It's 7:45 a.m. and we’re just about into Tallinn, Estonia. I’ve been up all night. When the Americans say that we live in the far north of Canada I now know this to be wrong. I’ve lived in Toronto and Vancouver and spent lots of time in Northern Ontario but in all these places it get’s dark at night.

Here we are in Baltic Sea at 59 degrees 30.52 N heading into Tallinn and it’s been LIGHT all night long. The biological clock / body clock is a funny thing. I guess this chain of events started last night when I had a Spanish Coffee after dinner. I don’t drink coffee so why would I order a Spanish (likely because it was free) – then there was the Motown Margarita’s, the dancing and the light coming through the sliding glass doors all night – even with the curtains drawn. I resorted to the sleep mask at about 3:30 p.m. but I didn’t sleep a wink - all I could hear in my mind was the band’s last tribute song to O&A – Prince’s Purple Rain. What a night – now I sitting here waiting my breakfast to arrive in the cabin and getting ready for what will be a walking tour of Tallinn. This is Deb’s port – she’s the tour guide today as this was once of her cities in the overall plan.

We’re within site of land and likely to dock within the next 15 minutes so I’ll pack this up and finish it off with my comments from Tallinn. This is Estonia’s largest city and capital with evidence of settlements going back some 5,000 years ago.

The walk from the ship into town was about a mile (we walked 8.50 kilometers today) in what was foggy and overcast conditions – not a great day for the photography. There are two sides to Tallinn – the old town and the new side. We were told to change some money into Russian Rubles while we were in Estonia because of the unreliability of the local ATM machines in Russia. For $20.00 I got 450 Rubles. During our walk about we found the buildings to be quaint and colored with soft shades of pastel colors but in need of some repair and sprucing up. Maybe they just haven’t had their spring clean-up as of yet. Things were pricey here – as I’ve said we’ve been collecting magnets here and this is the first place that I’ve seen a cheap city magnet going for 11 Euro’s or $14.00 U.S.

The port area seems so very well prepared to accept the onslaught of the cruise trade but the stores seem to be devoid of usual touristy junk instead they display quality linens and handcrafted sweaters with a familiar Baltic look to the design in their windows. I want to send out a special thanks to Jay and Susan for that black winter jacket – without it I’d be very wet and cold to the bone – Thanks guys.

We stopped for lunch – fries, fish & chips and fried cheese sticks with a couple of beer and Deb’s perennial Diet Coke – our total bill was 34 Euro’s for the four of us or about $50.00 bucks – really quite outrageous for food that wasn’t even warm. Kudos to Tom for putting away the Fish & Chips – they didn’t resemble anything like I ever seen.

Still raining (misty but steady) we decided the best of course of action was to head back to the ship and get ready for our 3:30 pm ramp up so that we can get underway to St. Petersburg, Russia for our first overnight stay. Tonight it’s a sleep mask and I’m taping the curtains closed to try and get a little shut eye here in north part of Scandinavia.

Updates from this Russian center on the next go if we’re actually allowed to enter the country will follow.