving via ferry from St Petersburg and Helsinki. 

If the weather had been better we would have stayed at the end of the tour - it's only about a 20 minute walk back to the ship - but we decided to come back and yet again have had a "cruise afternoon" nap.  I'm wrting this at about 3pm and we would still have time to go for a walk, but the weather has closed in again.

A few interesting things we learned today:

• There is a TV tower in Tallinn with a viewing platform, quite similar to the Telstra Tower in Canberra actually.  On a really clear day, you can see Helsinki
• Back in the 1980s there was one ferry between Tallinn and Helsinki each 2 weeks.  Now there are multiple arrivals and departures every day - the Finns apparently love to come to Estonia for cheap alcohol among other things!
• Finnish and Estonian are very similar languages, but confusingly different as well.  There are apparently 2,000 words which are spelled and pronounced the same in both languages but which have completely different meanings, some of them quite funny - for example, the word for government in Finnish mean fungus in Estonian.
• Estonia had a negative birth rate by the turn of the century and so implemented a Paid Parental Leave scheme which bluntly makes Tony Abbott's look mean. Apparently between them, mum and dad can have 1.5 years of paid parental leave, at their previous salary.  And, a mother is guaranteed to be able to return to her job up to three years after the birth. 
• Tallinn has about 400,000 people, so not much bigger than Canberra.  However, they have a singing festival every 5 years and there is a permanent stage set up for it - this stage can have 30,000 people performing on it at once!

This is the Estonian parliament house- as you can see, we were allowed to just stand around outside and there's no sign of guards.

Our guide Maia standing outside the Peppersack restaurant - the building dates from medieval times.  Peppersack was slang for a rich person

Pipe organ inside St Mary's Church - the organ dates from 1914 but the church is from the 13th century.  It also contains many elaborately carved coats of arms of local noble families. 

This is the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral - a Russian Orthodox Church. Photography inside is not permitted, nor is talking.  But, they have a glorious choir who sings there almost continuously during the day.

Day 13 - 24 August - St Petersburg - day 9 of the cruise

Woke up this morning feeling slightly refreshed.  

Last night the Emerald Princess left St Petersburg and an old friend - the Brilliance of the Seas - docked this morning.  This is the ship we did our transatlantic cruise on in 2012:

We had a later start today - 9:30am - so we could be quite leisurely about getting our breakfast and getting ready.

Immigration also wasn't such a drama today - they just checked that we had been granted visas yesterday and rechecked that we had tour tickets for today, and then we were off.

The weather looked less promising than yesterday, but in the end it didn't rain at all, and we were quite comfortable all day.  Elina even took off her overcoat at one point!

We started with a drive out to Peterhof, to see the fountains, gardens and palace.  

The fountains are all created by gravity - they're another of Peter the Great's installations.  Yet again, I can't possibly show all of them, but here are a couple during the process of starting them all up - they start at 11am each day:  

The gardens are also beautiful - carefully planned and really well maintained.  They're in a very formal style, all evenly set out.  The white areas in the gardens are crushed marble (!) while the red areas are crushed brick.  There are thousands of different sorts of flowers, and they replant them a few times each year - for example now they're starting to change over to the autumn flowers.  There are also of course many many trees, again, beautifully set out and maintained.

I asked Elina how many people work there but she said that's quite a common question and they can't get a full answer - there are about 200 full time employees but also many contractors during the summer time particularly.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself - as soon as we had seen the fountains start we went to see the palace. This was an extraordinary experience, both because of the palace itself and because of the Russian way of organisation.  

As a small group with a guide, we apparently had the right to go to the front of the waiting group, but we had a lot of trouble doing this - some people refused to let us past, and then a tour guide physically pushed us back and started an argument with Elina.  Then, once we finally got inside, there was a huge scrum of people waiting to drop things off in the cloakroom (more about this later) and then to get and put on the little paper slippers that you have to wear right throughout the palace.  Then we had to go through the turnstiles - all the main exhibits in St Petersburg seem to have electronic turnstiles where you have to run your ticket over a bar code reader to get access - and the lady running another group also refused to let us pass, even though there were three turnstiles and they were only using one of them.  Elina is a few inches shorter than me and wouldn't weigh 50kg dripping wet, but she managed to get us through there too.  

