Have just spent the morning in Helsinki, a place of some beauty as the city is surrounded by the sea on three sides. Like most Scandian cities, it is clean and elegant.

Yesterday we were in Stockholm which has a very beautiful entry for ships. There are some 24 000 islands in the archipelago and it takes the ship some three and a half hours to navigate to get to the harbour. However, my favourite was Copenhagen which seems to have a great deal of personality.

The weather has been most kind to us since entering the Baltic with clear blue skies and a sea like a millpond. So much so that as a result of spending a few hours in the sun enjoying the ship's pool we all got quite sunburnt. Trying to find sun screen in the shops however was difficult - not a product that they would need for most of the year! Helsinki is icebound during the winter months!

Tomorrow is the big day when we arrive in St. Petersburg (incidentally named after Saint Peter and not Peter the Great). Ensuring that we will be able to enter through immigration has been the subject of much debate and argument as the Russians apparently don't like to allow foreigners in if they don't have a clear and written statement of where you are going to go. Wandering around the streets is, by all accounts, a no no. We wait in anticipation.

Bill