St. Petersburg, Russia June 5th - Part 1

 

We had made arrangements to meet a student named Dmitri at the port.  We found each other on the Couchsurfing website.  We made application to have him visit the ship.  We thought he would enjoy it, but the ship lost the application.  I wasn’t happy and filled out another one, even thought they might not have enough time to process the request.  Last night I was told the application was approved…yeah.

So this morning we met with Dmitri, a 20 year old 6’4” college student.  He speaks English very well and understands it almost as well.  So we went through emigration with our passports and papers and got him and tried to reenter the ship.  The Russian authorities couldn’t figure out how to make that happen.  After about and hour, we decided to forget the ship and start our visit.

It was wonderful.  Dmitri is the perfect guide and a very nice man.  We walked a ways and took a bus, then a subway to the main street of St. Petersburg, Nevsky Prospekt.  The buildings on that street are amazing.  We could bore you with dozens of pictures of them.

Bye the way, did you know that the Spb subway is the deepest in the world?  I didn’t either.  I thought it was London’s.

    

Can you tell that this is a Russian subway?  It looks just like an American subway, except cleaner.  Notice the people dress just like everywhere else in Europe and any developed country.

I, Arleen, had been to Spb in 1989, one year before the coup that finished communism.  The difference between what I saw then and what I see now is amazing.  First, Dmitri has traveled to about 10 different countries with his parents.  That was not possible before.  He lives with his aunt and she has a flat panel TV and cable, also not possible.  They seem to live very much like we do at home.  The streets are full of cars and buses and subways are well used.  Just like any big city.  I am very happy for them.

There are many canals here.  We didn’t get around to taking a canal boat ride.

I seem to be unable to stop taking pictures of Mc Donald’s signs.  I think it is amazing that you find them EVERYWHERE.

One of the churches we passed was built in the style of the Moscow’s St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Church of the Resurrection. 

   

                                                   

 

                                                       

These icons are not painted, they are mosaics.  The artists who made them were taken from a different church, and that church was never finished.  The whole church looks like this.  Yes, of course we have more pictures.

I hope this doesn’t offend anyone, but I thought this was a funny way to look at this mosaic.  This of course is a picture of Mary, and Joseph and the baby Jesus.  If you look at it like a family photo, it looks like Mary just checked Jesus’s diaper and says “Oy” while Joseph holds his head.

     In case you couldn’t see Joseph.

This is the Cathedral that the locals get to use.  The Church of the Resurrection is only used for big holidays. 

                                              

 

We walked a while taking pictures on Nevsky Prospekt until we got to Katherine’s Winter Palace, now the home of the Hermitage Museum.  Actually, the Hermitage is made up of 5 buildings.  We visited the main palace and only saw a tiny bit.  If you spent 7 seconds in front of each item, it would take your whole life to see all the items owned by the museum.  Only 18 years for what is on display.  I just noticed how many pictures I want to share with you of the Hermitage, so I will post  them separately.

 

Tallinn, Estonia June 4 part 3

 

Here are some more pictures that we thought you might enjoy.

   notice there are 3 towers showing.  There were actually 5 in a row, but we couldn’t get them in one picture.

  As I said, the towers are tall.

We found the buildings really interesting.

 

This is a memorial to the 852 Estonians who died on a passenger ferry…notice the “line” is broken…

                                                                                        

 

You probably can tell, we really enjoyed Tallinn.  We had no idea it would be so interesting.  We wore out before we ran out of things to see.  We never even saw the new parts of the city.

Tallinn, Estonia June 4 Part 2

 

We stopped for a snack, not because we were feeling hungry, but because the sign drew us in.

The proprietress of the establishment was totally in character at all times.   

She evidentially never left the middle ages.  She abused us when we asked for a knife with which to cut our meat pie.  “Any traveler know better than to travel without a knife and all utensils.  I will lend you mine, but I had better get it back!”  We were sure to return it to the proper place…

                                                                The food was good, too.

Even rain spouts on the top of the buildings were fun.

  

I guess it stays cold here a lot, since the restaurants put out blankets for you to use while you eat.  This one was a fancy eatery.

Luckily the old town was small enough for us to get around because when the street signs look like this, you sure could go around in circles.

We came across a very small church with this on it’s door:

  

 

 

 

 

Tallinn, Estonia–June 4 part 1

 

We didn’t expect much from Tallinn.  We never heard of it.  It is the capital of Estonia.  It has been under Danish, Swedish, German and Russian rule.  It got full independence in 1991 in a bloodless revolution conducted in song.  Yes, song.  Thousands of Estonians gathered all over the country to sing patriotic songs (think the singing of the Marcese (sp) in the movies Casablanca and multiply it by thousands, got the idea?).  The Russian government gave them their independence.  Pretty cool.

The city is made up of two distinct parts, the old and the new.  The new is a vibrant modern city.  The old takes you right back to the middle ages.  The city was once walled with 46 towers.  Now a couple of miles of walls remain along with 25 towers.  We are talking tall, formidable towers.

Pictures you say, where are the pictures?  Well we took over 200 pictures today, but, no, we are not posting all of them.  We are posting more than can go on one blog, so there will be 3 blogs with 10 pictures each.

Enjoy.

We entered the city through an original city gate

 

There are many gates.  One even has the walkways in place and you can go up and walk between 3 towers.

    

Besides towers, there are tons of churches.  Churches for Germans, for Russians for Estonians. 

   The short tower is call Fat Margaret, no I did not make that up.

    There were 6 cruise ships in port today along with I don’t know how many school kids.