And, I could see why all the fuss once we started going through the palace.  There is only one way to walk through the palace - a set path through the rooms you're allowed to see.  At the start of every room there is a guard - usually an older lady - who completely controls whether or not you can go into that room yet - to keep the crowds somewhat under control.  And of course, a small group like ours finds it much easier to be allowed through as there'll often be room for us but not for a big group.  

I am really so glad we went to the expense of doing this private tour - really, it wasn't that much more expensive than the ship's tour but in almost every place we went, I could see people in the big ship's tour groups struggling to see things and in some places struggling to hear.  And on long tours like you have in St Petersburg, groups like that spend so much time just getting places - it takes forever to get everyone on and off the bus, toilet breaks can take an hour, etc etc.   

Since I'm already off track, I'll stay off for a minute - on the issue of backpacks.  Paul and Cameron both had a backpack - neither of them very large.  But, in most places including here, they weren't permitted to carry them inside - they had to leave them in the car or in the cloakroom.  This wasn't a real drama for Paul but was an issue for Cameron - as a teenager he's fairly well welded to his backpack and of course his iPad was inside it.  The interesting thing is that both Caroline and I were carrying handbags that were bigger than either backpack, but we were allowed through.

Again, there's no way to show the amazing beauty of this palace in just a few photos, which is possibly a good thing because I have none; photography is not permitted. In some places here you can take photos provided you pay an extra fee - that's the case in the Hermitage for example.  However, even in those places there will be rooms where photos aren't allowed.  At Peterhof though you just can't take any photos inside at all.

So, back on track - once we fought our way out of the palace, we then went for a leisurely walk through the gardens.  There are some areas of the gardens where the fountains can spray over you unexpectedly.  Although they're made quite obvious now, they weren't originally like this - apparently Peter the Great incurred the enmity of a number of noble ladies who got wet when a fountain started unexpectedly - neither the fashions of the day, nor the hairdo's (which were supported by flour and starch!), were designed to get wet!

Here are some more pictures of the fountains and gardens - the balcony area at the top of the stairs is where we took the earlier photos from.

Once we had walked through the gardens we walked to a pier and caught a hydrofoil boat back across to St Petersburg.  

We then went to lunch, this time in a traditional Russian restaurant - its name in English is Yat, but the Russian name is made up of three letters that were removed from the Russian alphabet in a restructure some years ago.  Yesterday's Georgian food was nice, but today's was just superb.  Chris and Caroline both had Beef Stroganoff - which I didn't realise was Russian, I thought it was Polish or something like that.  Anyway, apparently not - there was a Prince Stroganoff living in St Petersburg who become quite old and couldn't chew his food, so they made him this stew with small pieces of beef, and mushrooms and cream.  Interestingly, in England you'd apparently normally be served rice with it, while in Australia  or the USA it would more likely be served with noodles, but the traditional accompaniment is actually mashed potatoes. Paul and I had what was described as a cutlet with breadcrumbs, whole baked potato and mushroom sauce.  It was actually more like a large rissole covered in croutons and fried - sounds odd but it was just delicious!

This restaurant would cause the health authorities in Canberra to freak out!  Elina told us how to get to the toilets, which involved going through a few rooms including one with rabbits.  We all assumed she meant rabbits painted on the wall, but she meant three cages with live pet rabbits!  However it was actually quite clean and as I said, really really excellent food.

After lunch we went to the Church of the Savior on Blood.  This church has spent most of its history not being used as a church.  It was built to commemorate Czar Alexander II who was assassinated at that spot on 13 March 1881 - the actual cobble stones where the assassination happened have been kept within the church surrounded by a shrine.  However, it took some time to build and was then largely destroyed first by the soviets and then during WW2.  It was only recently fully restored but is now simply astoundingly beautiful.  It is used as a church on special occasions but is otherwise always open to visitors.   All of the decorations on and in the church are mosaics.

