Welti Industries

Day 28 was the day I know we both were dreading. In my mind I think I calculated that the travel would be somewhere between 21 and 24 hours. That clock started at 730 we left the room for the last time. Mary was up about 6 o’clock to get herself ready. She then got me up. There was no time for breakfast. We took one last look and all the drawers and closets for stuff we might’ve missed. We put our backpacks on and headed down to five where we were supposed to set until we were called to go off the ship. It was right near the pizza place. When we got down there we were initially told that it might be 30 minutes or so. Mary went to go get tea. It wasn’t but five minutes later our color code was called – cream 3. Anyone in the group Cream 3 was instructed to leave the ship. I chased Mary down and told her that we were leaving. She had to leave her tea on the table as we put our stuff together and scrambled off the ship. They checked our cruise cards one last time signaling that we were off the ship. Thankfully, there was a helper who was pushing me while Mary tried to keep up. I don’t remember the exact count but they had four or five back-and-forth ramps which took you from the fifth level of the ship down to the ground to the port building. There were hundreds of people streaming down these ramps. When he finally got to the bottom you entered a huge building that was filled with luggage. We walked up to the area where the cream 3 bags were. It took Mary probably 10 minutes to find our bags again. She put them on one of those luggage carriers. From there we had to enter UK immigration. This was a no-brainer. We just kept following the people. You may remember that two of our pieces of luggage were shipped to the ship prior to us getting on it initially. With those two pieces of luggage needed to be shipped back. We didn’t know how to do this. As we were walking out of the corner of my eye I saw a man holding a sign that said Luggage Forward. This was a company that we used to ship our luggage. We walked up to him and handed over the two pieces of luggage. I know where they went from there but I know that we should have them here in Florida in the next few days. Once outside the building there were rows of buses. The vast majority where the big tour buses, but in between them was a little bus. As we approached it we can see a little card with our name on it along with the name of another couple. This was our ramp equipped van that would take us to Heathrow airport. The guy that was pushing me got a nice tip and was off. Mary and I talked with the driver of the van, Kevin, for more than a half hour. We were waiting for the other couple that were supposed to join us in the van to the airport. Everyone was supposed to be off the ship by 800. I don’t know why, but this couple did not get off until 845. That means we had to sit around and wait. We did not actually wait because Kevin talked almost nonstop providing a history of the area. It was quite interesting. It was a pretty day. It was clear but cool. It was not a bad way to spend 45 minutes. I was a little worried though because it would impact our time at the airport. If it got too late we would have to run through the airport. The couple finally showed up. They were a couple that we had been on a previous excursion – I don’t remember which one. They were from Nevada. The guy was the one who had his scooter breakdown. Somewhere he had picked up a new scooter but the broken scooter was with them so they had three scooters. I thought our flight was going to be a nightmare. They were flying from London to Houston to change planes to fly to San Francisco. There they would spend the night and then fly to Northern Nevada. All along they had to log this broken scooter. They were an older couple – probably late 70s or early 80s. I actually felt sorry for them. Kevin loaded us up into the van. He piled our luggage in every opening he could find. It was about it 90 minute ride from Southampton to Heathrow. I pretty much sold out. I might’ve even got a micro nap. We made it to Heathrow. The other couple was at terminal to so they were dropped off first. We were at terminal three. Initially, Kevin misread a sign and was about to drop us off at a different section of terminal to until Mary pointed out. We reloaded the van and headed to terminal three. There he dropped us. We had about a five minute walk or so from the curb to the Virgin Atlantic desk. There we found a very helpful Indian lady.  we made it to the airport about 11 o’clock. Our flight was at 230 so we were in pretty good shape. The time at the desk took quite a while because they needed to discuss the battery on the SmartDrive. We then found out that there were better seats for us so they move the seats. Then of course they have to take the SmartDrive and the chair. All this takes time. We probably left there about 30 minutes later. We dropped our bags there. We decided to only take our backpacks on the plane. From there we have to go through security. Security in the UK is similar but seemed a little less aggressive than TSA in the states. It seems that every airport does stuff a little differently. At Heathrow, you don’t know what gate to go to until about 30 minutes before your flight is supposed to board. See go to the big board that says 230 to New York. Alongside of it, it says that the gate will be posted at 130. So everyone sits in this huge common area until they figure out what gate you need to go to. Because we were early, Mary went and bought some snacks. We found a spot to sit and hung out there and tell a little after 120 or so. Once your gate was posted you had to figure out which of four different hallways you need to go down. If I remember correctly, our gate was C70. This basically means it’s at the end of the airport somewhere. We got past a certain point it became apparent that we needed to take a shuttle to a different part of the airport. These are common in airports now especially the big ones. We get on the shuttle and it took us maybe a quarter or half a mile to another building. We get off the shuttle and made our way to the gate. The people that were going to do my transfer were there and waiting. By now it was about 145. We were seated in the plane right correctly behind business class. We were in the first row of what they call premium economy there were only two seats and we sat next to each other. Mary was at the window. Again, in big airports, the plane leaves the gate and tends to drive for 10 to 15 and often more minutes to the runway where takes off. Then it has to wait in line. This particular plane took probably 20 minutes to get to the place where the pilot said they were third in line. It was probably another two minutes or so before the plane took off. I actually caught a video of it – Mary did really. We were on our way. For the next eight hours we try to keep ourselves busy by listening to books, watching movies on our iPads, sleeping, staring off into space and simply watching time go by. I was able to get in about three hours of listening to my book. I did manage to watch two movies on my iPad. Neither of them were very good but they did pass the time. Mary slept a great deal of the time. They did serve a dinner which we didn’t take. We did eat snacks. Later in the flight I did have some water. I don’t eat much the day before a flight. I try to drink just enough. On the day of the flight I don’t drink at all until later in the flight. We’ve gotten good at doing the cath on the plane though. The plane landed pretty much on time. This meant we had almost exactly 2 hours to get to on our next plane. New York’s JFK airport is another airport all together. It too is huge. I had a feeling right away that we were going to be in trouble regarding catching the next flight. It was just too many things to do in a short amount of