1. Aug 13-17: Departure and arrival in Copenhagen

Introduction:  This blog covers our 30th Anniversary cruise -- that was the occasion for the trip.  The best part of it for me was the quality of the time we had together.  

Important photo viewing note:  clicking on a photo will open it your photo viewer app or otherwise make it larger.  Then, rotating the scroll knob will cycle you through the pictures in that particular blog post. 

Additional note:  The posting dates given for each segment are arbitrary:  They needed to be dated in descending order by date, so that each would appear sequentially from first day to last in the list of posts, since this site orders posts from most recent posting date to earliest, just backwards from how I wanted them to appear.

Aug 13-14-15

Nan resting easy in British Airways business class a.k.a World Club, up on the upper deck of the 747-400.  She had storage places next to her, below the window.  On her right, a sliding window in a wall, and beyond it, me - facing the other way (forward).

Peculiar arrangement, because she had to stand up and climb over the feet/footrest of the person sitting just beyond her footrest.  While it did mean that we could talk to each other easily, I think we might've preferred side-by-side seats.

Note the old guy, below, turned into an ecstatic little boy in the copilot's seat of the 747!
What a thrill!
We got aboard, discovered that our upper deck seats were just aft of the cockpit, saw the door open, and I went to talk to the captain and crew.  I was agog, and they invited me to have a seat.
OMG!  
When I was in second grade, our class one time made a plane out of paper in the classroom -- this would've been back in 1940 -- and I got to be the pilot.  And now here I sit!  Realization of the child's dream!

Ten hour flight from SFO to Heathrow, where for some inexplicable reason we had to deplane, walk to another section of the terminal we were already in, go through Security again, and then get back to where our connecting flight would leave for Copenhagen, which was about a 1.5-2 hour flight.

Arrived in Copenhagen at about 5:30pm on Aug. 14th, caught a cab to the Skt. Petri Hotel in the Latin(University) quarter, right across from a really old Univ. library, had dinner in hotel. Very nice – smoked mackerel and beef carpaccio. Slept fitfully – nice breakfast buffet in hotel – decaf coffee treated with disdain in C'hagen. Only instant in hotel.

Hotel lobby and interior quite attractive. Former department store, interesting beams showing up in rooms. 

Beams and a pillar, presumably kept from original building.
Unusual and visually interesting, moreso than the usual hotel ceiling!

 

Entrance to Tivoli Gardens

Aug. 15th:  
Walked to HOHO (Hop On Hop Off Bus) – went to Tivoli Gardens – 2 hrs walking around – lots of eateries, shops, amusement park rides – gardened areas quite lovely. I had expected more gardens and not so much of the other stuff mentioned above. But overall, I enjoyed being there, since it's existed in my mind as a fabled place up to now. And an amazing place to exist within a city.

Moorish Palace/Nimb Hotel&Restaurant in Tivoli

Univ. Library across street from Skt. Petri Hotel

Got on HOHO, and discovered that it was SOSO (Sound On Sound Off). Some malfunction with the narration piped to the seats for earbuds. Henceforth to be referred to as HOHOSOSO.

Shots from Aug. 16th in Copenhagen below.

Rosenborg Castle:

 Crown jewels are in a cellar behind a massive vault door.
Note the toy soldiers, left.  Solid gold, no less.
Nice toys for royal little boys.

Counterclockwise Spiral tower

Famed Little Mermaid

  






Fountain and front of building - Royal Library, within which is the Danish Jewish Museum, where photography was prohibited, alas.

Old Town Copenhagen

Stock Exchange

Aug. 17th:  We board the ship in the afternoon and head out - next stop:  Gdansk, Poland (formerly Danzig).

Final street scene from Copenhagen.
Lovely city - we could easily come back and spend more time exploring.

Bridge from Copenhagen to Malmö, Sweden, part of which is, in fact, a tunnel.  Very  impressive. 

