Hi everyone I am running way behind in keeping my blog up to date so have compressed three posts into one. This wraps up the sea cruise part of our trip. I will be doing one more blog post to cover Poland which has turned out to be a real highlight of our journey. And then I will be signing off. We are at Chopin airport Warsaw awaiting a flight to London now.

Best Keri


Helsinki

Our next port of call following St Petersburg was Helsinki the capital of Finland. We only had six hours on shore but that was enough to get a feel for the city. Our initial impressions weren't too great. The public bus we caught into the city dropped us in a very nondescript part of town near the main railway station. However as we walked the streetscape, architecture and overall ambience improved markedly.

We found ourselves at a huge white cathedral the main worshipping venue for the city. We couldn't really tell but I think the religion is Lutheran like so many other cities and countries in the Baltic region. There was a festival going on so the place was teeming with people and tourists.
Beyond the cathedral was the old town; this was quite charming albeit on a less grand scale to other places we'd been to. The weekly market was in full swing with seafood, vegetables, fruit and all sorts of foodstuffs on sale including Moose meat balls and Reindeer stew! No different to us eating venison I guess. Just a bit confronting to think of Rudolph, Dasher and Santa's other reindeer as one chowed down on their cousins.

It was a quick visit to Helsinki and quite low key. But a nice respite after the two full on days that'd we just spent in St Petersburg.

The cruise was now nearing its end and I don't think we were the only people looking forward to getting back onto terra firma. One more port to go ... Stockholm.

Stockholm

Our final port of call was Stockholm. We woke around 4.30 am - the sun was already shining - to a wondrous sight of beautiful wooded countryside gliding past, as the ship sailed up a long series of channels inbound to Stockholm. Lovely wooden chalets, farm houses and cottages lined much of the shore but in small clusters rather than in villages or towns.

This idyllic sight lasted 3.5 hours or so and it was dreamlike lying in bed watching the magnificent vistas slide by.

We jumped on a shuttle into the city and soaked up the sights. Beautiful city built on a series of islands interconnected by lots of bridges. Many historic buildings and the huge royal palace and parliament dominating one part of the city. We wandered took lots of photos and stopped for coffee and later lunch at a smart restaurant. Ate the local fare of Swedish meatballs served with mash and linden berries.

The town centre was really jumping when we were there. It was the weekend so I guess that helped. There were concerts going on in the parks and people everywhere. The weather was superb and of course that always helps to brings out the best in a crowd. They've had a very cold winter up in Scandinavia so I expect they are ready for some summer loving.

We headed back to the ship not too sorry that this was our last port before the end of the cruise in Copenhagen in two days time.

Copenhagen

We'd met some really great people on this trip and we farewelled each other the night before disembarkation in Copenhagen. We will definitely be staying in touch with some of them both in Australia and other countries as well.

Leaving the ship was a fairly straightforward process and we shared a cab to our hotel with a couple from the Sunshine Coast we'd become friendly with. Our plans were to stay in Copenhagen two days in order to round out the sightseeing and immersion we'd started 10 days earlier when we spent a day here.

Another couple we'd become close to also from Queensland invited us to join them the following day for lunch at a fishing village in the country called Drago. They were going there with a friend of theirs from Ireland who has lived in Denmark for 35 years or so. So we went like the wind on our first day to tick off the other things we wanted to see and do. These included:

- watching the changing of the Guard at Amelionborg the palace complex where the royal family live
- visiting the famous statue of the Little Mermaid
- visiting Rosenberg palace where the royal treasury is, and the Danish Crown Jewels are stored
- going to the Tivoli Gardens a beautiful art nouveau amusement park opened in 1843 and still operating today
- going to see Nyhavn - New Haven - an iconic canal side precinct of colourful historic multi-storey houses

Fortunately the old town of Copenhagen is not huge so we covered everything on foot. Nonetheless we walked quite a few kilometres in the process. But we experienced and saw everything we wanted to. I won't bang on too much but instead will let my photos do the talking.

The nextday we joined our new friends Lynne and Lindsay, and their friend Francis for a public bus trip to Drago about 25 kms out of the city. It was really nice to mix it with the locals and to see where they live, shop and so on. Drago is a charming fishing village with old cobbled lanes, lovely old houses including thatched roof cottages, quaint pubs and shops, and of course lots of fishing boats. We lobbed into a pub for a traditional Danish lunch - think lots of fish, cheese, bread, pickled vegetables and so on. Delicious.

We were pretty knackered by the time we got back to our hotel so settled for an early dinner and early- ish night. Beautiful though it is we found Copenhagen extremely expensive, especially eating out. We quick discovered that for two people you need to spend at least AUD$100 to get anything nearing what we would consider a good meal. Burger King ended up being the go to on a couple of occasions even then we'd drop AUD $35 to $40 between us for a basic gobble and go.

Having enjoyed ourselves immensely in Copenhagen we hopped in a cab early the next morning for the airport for our flight to Warsaw the next stage of our holiday. See you there. Best regards Keri