time in a huge airport. Thankfully, the people that do the transfer from the seat to the aisle chair to the wheelchair came pretty quickly. We were able to talk one of those guys into helping us get through immigration into baggage. Somewhere along the lines we lost him. Every step of this process was terrible at best. Our first stop was immigration. We had to be left back into the United States. We found a shortcut for this and we were through pretty quickly. We then had to go to baggage claim to get our bags. Because we were running late all of our bags were already off the turnstile and we had to hunt them down. Mary found them and put them on one of those luggage cart. Now we had to run through customs. This was a no-brainer. After customs we had to go to the connected flights area where we dropped our bags off so they could be put on the next plane. Thankfully they were already tagged for the next flight. In the connected flights area we needed to get a boarding pass. The rule says that you have to have a boarding pass one hour before your flight. We got to the boarding pass area with two minutes to spare. I pleaded with one of the Delta agents to take us before another lady so we didn’t miss the one hour window she complied. With our boarding passes in hand we now had to go back through security. Other airports don’t handle it like this. I’m pretty sure that O’Hare once you are in a secure zone you stay in a secure zone when switching planes. This is not the case at JFK. All the time we are watching the clock tick we know we have to get to the gate by 715 at the latest and it’s already about 650. Because everything else was so messed up of course the TSA agent I got for my pat down was super slow. I honestly think he purposely went slow because he knew we were on a time crunch. Your powerless. You can’t do anything. You have to let them go through his paces. If you make a scene things get worse. The normal patdown for me takes about five minutes. This guy was verging on 15. After he gave me clearance we now have to find the gate. And with our Welti lock of course the gate happens to be at the far end of the airport which required yet another shuttle ride. By now we are literally running. Actually, Mary is doing all the running pushing me. I’m hanging on for dear life for my bag and other things don’t fall off. When we finally get to the shuttle Mary is breathing so hard I’m sure she’s can I have a flipping heart attack. She uses the two or three minutes on the shuttle to catch her breath before running again to the gate. The majority of the people were already on the plane by time we got there at 715. They were waiting for us. The people who do the transfer were there and they started to load me from my chair to the aisle chair. Mary went on the plane to check out our seats only to find that they would not work for us. They were not the ones we paid for. Mary had to go back up to the ticket agent and get this straightened out. More time went by. We did not end up with our premium economy seats. We got the next best thing – the role right behind premium economy. There was nothing we could do at the time. Because we are running late they apparently upgraded someone from a normalcy to our seats. I’m working with Delta to see if I can get my money back but we made the plane. I think out of pure exhaustion Mary slept pretty much the entire flight from New York to Orlando. I slept for a while too. The flight was uneventful. We had a bunch of snacks and the Snickers bar that had traveled with us the entire way. I drank some water and Mary had a Coke. The plane landed pretty much on time at 1000. The people doing the transfer were there and I was off the plane pretty quickly. After yet another shuttle ride from the terminal to the main terminal, we made our way up to baggage claim where we found our bags. Dan Kelly, the guy that drove us to Tampa, on day one was picking us up and driving us home from Orlando. We found our way outside after some initial confusion. From there and Mary called Dan and he was about five minutes away. He drove around the corner, we got in the van and we headed north. It was about an hour and 20 minutes. We also had to stop for gas but we made it home somewhere near 1230. If I do the math correctly that means the trip home – door to door – was almost exactly 23 hours. That is a long time. It would’ve been much longer had we missed the flight at JFK. Mary lugged the bags into the house. We both got something to drink and headed for the bedroom. We were beyond exhausted. I would say that is the end of our trip. Sunday, the following day, was a bit of a catch-up day. We got up and we were ready to go by about 10 o’clock. We decided we’re going to go to breakfast and then get groceries. We stopped at Billy’s Café on 441. We had to wait about 15 minutes. Billy’s is a local place that just does breakfast. We both had omelettes with potatoes. Simple breakfast food that is very good. I will save you all the details but from there we went to Sam’s Club to pick up groceries. There were a few things that Sam’s didn’t have so Mary stopped at Publix. We came back home and Mary put all the food away. She pretty much unpacked the suitcases already. She walked over to Linda and Tom’s and picked up her car and brought that home. She took a nap. The one remaining task which we both did not look forward to was going through the mail. Without much exaggeration, I would say there were 250 pieces of mail. 98% of it was junk but it still need to be looked at. There were a couple of barn burners and there which raised concern and had to be dealt with first thing Monday. Beyond that it was just everyday mail. Of course now that we were home in the bags were unpacked there aspects of the trip that will live on for a while. I have to get the Smart Drive fixed. I’ve already been in contact with the shower chair maker. I have to finish this log. There are pictures that need to be managed. I think that’s about it. Once these tasks are completed we can say the trip was complete. I’m drawing the line though by saying from a log perspective the trip is done. What follows are a few thoughts on the trip itself. There are simple questions like did we have fun? Yes. Did we eat too much? Yes. Did we spend too much money? Probably. Would we do it again? Yes but in a different fashion. We were gone for 28 days. We visited 13 different countries. We were able to say we set foot on the African continent. We spent a ton of quality time together. Thankfully, Mary and I can spend days on end together without conflict. There were a few points during the trip where things were a little testy but nothing that dramatic. We were exposed to a lot of different types of art on this trip. I think Mary found a new passion – art. We ate a lot of different foods. Because we have traveled on ships before I have had many of the things that some people would consider odd. I’ve eaten escargot before. I’ve had quail and venison before. We drank a lot of good wine this trip. We drank more wine this trip than in previous trips. We did not sleep enough. I would have to add it up, but I believe we’ve traveled at least 10,000 miles between airplanes and boats and etc. We met countless new people – the majority of which we will never see again. We were exposed to new cultures – most not that different from our own – but still different. Overall the trip was very successful. We really cannot complain about the few pickups that we did encounter. Thankfully, we were not hurt when the shower chair broke. Thankfully, except for one day, the weather cooperated. Physically we were able to do a 23 our travel day. We will pay for it for a few days but we did it. I know there are a few of you out there that have read this log from the beginning. I appreciate you taking the time to do that. With that I will say the trip is over.