2. Aug 18: Gdansk and more

 

Aug 17-19: Sailing to, being in, and leaving Gdansk

After a nice walk in the morning in Copenhagen, far fewer people on the streets, returned to the hotel, packed up, and headed for the pier and boarding the Silver Whisper. I sat in our suite, gazing out the window to our veranda, looking over at...Sweden! Quite a sensation, looking from one country to another like that.

Unexpectedly rough seas during the evening as we sailed to Gdansk. I had a hard time standing up! The crew had been taken totally by surprise – the weather was atypical of the Baltic in August.

Aug 18, our 30^th anniversary day:

Took a shuttle into the old town section of Gdansk, which was utterly charming. The town was 95% destroyed by the Soviets in 1945 as they drove out the German forces. It's been rebuilt completely since then, and is 4.5 feet higher than it was, having been rebuilt on the ruins of the old city. Buildings and statuary recreated largely from old photographs.

All the streets we walked were lined on both sides with people selling amber jewelry. According to Wikipedia, “Amber processing is also an important part of the local economy, as the majority of the world's amber deposits lie along the Baltic coast.” Gdansk is over 1000 years old!

On our return to the ship, after what was a lovely, lovely afternoon strolling on cobblestones (can be quite tiring, if quaint), we discovered that a small cake reading “Happy Anniversary”, electric candles, and festive baloons had been placed in our suite (see pictures). After drinks and dinner, I came up and got the cake and took it back down to the dining room for our dessert. Thank you, Silver Whisper, for acknowledging us and our special day.!

At 10:30, en route to Klaipedia, Lithuania – seas were so calm there was hardly a sense of motion – a most welcome change from the night before!

 

This is a cruise ship from a different company :-)

 Looking from a bridge (see next photo)

On bridge looking at the gateway to Gdansk Old Town

 These buildings were rebuilt using old photographs to capture the original designs.  Note the statuary atop the white building in the center - extraordinary!

High ceilings you want?  High ceilings you got!

St. Mary's Church, the largest brick church in Europe.

I just love it when shots like this show up.  

Flying buttresses rock!

Anniversary pictures:

                This is what greeted us on our arrival in the suite

 Nice marzipan rose, eh?

3. Aug 19: Klaipeda, Lithuania

Aug 19: Klaipeda, Lithuania

We arrived at about 8am, had breakfast and went ashore and walked around at around 11 o'clock. We didn't have much time, since the ship was due to depart at 1:30. We did not see very much at all of any interest – and the few people we saw sitting on park benches, and the like, gave absolutely no response at all when I waved or said, “Good morning” or just “Hello”. No acknowledgment of our even being in their field of vision. It was eerie.

One much younger person, a woman with a baby in a stroller, was quite cordial and answered some questions I had about a pair of buildings shaped like a K and a D.

Turns out that the K is a hotel and offices, where she works, the K standing for Klaipeda. The D building is mostly residences and offices, the D standing for Dané, the river on which we were docked.

Perhaps we should've taken a shore excursion, although there weren't any that had appealed to us when we looked them over, given the short time we were in the port.

Later, googling, I discovered that in other parts of the city, there are a multitude of fascinating and some very beautiful sculptures and statues, and I'm sorry that we missed those.

K is for Klaipeda - it's a hotel and office building

D is for Dané - that's the name of the river where the buildings are, and where we were docked.  It's mostly residences and offices.

Captain on the left, other ships' officers, on the starboard flying bridge as we pull away from the Klaipeda pier.  I was on the observation deck, my home away from home -- just loved being up there and watching stuff.

 Generic fisherman fountain in a small park across from the original city hall.

K is for Klaipeda



Our ship viewed from the pier

 This glorious sunset began two hours earlier than the photo was taken, just before 10pm.  Thank you, northern latitudes in summer!  Notice the ship right center on the horizon.  Photo taken from our veranda.