The picture immediately above is the shrine around the place - which used to be in the street - where the czar was assassinated.

Our final stop was at the Museum for the Siege of Leningrad.  Unfortunately we were running a little late by this time and didn't have a lot of time to spend there, and again we hadn't paid to take photos - but it was good to see it.

Overall impressions of St Petersburg - although to my eyes it looks ancient, it's actually a relatively new city.  But, the buildings and the history behind them are fascinating.  The museums contain so much of interest you could spend a lot of time here.  Unfortunately for us, we'll probably never get back here.  But, even for people like Chris and Caroline who could come here much more easily, there are still a lot of obstacles - unless you come on a cruise the process of getting a visa is tedious and expensive, and of course if you come on a cruise you only get at the most three days here, usually only two.  And, unlike a lot of other cities you can cruise to, most people wouldn't dream of trying to see St Petersburg on their own - unless you speak Russian you really couldn't risk it, which means that you need to pay to go on tours.  It's possible that this is partly deliberate of course - almost all of these attractions were amazingly crowded; maybe not quite as bad as the pictures you see of people trying to see the Mona Lisa, but not far from it.

Day 12 - 23 August - St Petersburg - day 8 of the cruise

The clocks were moved forward another hour last night so we got a bit less sleep than we wanted.  I set the alarm on my iPhone, thinking that the worst thing that could happen is that it would reset itself to Russian time and so I'd be woken up too early - at 3am.  However, for some reason I cannot detect, it set itself to London time again, and so the "5:30am" alarm wasn't going to go off until 8:30 - around the time we were due to be onshore to meet our tour guide!   Fortunately we woke up quite early anyway.
We met Caroline, Chris and Cameron as planned, and then went to face the Russian immigration authorities.  Fortunately it all went off without a hitch - a lot of people had already left the ship, so the queues weren't too long, and we were soon in the cruise terminal waiting for our guide - Elina.  She showed up a couple of minutes late which had us all a bit concerned, but then we were off. We're docked at the new cruise terminal in St Petersburg which is quite close to the city.
First we had a short drive around to see the some of the main sights while Elina explained what we were seeing.  I had read some stories about the history of St Petersburg, particularly about Peter the Great who founded the city (and was by all reports an amazing person) as well as Elizabeth and of course Catherine the Great.  I also discovered some new names - for example I had not previously heard about empress Anne the Ugly, but I found out about her and some others as well during the course of the two days.  Anyway, my point here was that I had read about a number of these places and it was really interesting to actually see them.
Our first main stop was at the Peter and Paul Fortress and Cathedral.  We saw the tombs of the emperors starting with Peter the Great and also started to learn just how overwhelmed we were going to be with both beauty and information.   

Tomb of Peter the Great and some of his immediate successors.  I can't really say descendants because Catherine the Great wasn't Russian at all - she was the German wife of Ivan III who overthrew him and became empress in her own right!

Just an idea of the sort of beautiful detailed work we saw in so many places.

The tomb of the last czar - Nicholas - his wife Alexandra and their children.  Of course, they weren't interred here until quite recently.  Unlike all the other tombs, there are also servants buried here - people who were given the chance to leave when the czar and his family were about to be murdered, but chose to stay and were also killed.

This is a replica of a small sailing boat that Peter the Great found when he was quite young, and discovered that he loved sailing.  This led him to be so keen to get access to the land where St Petersburg now stands (which was Swedish at the time) so that he could have access to the sea for the Navy he was planning to create. 

The outside of part of the Peter and Paul fortress.