Monday, September 16, 2019

If you’re paying attention to the date, you notice that I actually skipped day 27 and day 28 and 29. They 27 was the last day at sea. Day 28 was our trek home. Yesterday, day 29 was our first day home. As I write this, I am sitting in my office at home in Florida. What I will do over the next day or so, because it might take some time and I have other things on my plate, I will cover days 27 and 28 and I will try to give some closing thoughts on our vacation. As I write this, Mary is at work – her first day at the new job. You might think that the rest of the trip was uneventful, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me start with the 27. Day 27 was Friday the 13^th, a day at sea. When I woke up around 8 o’clock I said to Mary that I would like to take at least two hours in sit on the deck and act like a person on vacation. This to me meant sitting there reading a book and/or napping and/or watching people – basically doing nothing for two hours. In the previous 26 days we did not do that. There was one day early on where I pushed on the seventh floor while Mary listened to her lectures, but other than that we ran. So when I woke up Friday I hoped that I would achieve this goal. As it turns out, and as you will read, that did not happen. I was actually up after having a real shower by about 9 o’clock or so. The first thing we did was sit down with the Princes Patter to decide what we were going to do for the day. After we circled the things we wanted to do it look like we had some free time in the afternoon and there was time after dinner. We decided that we were going to go to pub lunch so that we did not need breakfast. Instead, Mary went and played bingo at 11 o’clock. This was a good thing because she actually $150. If I added it up correctly, she/we made $600 in bingo wins. I did not count up how much money we spend to get those wins, but I’m hoping we made some money. We wanted to go to the 1 o’clock art auction in hopes of winning the cruise map. By time Mary got back from bingo it was like 1215. After bingo she stopped and picked up the last pictures that were taken. If you remember we had 203 pictures taken on the first cruise. Amazingly, we had 253 pictures taken on the second cruise for a grand total of 456 pictures of Mary and me in various close and with various poses and with various backgrounds. I don’t even want to get into how crazy that is. There was no way we were going to go to pub lunch and make the 1 o’clock, so we decided to skip pub lunch. Mary had a load of laundry in which she finished before we went downstairs to the fifth floor to pick up sandwiches. I had a toasted tuna sandwich. Mary had her ham and cheese. We found a spot on five and ate our food pretty quickly. I was trying not to eat that much knowing that travel is coming. The only reason we wanted to go to the art auction was to see if we could win the cruise map. This is an actual document maintained by the ship’s captain and crew that shows our exact route on a map that is probably 4 ft. square. On the Mediterranean cruise, the map was auctioned off for a mere $150. All the money goes to charity. We learned later, that the lady who did the hundred and $50 to not even pick it up. The map was returned to the ship’s captain. I was hoping to get the Baltic cruise map for somewhere near $200. I don’t know where we would hang it if anywhere but it would be a cool keepsake. The auction went off like all the others. I told Mary not to raise her card because we were not buying anything more. Of course I should’ve saved my breath. The movie cel of Mickey and Donald Duck came up for auction. Mary was looking for something Disney related for our friend Trish for her birthday. I don’t remember exactly now but the cel was valued at something like $1200. The opening bid was 200 and Mary raised her card. We were now the owners of Mickey and Donald Duck. I’m not complaining. It will be a cool gift. Several other auctions went and in between they had a raffle. We won one of the raffles. There was a print that we won very early on but decided not to take. Guess what? We won it again. It is a print showing a red lounge chair on the shore of either a lake or the ocean. I’m not particularly thrilled with that but it costs us nothing. Finally, the cruise map came up. The auctioneer started the bidding at $100. Mary raised her card. The bid went up to 150 and another guy raised his card. This went back and forth until it was $300. Mary looked at me and I nodded signaling her to raise her card. The auctioneer then said $350 and I thought the other guy raised his card. My limit was $300. And as it turns out the other guy did not raise his card so we were the winners of the cruise map. I honestly thought we lost it until Mary said we were winners. The art director said that we got a steal. There are some maps that go for thousands of dollars. We set an appointment to go down to the art area at 550 I think it was. After we left the Explorers Lounge, we went up to the casino. We were going to try to play and a blackjack tournament but we misunderstood the time and it was over by time we got there. I didn’t mind because I had no interest in playing, but Mary was a little disappointed. I suggested that we take the money that we would’ve lost at the blackjack tournament and apply it to scratch offs. We ended up buying $60 worth of scratch offs. This gave us six cards each. We didn’t do anything with them at the time. We took them up to the room. By now it was about 3 o’clock I guess. Mary did some packing while I sat out on the balcony and played with my goPro camera. Mary had a raffle ticket for some prizes that were being given out at the picture studio. I decided to stay back while she walked down there to see if she wanted anything. She didn’t. She came back and we got cleaned up. As I mentioned, we had an appointment with the art director at 550. So, back down to five to talk to the art director. We needed to finalize what we bought and add the couple of pieces that we won that afternoon. After some initial issues with the financing company we get that straightened out. The Mickey and Donald Duck picture will be delivered along with the red chair picture separately from everything else. Initially, the intent was for us to carry the cruise map home in a big tube that was about 4 foot tall. I couldn’t imagine lugging that through the airport for 20+ hours. Thankfully, the art director, Gareth, offer to ship it to us from New York when the ship gets there and early October. We don’t need it that quickly and if he’s willing to ship it, it will make our life a lot easier. We said our goodbyes to the art director and the art salespeople we had been dealing with – Kristin Scott is the only one that I remember now. I don’t remember now exactly why but we did go back up to the room before dinner. After leaving the room we gave Rosalee, our room steward, her tip. I don’t think I mentioned it, but every day an optional gratuity is added to your cruise bill. For us it was $29 a day. This money goes to people like the room steward, our waiter, our waitress and other people that we deal with – many we don’t know. Mary decided that she did not like this and ask the front desk to remove the optional gratuity from our bill. It came to more than $800. Instead, what we did was give the people that we dealt with most direct tips. Rosalee got a nice chunk. Meow and Nick got nice ones too. The people Mary dealt with at the tea station where she got probably ten teas a day also received tips. We felt better about this knowing that people that helped us directly were getting money directly in their pocket. The optional gratuity was a bit nebulous on where the money went. You weren’t exactly sure. So off to dinner we went. We took the Carlo Rossi wine with us. If you remember, this was the five dollar bottle of wine we bought in Poland. I was not expecting much. Nick opened it for us and we both took a drink. It was not bad but it was not good either. It was like grape juice. Very sweet – too sweet. I guess we got what we ask for when we asked for a six dollar bottle of wine. Because it was being careful with what I ate I only had pasta alfredo and the burger. Mary had potato soup and a burger. For dessert I had a cherry sorbet. Mary had some type of ice cream. For some reason, I don’t know if I ate too fast or what, I got really tired suddenly. To the point where I could barely keep my eyes open. As we finished our dessert and we finished talking to the Australian foursome that we had dinner next to several nights we set our goodbyes to Meow and Nick. They were very good to us. We headed back up to the room in hopes of catching the sunset. We did. Mary took pictures. I took pictures and a video. They turned out really nice. We caught the last sunset of our 28 day adventure. I thought that was pretty cool. After that my job was to stay out of the way. Mary was finishing packing. I really should’ve taken a video of that. You cannot believe the amount of stuff she was able to stuff into the suitcases. You know the saying 10 pounds of crap in a 5 pound bag? Mary was doing 20 pounds of crap and that saved 5 pound bag. I actually find it admirable that she was able to do that. We had a mini scare for a few minutes because Mary could not find her passport. That would’ve been ugly but she found it. It was about 931 the bags finally went outside the door. The signal the end of our cruise. I did some playing around on the laptop. Mary flipped through the stations. We decided to go to bed early because we knew the next day was gonna be a long one. We were in bed by 10 o’clock and probably asleep by 1004.