4. Aug 20: Riga, Latvia

Aug 20:  Riga, Latvia

Breakfast in our suite, since we had an early (9:30) shore excursion into Riga. I had gotten a good night's sleep, so was up on the observation deck at 6:00 or so to watch us being piloted/steered into our pier. Below is a photo of a beautiful suspension bridge, glistening in the morning sun, and a new library building just beyond it.

Short bus ride into Riga from the cruise ship pier – got a walking tour of the Art Nouveau section of the city, where there are very expensive apartment, residence and office buildings. Most we saw had been created by Michael Eisenstein (see pictures below), and they were amazing! Eisenstein had done, I think the guide said 16 buildings, and another man whose name I didn't get had done over 70. It was a feast for the eyes, very reminiscent of Barcelona.

Walked back to the ship on smooth pavement, which was grand.

Had a very good dinner on the ship, and then after a bit, we went to the evening's entertainment, featuring a singer who was so bad, we walked out after the 3^rd song. I would've left sooner, but Nan prevailed on me not to leave mid-song :-)

Something about cruise ship and resort singers – I suspect they can't get jobs otherwise – and this one, as well as others we heard, briefly, later on, were unlistenable, to me.

We pulled away from the pier at about 6:30pm for a 22-hour voyage to Helsinki. Sea was calm, and we got to see a deep orange crescent moon sink below the horizon from our veranda as we sailed away from Riga.

lovely and

A great day. Riga is definitely worth a comeback trip someday.

Suspension bridge, and visible to the left of the tower, a multi-story library.  To the right, the fascinating spiral-like Swedbank building.

One of many Eisenstein-designed buildings in the Art Nouveau section of Riga; another below.

Town Hall, Riga.

Click on this, and notice the Star of David in the upper circular windows.  Also check the little fellow to the right of the top of the window.  Ingenious, and doubtless has a story which I did not hear. 

                    The Tower, it's called.  Maybe The Old Tower.
                    See the lady at the base, for a sense of the size of
                    the tower.

  And as we head back to the ship, another view of that beautiful bridge.  In the right of the photo, the back of our new-found friend and cruisemate Graeme Watts, from Syndey, Australia, about whom and his wife Maree more in a subsequent post.  Our walk back took us under the bridge to the ship just beyond, not visible in the photo.

Graeme and Maree Watts

                                                                 

5. Aug 21-22: Helsinki

Aug 21-22: Helsinki, Finland

Nothing noted about the day we spent at sea going from Riga to Helsinki. Actually I didn't make a recording of the days between Aug 21 and 25 until the 25^th. As will become clear in a moment, a shadow fell upon the trip on the morning of the 22^nd. 

Photos taken from observation deck as we arrived in Helsinki:

 

One thing to be noted, though: we met, while we were leaving Klaipeda, a lovely couple on the ship from Sydney, Australia: Maree and Graeme Watts. We hit it off immediately, and were with them for several meals and shore excursions. Graeme's back was in the last photo of the Riga bridge. We had all elected to take the 20-minute walk back to the ship from where the shore bus had last dropped us off in Riga. We walked down by the Daugava River, and went under that marvelous suspension bridge to get to our mooring just the other side of it, it being the first obstacle to ships of any appreciable size in the river coming from the Baltic.

Aug 22: 2am – docked in Helsinki

I awoke at 2am with pretty severe abdominal pain; I thought it might be a colostomy blockage – we called the medical center, and were there until 6am. There was no blockage, as it turned out. The medical staff, who had taken marvelous care of me while I was still on the ship, were superb. Here they are: The doctor, Maria Novella Cruzado,and the nurse, Mirabel. More about them and their care later.

 Nurse Mirabel and Dr. Maria, l to r.

We took a cab to the Helsinki University Hospital – I was seen, after a long wait, at the Urgent Care/Triage Center, and then transferred around the corner to the ER. There I was attended to by a wonderful nurse, Tarya, and doctor, Sanna Kouhia, a vascular surgeon with G-I experience. I was diagnosed, after a CT scan, with uncomplicated diverticulitis. Since we were headed to Russia, the doctor decided to take no chances with me falling into Russian medical hands (she actually said, “Health care in Russia is crappy!”) and gave me high doses of antibiotics. If I had been going anywhere else, she would've let me weather it on my own. That was followed by 2.5 more days of IV, morning and night, on the ship, to which she permitted me to return well in time for departure to St. Petersburg. Thank goodness! We were terrified of being kept in Helsinki after the ship departed, and having to come home early.