We then walked to the Artillery Museum, which of course was on the tour for Paul. Elina had a really difficult job here, as we had booked a tour with an expert from the Artillery Museum, but she didn't speak English so Elina had to translate, and the technical / military terms weren't her strength.  Fortunately her driver came with us - a very nice Indian man with an excellent command of English and Russian, and he helped quite a bit.  The lady who ran the tour was quite scary - she carried a pointed cane and we were all quite certain that we'd be holding our hands out for punishment if we got out of line!
The museum has more than a million items and I think Paul could have happily spent a week there.  Or more!
They sadly said that they have no tanks or ships or aircraft but I'm pretty sure it's not for lack of desire.  However they have almost anything else you could want to see, from medieval right through the more recent wars to relatively modern missile launchers for example (including one that they proudly said would still work as long as some gasoline was put into the tank!).  As well of weapons of all shapes and sizes they also have many paintings and statues.
The guide - the lady from the Artillery Museum, not Elina - made it very clear what she thinks of the current situation in the Ukraine.  She was talking about defeating the fascists in WW2, and then moved straight from that discussion to talk of the fascists running the Ukraine.  From her perspective, the Ukraine is full of Russians whose rights are being trodden on (she didn't mention the reason that there are so many Russians there of course!) - at one point she talked about Russian veterans who defended the Ukrainians and now aren't even allowed to speak Russian.  To be very honest I'm glad there were no Americans in our group because I suspect that the discussion would have become even more pointed!
I don't have enough internet access here to post even a small proportion of the pictures Paul took but here are a few:

This last one is from their displays of AK47s - apparently the creator of them lived in St Petersburg and used to come to the museum regularly.  This is where Paul created havoc - he was holding an AK47 and comparing the weight to a tommy-gun he had held, but the Russian lady thought he was saying that it was a tommy-gun and became most offended.  The next 6 things she pointed out in the museum were tommy-guns!

After this, we went to lunch.  Elina offered to take us to any sort of restaurant we liked, and we asked her to help us try traditional cuisine.  So, today, she took us to a restaurant that specialises in Georgian food.  Paul and I shared an entree which was something like a folded pizza or calzone perhaps, but with fairly light pastry and filled with lots of a local cheese - a little like mozarella in texture - and boiled eggs.  Yum.  Then we both tried a sort of dumpling for our main course - again, quite nice but I couldn't eat it all.

After lunch, off to the Hermitage Museum.  I don't even know how to start describing it - 5 buildings all joined together, former homes of the czars, and containing the most amazing works of art - and of course the buildings themselves are beautifully built and decorated.  We had all started to flag by about 4pm, and the building of course was fairly warm and very very crowded. So, in the end we cut it a bit short and skipped a few painters - I think we went from Rembrandt straight on to the impressionists and then finished up for the day.  Here are a couple of photos but really there's no way to do any of it justice in a photo.

One of their da Vinci's

The same painter did all the portraits in this room - there are dozens of them.  He was quite good at painting heads but the large painting above got him sacked as he really made a mess of the hand and arm.

Throne Room

I was very tired by the time we got back to the ship, and I had a pounding headache from not drinking enough water.  We went back to the cabin and crashed - Paul woke me up at 6:30pm and again at 8pm - we then staggered up to the buffet, ate something, and then crashed for the night.

One interesting point - when Elina picked us up, she was wearing a coat and was horrified to see us all in short sleeves.  It was about 12 degrees but of course Paul and I are still acclimatised to the Canberra winter, and Chris, Caroline and Cameron live near Manchester and so also thought the temperature was just right.  By the next stop, we were all standing in the shade whenever we got a chance and Elina was still complaining about the cold!

Day 11 - 22 August - Helsinki - day 7 of the cruise

We had quite a late start today - although it's only a very short distance from Stockholm to Helsinki, we didn't get to dock until 10am.  
Our shore excursion today was a guided walk - we got a map and an iPod with pre-loaded commentary.  We made it about half-way through before we decided it was just too dry - a tedious American voice telling us lots of facts about buildings but no real historical information.  So, we knew that we weren't too far away from the Military Museum, so we went there instead.  Then we just wandered back to the centre of the city and caught a shuttle back.  Luckily, Helsinki was also in the free roaming area so I could use google Maps to make sure we were heading in the right direction.
Just a couple of pictures today:

They warned us over and over while waiting for the excursion that it wasn't going to be warm outside, but they clearly aren't acclimatised to Canberra weather.  I took a jumper with me but never put it on - to me it was a lovely cool day mostly, except when I got caught in the sun and it was almost too warm.
We got back to the ship just before 3pm and got some lunch, then proceeded to go to sleep and missed dinner - we wouldn't have been hungry enough to eat then anyway.
I've now gotten all our stuff together for St. Petersburg tomorrow - the Russians are very strict about documentation and I'd imagine in the current climate would like nothing more than to irritate a few western tourists.  So, I've got our visas (aka our tour tickets), passports of course, a copy of the photo page of the passport and a copy of our passport photo.  Pretty sure that's everything they want!