Day 26 was the first of two at sea days. The ship is making its way up and around Denmark heading towards Southampton. The seas of been pretty calm as we have sailed through some islands the majority of the day. It was cloudy and cool out there. I haven’t looked at the map, but I believe we are around the top of Denmark heading south west. We should be heading southwest most of tomorrow towards Southampton. The seas are a little rough tonight. Probably because weren’t open water again outside of the islands. We were up and pretty much ready to go to breakfast by 9 o’clock. I spent some time playing on the computer trying to get the pictures off of my go Pro on to my laptop. Mary did this and that for about an hour before we went upstairs. My intent was to do little today. That did not go the way I had planned. We went to breakfast on 14. I had a can of monster. Mary ate pretty much a full breakfast. We sat at the table with other couples but they were not very vocal so we didn’t have any of the normal discussions. Because it was a day at sea it was very busy place. We wanted to go to a 1030 lecture on Peter Max. On the way, because we had time, we stopped at the excursions office to get the bill figured out. I don’t know the details because Mary knows but they double charged us for one of our excursions. I think she got that figured out now. From there we went to the Explorers Lounge. For the next 35 or so minutes we listened to a lecture on the artist Peter Max. We learned a great deal about his history and his artwork. Considering I knew next to nothing everything that was discussed was pretty much knew. The important things are that his wife died recently by suicide. He has this dementia at some level. So these two things combined have made him decide to stop producing new art. I didn’t realize he was so wildly popular in the 60s and 70s. He did a lot of work for 9/11. Basically, I learned a lot about him. After the lecture we looked at a few pieces of his art. He has some cool stuff. After the lecture we worked our way up to the pictures place. Mary picked up more pictures from the pictures and we had taken last night. Again, she picked up about 25 or 30 pictures. I’m really curious to see if she has more on this cruise for the last cruise. Either way will have more than 400 pictures. It’s a crazy number. Right next to pictures is Club Fusion or as we know it the bingo hall. Because Mary was playing with the pictures I went ahead and got a tablet for bingo at 1130. For $45 you can play 18 cards for four games, plus you get a paper card so you basically have 19 cards. The first three games were uneventful. Actually the people we know from San Francisco, James W, won the first two games. Because the fourth game is the full house game, which means you have to get every number on the card, I kind of zoned out for a little while. I was playing with the pictures on my phone. I looked up and we had one card that only needed one number. It was after the 50^th ball so we would win the consolation prize, not the jackpot. In the short space of time between realizing we had one number left on one card they called the number. Mary and I both yelled out bingo. It was a good bingo and we pocketed $200. So overall on the two cruises we won $450 in bingo. I doubt that we made any money but the 450 definitely offset a lot of the losses.  After bingo we came up to the room. We had a few minutes to chill. We had a 1 o’clock appointment in the Explorers Lounge. We were invited to a VIP art demonstration. Because we’ve been looking at so much art and have committed to a certain amount we fall into the VIP category. The VIP event was to showcase some very unique art. Specifically there was a very new artist whose name I can’t remember right now. There was a very old artist does some very cool things with three dimensions. And then the art director spent some time discussing the Peter Max works. As the story goes, Peter Max was actually on the Mediterranean  cruise. Because he was on that cruise several pieces of his art were supposed to be on the ship with him but apparently they did not clear customs so the art was not shown to the VIP people on that cruise. It made it on the ship for this cruise so we were the first to see some of the things that were supposed to be shown last week. The new artist had some interesting things. He used acid and other things to do special effects on metal. And then he painted on top of the to create his works of art. There was a green one that both Mary and I really liked. The prices were not that expensive because the guy is a newbie. The older guy, whose name I can’t remember, had some really cool three-dimensional stuff. The art director did say that because of his age and the rarity of his work the prices were crazy. And, because of the mixup with customs, they had a wide range of Peter Max’s. They had things that even the art director had not seen before. Mary and I were both drawn to the sculptures. We went through the presentation and then afterwards we wandered around and looked at everything. We went up to the sculptures. There were several but one that caught my eye was the flag. It is probably a foot tall by a foot and a half wide. It’s about 2 inches deep. It’s acrylic. Kristin, our sales lady, went to retrieve the prices. We were also interested in a Statue of Liberty sculpture. We knew the prices would be crazy, but I was actually surprised they weren’t as high as I thought. We did not make any commitments at that point. We said that we would give it some thought and come back and see the art director at 9 o’clock at night. We left the VIP event, we went up to the main desk to ask about four things actually. The first was is the ride we have from the boat to Heathrow airport accessible? Yes it is. Can Mary get copies of some of the Port guides that she is missing? Yes. How do we handle the luggage that we have that was shipped to the port by Luggage Forward? The lady explained that we should treat it like any other luggage. Lastly, we are interested in the daily gratuity that was applied to our bill. Every day, on our bill was a $29 to the charge. We understood that this was a gratuity for the lady who maintains our room and others. Mary wanted more details on what this breakdown was. Where does the $29 a day go? I don’t remember the details right now but it boiled down to it is spread in varying layers across several different areas. We haven’t decided exactly what we wanted to do, but we are considering undoing the optional gratuity and instead handy specific people will tips. This way we know the money goes to exactly what we wanted to go to. This will be a tomorrow discussion I’m sure. From there we went down to five – the international Café – to get Mary some tea. They had a shrimp salad so I had a plate of that. We came up to the room. I had a beer and some shrimp. I forget now what Mary brought up I think it was a sandwich. I decided that I’d take a nap. Somewhat to my surprise, I crashed. I think I asleep around 530. Mary woke me up about 630 or so. She had already dressed and got ready for dinner. She was in her blue dress that she wore earlier of the cruise. She looked good. I already had my black jeans on so Mary put on a button shirt on me. We picked out a tie. After I was ready to go, he gathered up the things we and we headed out the door. We went straight to five to the dining room. There was a small wait so it took us a little while to get seated. Of course we were seated in the same area we area where we were seated for the entire two cruises. We were seated next to a couple that we have been seated next to in the past. There were some idle chitchat about various sports teams. They were from Australia so there was some discussion about their travel plans home. I kind of half heard it. The previous night, Mary found that the wine list included her favorite Cabernet – Jordan. Because we wanted bingo we had a little money in the pocket. We decided to buy a bottle of Jordan. I don’t know the final price but it will be the most expensive wine we bought this trip. After a few minutes, the bottle came. It opened it up and poured us each a glass. It was as good as you can imagine. For my appetizer I had escargot. Meow asked if I wanted a second one but I decided against it. I want to stay kind of mellow for these last couple of days. For my entrée I had lobster tail. This too was very very good. Mary had a beef pot roast with her big salad. She was happy with her meal. Because we had a date at 9 o’clock with the art director and it was almost 830, we decided against dessert. We could get dessert from the international Café on five later. Decided to see how many picture stops we could accomplish in a half hour. I think the four of them. There was only one that we missed and that was because the photographer was not that his or her station when we came by. The art area it was on the fifth floor. We went down there and went straight to the art director’s office. We did quite a bit of discussion around the flag sculpture and Statue of Liberty sculpture. Have some decisions to make. We looked at everything that we were slated to buy. Again, we have some decisions to make. This will help our art collection. We just have to understand that we want to take on debt. Tonight, I’m sure as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, this will be the main topic I mull over. It’s about an hour there. So that we would meet tomorrow. From there, we went up to the casino. Mary played some blackjack for a short while before she lost her $20. I just was not interested in putting any money in a slot machine. No one was playing Texas hold ‘em. So, we decided to come back to the. We went to five. I decided because we did not have dessert earlier we could have dessert now. I picked out a chocolate mousse class and a small piece of cake. Mary had a piece of carrot cake. We sat inside the international Café for about 15 minutes. We ate our dessert and then decided to go home. That pretty much wraps up the day. As I write this, Mary stuffing clothes into suitcases. I’m going to finish this entry the consider calling it a night. It was a very good day 26. Tomorrow, if I get my wish, I hope to be outside for a couple of hours. I want to sit outside and listen to my book. Over 28 days there is a little downtime. Any down time was usually filled with naps. I am closing day 26.

