BALTIC SEA CRUISE -
NORTHERN EUROPE
8-20-06 through 9-11-06
Each of the cities we visited was
great and historical in its own
right. Each link below was formatted in a different fashion so I could try out
some new software, and
to see which style works best. Have fun... hope its not too boring. This was our
8th cruise.
(*Most cruises we saved from 60% to 70% at
www.vacationstogo.com)
Way cool.
Don & Emily Leske
SEE EACH DAY IN DETAIL ... OR, CLICK HERE
FOR THE VIDEO PRESENTATION
|
Day 1 in Port |
We flew to Gatwick, then a 1.5 hour bus ride to Dover England where we got right on the Celebrity Cruise Ship around Noon. Yes..., we saw the white cliffs of Dover. |
| Sea day | One day at sea in the Baltic... rest, relax, sleep a bit after 14 hours in planes. There were about 4 days at sea overall so I will just show the Ports of call. |
| Day 2 in Port Gdansk, Poland |
....then we arrived in Gdansk a seaport with lots of big ships and Industry. The people were nice enough but it appeared that it was a harder life than we are used to for sure. |
| Day 3 in Port Stockholm, Sweden |
Ahhhh Sweden was nice. Good looking people and lots of old buildings, the food was actually good. |
| Day 4 in Port Helsinki, Finland |
Nice clean air, old castles and stories from the tour guide of days gone by. |
| Days 5 & 6 in Port St. Petersburg, Russia We love
Russia! www.freetranslation.com
|
Российские люди красивы, и наше посещение было большим! This highlight of our trip took two days. The people are beautiful, very nice and I loved to make them smile. It doesn't take much, like everywhere you get what you dish out. Some say the old communism ways are hard to let go of. I heard that it is hard to live.., and many people have to pay someone just to get a job. I am not sure, but what I did see is a lot of construction, building and growth. This city is located in northwestern Russia on the delta of the Neva River at the east end of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. Some things we learned too was that it is informally known as Piter (Питер) and was formerly known as Petrograd (Петрогра́д, 1914–1924) and since WW II .... Leningrad (Ленингра́д, 1924–1991). The most beautiful castles we
saw was around St. Petersburg. The castles of Peter the Great and Catherine
the Great were the largest and most opulent we have ever seen. They used
TONS of gold to cover domes, columns, statues and many other things, leaving
me to think that it was no wonder the people revolted. |
| Day 7 in Port Tallinn, Estonia |
...The most beautiful & tall people of any country we saw. Very modern and lots of western ideas, McDonalds etc. but we ate the local foods and they were very good. |
| Day 8 in Port Rostock, Germany |
A seaside port and city with lots of history. Glad we didn't take the 3.5 hour train to Berlin.... those that did had only about 2 hours to look around and they had to jump back on the train back to the ship. In the 11th century there was a Slavic settlement at the Warnow river called Roztoc (which means broadening of a river); the name Rostock is derived from that designation. The Danish king Valdemar I set the town aflame in 1161. Afterwards the place was settled by German traders. |
| Day 9 in Port Copenhagen, Denmark |
Didn't see any "chewing tobacco"... but lots of old castles, buildings and a ton of history. Viking history abounds. Also see more photos at: www.copenhagenpictures.dk/ |
| Day 10 in Port Oslo, Norway |
More Viking history, museum was great and very nice people and food. Oslo seems rather generically European at first, but it grows on you. The city is really pretty, clean, and quite small by capital city standards. There are only 450,000 people in Oslo -- heck, there are only 5 million folks in all of Norway. Please excuse a few of the really dark photos from the ship museum, I was trying to shoot pics of a real Viking Ship they had. |
| Day 11 in Port London England |
Dover, then on to London.... Big Ben, Tower of London and ate real English meat pie and drank beer in a real English Pub. Cool, lots of history here and TONS of people. I learned that taxes are fairly high and all over Europe people would love to move to the USA where they see that our life is sooooo much better.... hummm, who told them that? Just joking, really though.... I can certainly appreciate our way of life a LOT more now that we are back home. We really don't appreciate what we have sometimes it seems until we see how hard life is in other countries. We saw extreme beauty, wonderful people, great food and tons of real history everywhere we went.... but it seems the high taxes, from 30-60% in some places, and a lack of government control over greed and corruption that appears to affect many. We also have these problems here, but just not as bad I think. After all is said and done, the vacations are great... but there really is... nothing like home! |