Day 10 - 21 August - Stockholm - day 6 of the cruise

Woke up this morning to see that the ship is sailing incredibly close to some small islands.  I had recently found out that Stockholm is approached by sailing through islands, and is in fact basically situated on islands (14 of them it turns out).  However, I had no idea that they're actually situated in an archipelago of about 24000 islands.  I was going to post a photo or two here but it turns out that the ones I took of these islands are all on my phone; I'll add them later.

We didn't get to watch the ship dock because we had to be downstairs ready to go on our shore excursion.  It was your basic shore excursion - 44 people on a bus, looking where we're told and going where we're told.  However, if you don't know anything about a place it's a good enough way to learn about it, as long as the places you're seeing aren't too crowded and you don't mind that it takes a long time to get anywhere.   Our guide (Lars) did a good job - shared a lot of information in an interesting way.

The main part of the tour was to see the Vasa.  This is a 17th century warship, built by the king of the day - Sweden was quite warlike at that time - to show off to the king of Poland how huge a warship they could build.  Unfortunately due to a design flaw - probably brought on by the king adding an extra gundeck after construction started, although that wasn't ever admitted to be the cause - it sailed for approximately 20 minutes before it sank.  And, it stayed there for 333 years until they raised it in the 1960s.   

Carvings on the Vasa - this sort of work appears in many places on the ship - astoundingly detailed carved decorations which were apparently originally painted.

This gives you an idea of the size of the ship.

Paul, beside a cannon, because you can never have too many pictures of Paul beside a cannon!

Sadly it turns out that it probably wasn't a good idea to raise it and some of the treatment they gave it at the time has not helped - apparently unless they find a way to stop it, the ship will simply decay away over the next 50 - 100 years.

Good thing about Stockholm - the prepaid SIM for both my phone and iPad allow free data roaming here, so I could post photos straight to Facebook.  Berlin wasn't like that though, and athough Bruge promised to be, it never actually worked.  No idea about the rest of the cities on the cruise but hopefully some of them will be on the 'free roaming' list as it will cut down my ship's internet bill by quite a bit!

We got back to the Eclipse around lunch time and considered going out for a walk after lunch  - it's quite simple to walk to the Old Town from the docks.  However we went to sleep instead and only woke up when the ship was pulling away from the docks.  Something about being on a cruise ship in the afternoon just makes us drift off to sleep!

Dinner was nice, but it was formal night - quite unusual to have formal night on a day when we've been in port, but there are so few sea days on this ship I guess there wasn't a choice.  I'm not really all that keen on formal night but we opted for fixed seating dining on this cruise so there's really not a lot of choice if we don't want our table-mates to think we've abandoned them, since we're likely to do so over the next few days anyway (because of exhaustion following shore excursions!).

Day 9 - 20 August - At Sea - day 5 of the cruise

No plans at all today - this is our last day of rest before 5 straight days in port - Stockholm, Helsinki, St Petersburg (2 days) and then Tallinn.
So, we wandered upstairs and had some breakfast, then downstairs to get some decent coffee from the Cafe al Bacio.  Then, we played the pokies for a while - I actually won something for a change! - then wandered back to our cabin for a well-earned rest.  It's apparently only 16 degrees outside but this morning at least our balcony is sheltered from the wind and in the direct sun, so it's actually beautiful out there!
Paul is currently sound asleep while I catch up on blog entries.  Once this is done, my Kindle and I are heading for the balcony again.
I really will take some photos inside the ship someday - it's really quite nice - but there are so few sea days on this cruise that we don't ever seem to have the time / energy to do anything much onboard except eat and sleep.