Day 25 found us sitting in the port of Gdynia, Poland. There were no Princess sponsored accessible excursions so Mary and I decided to walk into town. We were up and to breakfast by 9:00. I had hash browns and orange juice. Mary had a bigger breakfast. The skies were partly cloudy but it was only maybe 50 degrees. We wore our jackets onshore. Off the ship we had our pictures taken. We were told the walk into town was about ten minutes. That was true to a certain extent. The area of town where there were shops and stuff was more like a 45 minute walk. It was a pretty day and thankfully the sidewalks were good.  Nick, our busboy passed us. A little later Meow passed us. On the way in we didn’t stop anywhere. I was taking time lapse videos. We walked half a mile into where the shops started. There was a church. Of course, Mary had to stop. While she was inside I watched the people. Gram and Anna (Australian couple we did St Petersburg and other tours with) showed up. We talked to them for a few minutes before going our separate ways. There was a Starbucks across the street. We agreed to get a cup of tea (Mary) and coffee (Jim). It took 20 minutes to get our order. Not that I cared. I was watching the world go by. We sat there for maybe half an hour chilling. Perfect spot for people watching. A few doors down was a souvenir shop. Mary got magnets. Down several blocks was a ice cream/pastry/etc. shop. We bought two Polish cookies – I’m not sure what made them Polish. They tasted like oatmeal. We also bought perogies. We didn’t know what was inside of them until we ate them on the ship. We think they were filled with mushrooms. All the way down to where the shops started was a lone door with Alkohol stenciled on the door. I couldn’t get in because the shop had a step to get in (it seemed almost every shop had step(s)), I asked Mary to see if they had a cheap red wine.  A few minutes later she came out with a $5 Carlo Rossi. The sales guy recommended it. I don’t have much confidence it will be any good, but it’ll be a $5 experiment. All along the way Mary was taking pictures of this and that. Coming back seemed quicker. When we got back onboard we went to he room. We spent just short of five hours onshore. In many respects, I think I’ll remember Gdynia as one of my favorite stops. We did it our way. We ventured into town – no map just followed others. We took our time. We tried some local fare. No/few cobblestones. It was a perfect day weather wise. A great way to spend our last stop. Mary napped. I worked on this log. We turned in my coupon for five beers. I’ve had two already. Mary went to Thomas Kinkade lecture. She learned about his history and the “N”s. She has been bitten by the art bug. Another hobby 😊

Thursday, September 12, 2019

I’m picking up the story of Day 25. I’m actually writing this Thursday night almost midnight. All signs point to disembark Saturday morning. We knew this day would come. I think we’re just hoping it wouldn’t come so soon – not complaining by any means. In order to attempt to adjust to the time difference a little bit we         are going to stay up later tonight. Not much later, but a couple hours. So, going back to day 25 – yesterday – after Mary returned from the Kinkade lecture we got cleaned up for dinner. At dinner we were seated in the same area. We had a bottle of wine left over from the previous night so we managed to kill that. For my appetizer I had a venison and quail terrine. Very different and very good. For my entrée I had seafood stuffed trout which was amazing. Mary had her big salad and she decided on fried chicken. She was happy with her choice to. I had ice cream – chocolate peanut butter. Mary had cookies with her tea. It was another very nice dinner. For whatever reason though Meow and Nick were crazy slow. The dinner was more than 2 ½ hours long. I’m not complaining but it made us miss some picture stops. We had to go straight from dinner to bingo. At bingo we did not win anything. We did hit a few picture taking stops before they closed at 10 o’clock. There were some good themes this time. For example there was one where we were behind a three card poker table. We had on a hat and we held cards. They were pretty cool pictures. After that we made it back to the room. I started to watch a movie called the hummingbird project or something similar. It didn’t have captions so I did my best to understand what was going on. We crashed shortly thereafter. I would say that we slept pretty well. I only woke up Mary a couple of times. So that wraps up day 25. It was our last onshore adventure. As I mentioned above, it was a good adventure.