   Outside a church

          Lots of souvenir shops.  This one was particularly interesting.

 

Warnemunde, Germany–June 2

 

Most of our ship went on to Berlin for the day, a 3 1/2 hour trip each way.  We chose to stay here, since we will go to Berlin when we start traveling by train. 

Warnemunde is a resort on the Baltic Sea.  So it is touristy, but cute.  We were so tired we were going to skip it.  I decided to go out for a little and see if I could find internet.  I seem to spend more time looking for and using the internet than I do sightseeing.  Well on the way I saw that there were street performers.   I tried to take some pictures, but my camera would not stay open.  I found a photo shop where they checked out the batteries and said they were good but the camera wasn’t.  I went back to the ship, which was no small task since you had to go under a train station and walk quite a ways to get back, to get a credit card.  So, I got Duane, since he was feeling better after a good nap, and we went out together, bought the new camera and took a few pictures.

  

One of the street performers played classical music on glasses amazingly well.  I even bought his CD.  I don’t know how to post a video, so a still photo will have to do.  When I get home I might be able to email you the video.

 

June 3rd was a sea day.  We slept late, and had a restful day.

 

Copenhagen, Denmark–Part 2

 

While walking we came upon a strange sight.  On what looked like a barge, we saw people working on sand sculptures.

Blurry as it is, you can get the context of where it is.

  

Can you see in the blurry panorama that there is a spiral tower on the right?  See the same tower in the right picture above?

I hope you don’t get tired of churches, because there are a lot of them here in Europe.  We will only post the best (in our opinion, of course).  Here is one.

  

Isn’t that dome amazing?

Here are some other picture of Copenhagen, enjoy.

     

  

      

 

  

And, yes there are as many bikes as you have been told.  As a matter of fact, there are bike lanes of traffic with their own traffic lights.

Another place we went to, albeit accidentally, was the Parliament Building.  Again we followed some people into a beautiful building.  When we entered there was a glassed in space with 2 people.  One asked if she could help us.  I said yes,”where are we?”  She smiled and said in the Parliament, and since they were not in session, we could not enter.  So we at least got to see the building.  Oh, I almost forgot, Hillary Clinton was in town and messing up all the “hop on, hop off” busses because of the motorcades passing through town.  No, we did not see her motorcade, but I sure saw someone who looked like her in a cab led by several police motorcycles.  Who knows?

By the way, if you don’t know what a hop on, hop off bus is, it is just as the name suggests.  You pay one fee and get on and off as you wish and they have tour info during the ride. 

Copenhagen, Denmark–Part 1

 

First, Debbie, the last comment you made was the only one we have seen.  So whatever you did differently this time is the right way.  I think you can view the comments and see if yours is there.  Thanks for making them.  They are really great to get.

Now on to Copenhagen.  We were there for 2 nights, so we wore ourselves out totally.  Today we are in Warnemunde, Germany and we may not leave the ship.  We are both very tired and I want to get this blog out today, if possible.  The weather is everything today.  It is sunny, rainy, hailing and cloudy, but most of all it is cold.  We packed expecting this to be spring, even here going north.  So we do not have heavy clothes.  We just layer up.  Yesterday and the day before were not that cold, but the wind was awful.  Today the wind is also blowing hard.  Another excuse to rest. 

Our original plan for this trip was to use the 30 day cruise as a rest for the adventure part of our trip, when we get off in Amsterdam.  We you know about the best laid plans.  So today we rest.  Now on to our travels in Copenhagen.

We awoke at 5am because the captain said we would be passing Elsinore Castle about then.  We were able to sort of see some of it.  Here is the best picture we got.  By the way, Elsinore Castle is the one that Shakespeare used in Hamlet.

Even blurry it’s pretty cool.

 

Our ship docked very near the statue of Hans Christian Anderson’s “Little Mermaid” statue.  Actually he had nothing to do with it, but it is based on his story.  He is an icon to this city.

 

While walking we ended up at the Queen’s Palace in time for the changing of the guard.  We waited with other people for whatever would happen next.  No one seemed to know what it would be like.  Like the pomp of Buckingham Palace or not.  Well not is the right description.  It was interesting though.  While we watched the old guard be replaced by the new ones, we were being watched by two policemen.  The one near us spoke English perfectly, amongst many other languages were heard him speak.  He was asking everyone where they were from.  I had made my way to the front of the crowd, since I could not see anything from the back.  I was sitting on the ground, so as not to block anyone else’s view.  I told him were from Colorado.  In a little while he was back and asked, teasingly, if anyone was going to take me away.  Even later he said I needed to move back or he would have to take me to jail.  Since the wind was howling and I was very cold, I asked if it was warmer in jail, and he said it didn’t matter because the food was terrible.  It was a fun exchange, and no I did not go to jail.

The guard changing was short and sweet, but the boys were young and cute.

While we were walking around we bumped into a “country” called Christiania.  They think of themselves as sovereign.  We followed some people up two flights of stairs to see what was there.  It turned out to be a presentation on the sovereignty of Christiania, but all in Dutch.  They did not allow pictures to be taken there.  Probably since pot was sold and smoked openly and it is illegal in Copenhagen now.

   Kind of blurry. Hope you get the idea.

We thought that Michael Angelo’s statue of David was in Florence.  Well it is, but a copy is here.  Who knew?

   

We learned that a king, I forget which one, promised a sorceress that she could have as her own all the land that she could till in one day.  So she turned her giant sons into oxen and plowed a huge amount of land.  This fountain tell of that story.

There are a lot of fountains here.  This is the best.