After the 3 days total of IV antibiotics, I went on oral of same for another 7 days. That stuff kills my appetite, and as a result, I did something very unusual for a cruise: I lost weight!

Doing it the hard way, but I'll take it.

I had to change radically how I was eating and drinking after this episode -- I drank gallons of water, almost to the point of nausea, but it was necessary, and still is, actually, so that no blocks occur, and no more nasty infections in diverticuli develop ever again.  In fine, a small price to pay.

What a day.  Grateful indeed that it was just the one day, and that it was in Helsinki.

6. Aug 23: St. Petersburg - 1 of 3

6. Aug 23: St. Petersburg, Russia, Day 1 of 3

 Arriving on the Neva River, to dock near the bridge seen in the distance center and left.

We arrived in St. Petersburg on Sunday. It is a beautiful city, in many ways – we noticed particularly the buildings on either side of the Neva River, where our ship was docked. Great colors, interesting facades, and...practically no people, not on Sunday, not on Monday or Tuesday, either. My impression of the river area is that the building facades are like makeup – but in this case, there didn't seem to be anything underneath/behind. Adding to the St.Petersburg Theme Park impression, all the buildings lining the riverfront were brilliantly lit all night. And in the blocks behind the buildings on the river streets, there were never any lights on. It was strange, and a bit eerie. The facades have been fixed or created anew, but what's underneath doesn't seem to have been taken care of. We saw on one bus tour buildings where the facade had crumbled, revealing worn red brick beneath. And again, the buildings closer to downtown also seemed empty. 

 

I was told later by someone familiar with the city that “downtown” is a happening area, with good and interesting restaurants and cafes, and the like. But we saw almost no signs of life down by the cruise ship piers.

History: during the Nazi siege of St. Petersburg, from 1941-1944, the city was surrounded by enemy troops, although they never penetrated into the city itself. That defense is epic and well worth applauding and admiring. However, the city was bombarded relentlessly; 1/3 of the buildings were damaged, and 1/7 of them were destroyed completely. The rebuilding continues even now.

Many buildings are covered in a gauzy kind of netting/wrap – no work going on beneath, but the structures are shrouded to keep the damage from being seen. And on the other hand, some spectacularly magnificent churches and cathedrals, many covered in gold.

Our morning tour was to the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. The Hermitage is a mind-blower. All of the incarnations of the Hermitage are connected within the Winter Palace. There is an incredible amount of gorgeous art works – it's almost too much to take in, even in a quick tour. And the rooms themselves are works of art on their own. Some of them display an opulence that is almost embarrassing. And I could not help but wonder what price had been paid by the peons, the peasants, the poor, for all of that splendor. 

Is it my imagining/hallucinating, or is there a face near the window end of this ceiling painting?

A  throne room and closeup of the ceiling above the throne

Malachite vase, probably about 6' tall

 If I'm not mistaken, this is a self-portrait by Rembrandt

 

After that, we returned to the ship for lunch, and then back out for a bus and boat tour of canals and rivers; it's called by some the Venice of the North. The guide on the tour boat had given us all earbuds, the same kind as on the HOHOSOSO buses in Copenhagen, with similar problems: her microphone kept cutting out, and then, she would, it seemed, time her narrative so that much of it came out while we were going under very low bridges, which acted as bass reflex speakers for the motor noise, drowning her out completely. A couple of us approached her and mentioned that the sound was cutting out, and her amazingly rude reply was, “You've seen beautiful St. Petersburg,” and she turned and walked away. No apology, no acknowledgment, nothing. That was so atypical of the guides we had had up to that point, it was stunning.