I started this note on day 24. Mary still is not back from bingo and I’m starting to wonder where she is. She probably stopped to talk to someone. We got up this morning around 8 o’clock. I slept okay but had some weird dreams. I actually got a real shower today which was nice. We went up to 14 for breakfast. I decided to eat something other than just hashbrowns. I tried the Italian sausage – not that good. I tried the corned beef hash – pretty good. I had an egg and salmon omelette – pretty good. It was way more food than I needed, but that’s become a habit. We met a couple from Washington state. We were out of there in about 45 minutes or so.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Still on Day 24 after breakfast, Mary at Bingo, I begin updating this log back in the room. I recently past 40,000 words. It seems the thing is turned into a book. I am posting this on the Internet as I go. Just before starting this dictation I posted the three previous days entries. I believe there are a couple people out there reading it. I actually write this for myself. I want to be able to pick it up and say a year or two or 10 and read it to remind myself of the good time we had. I don’t think I’ve ever written anything this long which discusses one topic. I know that what I have posted needs a lot of editing, but we’ll see if I ever actually do that. I said to Mary today that with this log, her pictures, my videos and pictures and the pictures we had taken with the Princess we should have this trip pretty well documented. Looking back, I’m pretty sure I could say the same thing for our South America trip. I have these little documents all over the place which discuss in detail various trips. Someday I will put them all in one spot. Again, mostly for my recollection. I started logging or journaling several years ago because I have a terrible memory. Very often Mary will say do you remember XYZ and I’ll say I don’t have a clue. So with that discussion laid down, I will pick up the day 24. It was a day at sea between Helsinki and Gdynia, Poland. Mary came back from bingo around 1230. In the interim she picked up pictures from the picture place. She ended up talking to one of the photographers for a while. She also stopped at the excursions office to see if she could figure out what they were charging us. I didn’t ask for details but it appears that she’s got that figured out. Most importantly, she did not win at bingo. There will be more opportunities I guess. She brought back tea for herself. We decided that we were going to go to the art auction at 1 o’clock. We were convinced that we were not going to buy anything. We already made a purchase. I did have some ideas on how we might change or add to it, but that would come later. We got our bid card. Mary had her eye on a Coleman. I don’t know his first name. As things turned out, there were three Coleman’s in the mystery auction. We bid on the opportunity to buy one at a super reduced price, It was a strange auction because the director had to deal with a few rowdy women (we learned later) and support people goofs. We bid on an eagle print, but decided later not to pursue it. Very few things actually sold. I drank the champagne and watched the happenings. It was over in about 90 minutes. Our next stop was wine tasting. We were seated at a table with two guys. Chuck from Canada and Colin from Australia. (Erin, his wife joined us later.) There were five wines – one sparkling, two whites and two reds. Sparkling was good. The two whites (Albarino from Spain and Torrontes from Argentina) were good. The reds were so-so. One was Pinot Noir. The second was a merlot which we’ve have before – St. Michelle Indian Wells, I believe. We stayed 30 minutes long talking to our table mates. We learn a lot about other countries at these table discussions. For example, Australians rarely tip. They will if service is way above and beyond. In Japan, tipping is usually an insult. Every discussion we have like this uncovers little facts. After we were talked out, we went our way. Mary picked up tea and we went back to the room. We both napped for half an hour before getting dressed for dinner. We half watched the movie Poms. We had an appointment with the art director. We wanted to make a change on the Peter Max we bought. I was looking at a Godard sketch. Mary was interested in one of the Coleman’s. I wasn’t thrilled with which one she chose so we agreed on a different one. This meeting took maybe an hour. We laughed with the art director. At first he came off as stuffy, but he’s actually kind of funny. We went the 150’ to the dining room.  We were seated right away in Meow’s section. I ordered a Spanish red wine. It was $37 but they tack a 18% gratuity on to it. It can get pricy. I had seafood antipasto for appetizer. I had beef pot roast for the entree. We both had a small serving of penne pasta in red sauce. Mary had big salad (sun dried tomatoes and mozzarella) and breaded veal. All the food was good. We were both stuffed so we skipped dessert – a first. Next stop, you guessed it, picture taking. There were three stops. Next was the casino for a slots tournament. Neither of us got on the board. Oh well. It was after 10 so we headed back to 12. We gained an hour over night so we were able to get extra sleep. Because the ship left Helsinki several hours late due to some ship test, the captain needed to make up time to get to Gdynia on time. He had to go faster than normal, plus there was a pretty nasty storm raging. This caused some serious rocking of the ship – probably the worst rocking of the trip. It made sleeping difficult. It got better by 5:00. Day 24 in the books.

Day 23 – already – can you believe it? It is starting to sink in that the end is near. We’ve already started discussing things like doing laundry before packing. We need to double check and make sure that we have transportation from the boat to the airport. Right now we are eight hours ahead of where we are at home. We will gain two hours on the way back to London so that will help with the time gap. I am not done vacationing. I’m starting to get the sense that I am done playing tourist though. We only have one more stop for which we have nothing planned. We’re going to do Poland tomorrow. The worst case, Mary and I will get off the boat onto the dock. Will have our picture taken and get back on the boat. We might get lucky and find them accessible taxi but I’m not counting on it. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself again. Day 23 was Helsinki, Finland. Most notable about this day was the fact that it was the worst weather day we’ve had of the trip – at least up until early afternoon. We had a bus trip scheduled. We got up normal time. We made it up to breakfast on 14. Because Mary was chatting with a couple we were a little late to getting down to our meeting spot but we had to wait a few minutes anyway. We got off the ship on four and made our way to the bus. It was about 45° and a steady rain. Our Baltic jackets saved us again. I was first on the bus and then we had to wait for maybe a half hour for everyone else to get loaded. It was a big tour bus and there were two other chairs with me. They were probably 30 or 40 seats that were filled with other people. I set up my go Pro camera so it looked out the window. I was able to control it with my phone and I was able to take a few pretty cool time-lapse videos. The bus took off and we wandered around for about an hour. As with other bus tours we saw monuments and buildings and other things. Our first stop was at Sibelius Park. I stayed on the bus because it was raining pretty hard. It was also very hilly in the area. Mary got off the bus and took some pictures. We were there for about 15 minutes or so. I found that I could work on the crossword puzzle on my phone so I worked on that. Our next stop was Helsinki Cathedral. The bus parked about a quarter of a mile from the actual Cathedral. It was really raining so again I decided to stay on the bus. Mary took some pictures from the bus door. Everyone piled back on and we drove for a while longer. This time we ended up about a quarter of a mile from a huge Lutheran church. The weather has cleared a little but I was not in the mood for traveling a quarter of a mile uphill to see a Lutheran Church. Again, instead I stayed on the bus. Mary did get out and made the trek up the hill to see the church. From the pictures she took I can see that it was very cool. Very different from other churches we’ve been to. Once everyone was loaded back on the bus we slowly made our way back to port. It was only at 2 ½ hour tour. I liked it because I was able to see the streets of Helsinki. It looks like a very quiet laid-back town. There were very few people actually on the street at 10 o’clock on a Monday morning. I don’t know what time they go to work but they were either already there or they started later. Many of the shops on the streets were still closed. There were not a lot of people on the streets. I can say I came to Helsinki and I saw it. We made it back to the ship. We walked through the little souvenir shop. Once we were back on board we came up to the room. We dropped our stuff off and cleaned up a little bit before going down to five to the pizza parlor. For about an hour we sat there and had pizza. I had a beer from Italy called Perroni. Mary decided she was going to go back in the town to find a pharmacy. She was running low on gloves and toothpaste. She told me later she had to ask where the toothpaste was because all the boxes and aisle markers were in Finnish. I saw the tube. It’s not shaped like our tubes nor was there a word on it that would tell me it toothpaste. Just odd I guess. While I was in the room I watched a movie and napped. Mary was gone for about two hours. She texted me a couple of times. Her text seemed to indicate that she would be back shortly. I woke up an hour later and she was still not here so I got mildly concerned. As it turns out the bus that she took in the town stopped running at 4 o’clock. So she was dropped off in the center of town and had to figure out her own way back to the ship. Thankfully, there were plenty of taxis and that’s how she got back. The ship itself did not leave until this morning so it was not a matter of missing the ship. After she got back we cleaned up and headed out to dinner. We took the white bottle of wine. It’s our last bottle of wine. I guess I might have to buy a bottle or two for the last few nights. At dinner, for my appetizer I had scallop and shrimp ceviche. For my entrée I had orange roughy. Both for very good. Mary and I shared a small bowl of pesto pasta which was okay. Mary had her salad at a burger for dinner. We both had black forest cake for dessert. We set our goodbyes and we were out of the dining room. We did stop at three picture taking stops. From there we walked down to seven to where we pick up the pictures taken the day before. At first we couldn’t find any but by the end we had found another 25 pictures or so. Mary also stopped at the Internet place to get her minutes refreshed. Apparently she forgot to logout at some point and all of her minutes were used up. Thankfully the guy running the Internet shop gave her her time back. Because it had been a full couple of days we decided to go back to the room early and watch a movie. We watched the movie On the Basis of Sex about a Supreme Court justice. It was a pretty good movie. In between Mary did the laundry. We should be set for the rest of the trip. She had the laundry room to herself. She might have procrastinated one more day but we were both out of clean undies. By time the movie and laundry were over we were both ready for bed. And that’s what we did. Day 23 complete.