Day 8 - 19 August - Warnemunde / Berlin - day 4 of the cruise

This morning we got up early to be ready to leave as soon as we had docked.  The ship was a little late docking but we got off quite quickly and were soon heading for Berlin. 
 We were doing a private tour with just two other couples, so our transport was a Mercedes minivan.  

We made really good time into Berlin where our tour guide was waiting - a young Irish guy called Barry.  He did an excellent job - we went to quite a few places around the city and he clearly has a really detailed knowledge of Berlin and its history.  

It's a huge bonus to be with such a small group of course - even little things like stopping for a toilet break (which of course is a term we didn't use because of the delicate sensibilities of the Americans in our group - so 'restroom break').  On a normal tour you'd have 40 or 45 people on the bus and you're going to need more than 30 minutes for each toilet break, particularly since here, everyone has to struggle with finding the money to pay for the toilet.  And of course with such a small vehicle we could be dropped off in lots of places to be shown around the city rather than having to just look out the window of the bus - even on some of the good 'private' bus tours you still apparently spend a lot of time just looking out the window at the sights because the bus can't stop and/or because it would take too long to get everyone off and then on again.

We learned and saw a lot of the history of Berlin, from its early days up to the present, of course with a lot of emphasis on the time when it was separated.  The city isn't old at all by European standards anyway, and because of the war and then the need to rebuild some badly built East German buildings there aren't actually a lot of old buildings in the city - our guide said that his rough estimate is that 70% of the buildings in the city centre are less than 30 years old.

When the East and West were separated by the wall, both sides spent a lot of time and money trying to outdo the other.  This TV tower is one of the more spectacular failures of the East:

It was built in the 1960s and was intended as a showcase of how advanced the East was at the time - showing off their command of the future against the attempt  by the West to show off the old (actually not so old) building you can see beside it.  And, they did a pretty good job, except that no matter what time of the day, there is a  beautiful cross reflecting off the tiles on the globe part of their tower, which everyone of course chose to interpret as a Christian symbol.  The East Germans apparently went to quite an amount of trouble to try to stop this by changing the shape of the tiles etc, but nothing worked.

A few more pictures - nowhere near all we saw of course!

The Brandenburg Gate

The British Embassy.  The rules about design and construction of buildings in this area are quite specific - eg the buildings have to be 44 metres tall and there are all sorts of rules about the style.  But they neglected to make it illegal to build weird shapes into the middle of the building, which is what they did.

Statue of Frederick the Great in the Unter den Linden.  Lots of things in / around the Unter den Linden are being restored at the moment, plus they're also building another subway line which had a collapse here just a couple of days ago.  So, no walk down the Unter den Linden for us  :-(

Two pictures of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  It's meant to be unsettling, and it is.  There are many memorials here and they're apparently always controversial; there is always a concern of unintentionally glorifying the Nazis or their work.

Part of the Berlin wall.  The building under construction in the distance has been quite controversial - as part of the building approval process they got permission to knock down a small part of the wall and I gather that some people thought it was done in a fairly underhanded way.

Day 7 - 18 August - at sea - day 3 of the cruise

As is our wont on sea days we went to a great deal of trouble to do as little as possible today.  

There was an unhappy experience for someone though - we had to stop for almost an hour for a medical evacuation.  They flew out a helicopter - it appeared to be Danish armed forces one - and picked up someone in a stretcher.  It looks all very easy when you see it on TV but in real life even though the seas were quite small and the ship barely moving it clearly needed serious flying skills.  There is a helipad on the ship but they couldn't land as the helicopter was too large.  Instead they dropped off someone who seems to have helped set up the patient to go while the helicopter hovered off the side of the ship for a long time.  Then they came back and winched up the sick person on a stretcher, and at least one other person and what seemed to be their luggage, and then they headed off for the coast.  We haven't heard any more about their health of course.   It's not unusual for people to get sick or to be injured on a cruise, but they must have been in a very bad way if they couldn't stay on-board until we dock in Germany tomorrow.


The two photos of the helicopter are taken from our balcony, the less clear shots are photos from the webcam view on the TV in our room.