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

I’m alone in the room on day 24. Mary is out playing bingo. I decided to stay in and work on this log. We have other things scheduled throughout the afternoon so I wanted to take the advantage of this time. We are at sea today on our way to Poland. Before I discuss that though let me pick up the story on day 22. It was our second day in St. Petersburg. Again, we were up early. We went up to breakfast and ate something quick. We were down off the ship and through immigration by about 830. We waited there for about 15 minutes before our tour guide showed up. The lady who runs the company also showed up. As it turns out, I did not pay the full fare. I only paid the down payment so we had to pay the remainder of the bill. That took a few minutes but by 9 o’clock we’re on our way. We were loaded up into the van, tied down and headed out of port. The day was cool with partly cloudy skies. Our first stop was the Hermitage Museum. It is a huge art museum with something like 11 million pieces of art. If I remember what the tour guide said there were 1000 rooms. Before we went into the actual museum, we were dropped off in a huge square with several large buildings surrounding its edges. I believe they were all palaces. The main building we went into for the museum was originally Catherine  II Palace, if I remember correctly. I was actually looking forward to this on the tour. I like art museums. As I mentioned, the previous day or so we attended the lecture on what paintings to look at when we got to the Hermitage. We did end up seeing two Leonardo da Vinci’s. We did not see the Rembrandt or Monet’s. We were actually pretty much rushed through about a third of the first floor. We were in there for about two hours, but it took about a half-hour to get to the first room because of security checks and slow lifts to get up staircases. Once we were on the first floor things went a little quicker. We were very early in the day so it was relatively quiet. By time we left though, two hours later, there was hardly room to stand. You kind of moved with the crowd. Our tour guide did a pretty good job of explaining the paintings and things she stopped at. In every room that we stopped, she would pick one piece of art and discuss it for a few minutes. Then we would go to the next room. As I mentioned, you could probably spend an hour in any room. It boils down to the fact that if we want to spend any time in this museum we will have to come back. Around 12 o’clock we decided to head for the cafeteria for a quick lunch. Before that we did that we did a potty run. Our lunch consisted of sandwiches purchased in the cafeteria. Mary asked the person behind the counter what type of sandwich this was but they didn’t speak English. Mary thinks we had turkey sandwiches. Who knows. They were pretty good nonetheless. We had several more stops to go so we got out of the Hermitage pretty quickly. The building itself was cool. Obviously you go there to see the artwork but you could spend time in every room looking at things like the floor layout, the ceiling, the door hinges and handles. The intricate layout of the wood floors in every room was mind-boggling. Anyway, we made our way back out of the museum – which took another 20 minutes or so – onto the van. Literally, about five minutes away in the van, we pulled up to a church on the canal side. I think she called the blood church because that’s where Alexander II was killed. We went in there and spent about 45 minutes or so looking at all the paintings on the wall and other artifacts. I have to admit by now we have seen enough churches so I was only mildly interested. The story was interesting which helped make the visit memorable. What was really cool about this church was the steeples. It have to see the pictures but when you think of a Russian Orthodox Church you see the fancy bulbs on top of the church. These were cool. Loaded back up and the van, we drove down the road again for about 15 minutes or so. We stopped at St. Isaacs church. The majority of the discussion about this church was around its construction. How were the columns built. What was the layout of the ceiling. That kind of stuff. It was less about the church itself or St. Isaac. If you are an architecture fan it would’ve been a great visit. It took 14 years just to build the columns that would support the roof. From St. Isaacs we drove a little further up to either Peter or Paul’s fortress. I forget which. This was a sizable church in the middle of an open square. Because of the open space of the square itself, the church itself looked small. The bad thing about this was that there was about 500 or so feet of cobblestone to get to the church. I initially thought I would not go, but the tour guide had already purchased tickets so I was kind of obligated. Mary manhandled me to the church itself. What was interesting about this church was that it holds the remains of many, if not all, Russian Czars and czarina’s. There were several marble caskets in the building. The people were not actually in the caskets but they were buried some number of feet underneath the respective casket. They had a special room with the remains they have of Nicholas the second and his family after they were shot to death in 1917. According to the story, there are two children whose remains are not yet in that room. I’m not sure why. We wandered around and looked at the respective caskets. We were in and out of there in about an hour. In any one of these buildings you could spent the day looking at the finer details. Instead, we did the drive-by approach. We learned enough about it to say we had been there. I guess this is okay. I could’ve spent the entire day at the Hermitage. As I mentioned above, if I see one more church . . .  The other thing that is interesting is that these are ancient buildings and the things that they have done to make them accessible. There are chairlifts to go up three or four stairs. There are modern elevators that were jammed into corners of ancient buildings. There are steel plates that go over door transitions. There are long and winding and rickety ramps that go up the sides of buildings to get up to the main doors. Basically, they do what works. I would imagine that in the United States some of it would not be allowed do to safety reasons but were not in the United States. I guess if it is a revenue generator, they make it accessible. It was getting close to the time when we had to be back to the ship. Our tour guide had two more drive-by stop she wanted us to see. They were both ships. One was a more modern Navy ship and the other was an ancient ship. She had some story behind both of them which are kind of half to listened to. We made our way back to the ship. The driver unloaded us. We set our goodbyes. Both the driver and tour guide received tips. As with other personally led tours, this one was very good. I will say that at times we felt rushed. I know they want us to see as much from St. Petersburg as they can in two days, but it would be nice if we were able to choose to spend more time at one versus going to another. I will have to see how the rest of the trip plays out. Initially I thought that St. Petersburg would be the highlight. It might still turn out to be the highlight. I can easily see us going back again. After we set our goodbyes, we made it back to the port building and onto the ship. It was about 5 o’clock. We went up to the room after picking up some tea and a sandwich from five. We both took a nap which ended up being an hour or more. We didn’t get to dinner until almost 745. Playing tourist is tiring. At dinner I had artichoke and crab dip for my appetizer. I had a seafood skewered dinner which included fish and scallops and shrimp. I also had a small portion of pad Thai. This was good but not my idea of real pad Thai. Mary had her big salad and cottage pie, which is very much like shepherd’s pie. We drank the rest of the wine from the bottle we brought the day before. We both had ice cream for dessert. We spent a few minutes talking with Meow. We learned that she actually is married to someone on another ship. She only sees him once every nine months. She must work 80+ a week. She rarely gets off the ship. It didn’t sound like a very pleasant job. I can only imagine that the money she makes get sent back home. Maybe future conversations will uncover this. From dinner we were able to stop it too picture taking spots. Because it had been a long day we stopped and got tea for Mary and went home. We started to watch a movie but quickly decided to go to bed. It had been a long day. The both days in St. Petersburg were very busy and very worthy. I can see us coming back.

Day 21 is the first day of two in St. Petersburg, Russia. I did not sleep well the night before. My mind was racing on any number of subjects. I did finally go to sleep but we had to get up early. Actually we are up by 6 o’clock. We had to be downstairs by 8 o’clock so we had breakfast delivered. I think we were both a little anxious because we weren’t sure we had everything we needed to get through Russia immigration process. The notes that the ship people sent out were conflicting and confusing. They kind of all said the same thing but a different mix. We know we needed our cruise card, our passports and proof that we had a tour scheduled. We had these things so I felt pretty comfortable. I thought worst case they would not let us in and we would have to spend two days on the ship. We ate our breakfast and got our stuff together. We left the room about 7:50 so we were a little early to where we were supposed to meet – on the fifth floor in the Savoy dining room. We got down there and the lady there asked us to we have the things I mentioned above. We said yes and she said go down to the fourth floor. We get off the ship by showing our cruise cards like always. We walked into a building and right there was Russia immigration. We had waited in line for a couple of minutes but then we walked up show the lady behind the cage our passports and the tour ticket and we were through immigration in about 45 seconds. We were officially in Russia. We had to walk through the little port building to an area where various tour guides were waiting for their people. Literally right outside the door was a lady holding the sign with my name and Anna’s name. Anna and Gram, from Australia were traveling with us on this trip too. The company we booked the tour with is called I Love to Travel St. Petersburg. We did quick introductions and made our way to the van. It was the same type of van that we used in Estonia but thankfully it was only two wheelchairs. This driver had a much better idea on how to tie down chairs. He was much more efficient. So he loaded us up and we were pretty much our way well before 9 o’clock. If I remember correctly the drivers name was Eugene in the tour guide’s name was Eugina. Like every bus tour we’ve taken so far it starts out by driving around the city for an hour. This tour guide was much better because we could hear her and understand her. When we get off the ship it was cold – probably only about 50° as we moved away from the water it warmed up and I was still in my jacket. It got really warm in the van for a little while but I was able to unzip it a bit. We passed countless buildings of different historical references. We learned that there were 24 palaces in the city. Countless other buildings had some historical value. There were all kinds of monuments. I was surprised at the size of the city. I was equally surprised by the number of people on the street corners that early on a Saturday. Granted a lot of them were tourists but a lot of them had to be locals because there were just so many of them. The first thing that I noticed was there were no small buildings. Every building was a block or two long by about 10 stories tall. There were entire stretches of street that were one long building. The streets were narrow with about 4 feet of sidewalk on each side and then buildings. You felt like you were going down a tunnel. Our tour guide said that most people live in apartment buildings. She mentioned something about having to pay the state for hot water. I may not of understood correctly but she made it sound like hot water was a luxury. Most of the buildings had that old almost unkempt look. There were a few very modern buildings out towards the edge of the city, but in the city itself everything was a couple of hundred years old it seemed. Like other European cities, the traffic was crazy. I am surprised that there is not an accident every 14 seconds. It seems that if you don’t change lanes 10 times in a block you’re not doing it correctly. Cut the other guy off is expected. All this wandering around for about an hour led us to Peterof, which is a huge park. When the van stopped, the driver got us out. We made our way through the ticket gate. I was a bit worried because right off the bat there were a couple of pretty serious downhills. This would make the trip back difficult. Mary worked her way down the hills with me. Towards the bottom there is a bathroom. I didn’t have to go but Mary and Anna did so we took a while there. After that we went down a little lower to the lower Park. You really have to see the pictures to understand how cool this park was. I think our tour guide said there were 23,000 fountains. I don’t think there were 23,000 fountains there were probably 23,000 waterspouts that made up maybe 1500 fountains. Nonetheless, even 1500 fountains is a lot. We saw countless gardens. There were several monuments. We walked by a few palaces of the various Russians czars. There were certain areas that had literally thousands of tourists in the same area but then you could walk for a minute or two and you would be all by yourself. Long tree lined access ways were broken up by monuments and gardens. Tourists tended to flock around these. All along the way our tour guide was talking about how this czar built this and this czar built this and all what happened in World War II etc., etc. It was all interesting information but after about the first half hour of it I was beyond confused and decided to just watch the people and the scenery. The fountains were cool. In one area outside of a big palace they were all in sync. Our tour guide claimed that pumps were not used for these water displays. She said somehow gravity and water pressure from above maintain the flow. I didn’t actually understand it but I believe her. We spent a good two hours wandering around. Mary must of got near 10,000 steps. We worked our way back up to where the van was. Going back up those hills was a pain in the you know what but Mary did well. We loaded back up on the van and drove away. Our intent was to go to a place for lunch. We decided to go to a place in the city that our tour guide recommended. Unfortunately, the place recommended was not assessible. St. Petersburg is a city that is beginning to address some of its accessibility options but it’s a far cry from being assessible. We then drove to a second-place which for some reason wasn’t acceptable. We ended up at a third-place which was actually a restaurant inside of a high-end hotel. We wasted a good hour or more trying to track down a place for lunch. This had some repercussions down the road. When we finally did get to the hotel for lunch it was a great experience. We were seated in a second-floor open area. It was kind of a cool room to be in. The menu was displayed on iPads. Everyone looked at their iPad trying to come up with what they wanted to have for lunch. They had a large selection. One of their areas of interest was foods of Russia. I went there and found vodka and something called the Russian Plate. I ordered the vodka – real Russian vodka. I can’t even tell you the name of it because it was all in Russian Cyrillic. The Russian plate had hearing, pickles, pickled onions and rye bread. There was something I thought were green beans but turned out to be something completely different – not sure what it was. The vodka was good. I was tempted to have another, but decided against it. The Russian plate was interesting to. The herring was good. As was the cheese and pickles. Mary had a salad and some perogies – meat filled pastries. She was happy with her decision too. Everyone was happy with her selections. Actually, before the food arrived we were given a bread bowl, butter, olives, nuts and a few other small dishes of stuff. This was a meal in itself. When the actual meals can it was just that much more food. We sat there for about an hour. We’re not exactly sure based on the conversion rate of rubles to dollars, but we think we spent about $35 on lunch, just for Mary and me. It seemed odd but the waitress had a hard time with separate bills. Our tour guide had to literally break the bill into our separate bills and then have the waitress create three separate checks. This took a good 15 minutes or so to get straight. Nonetheless, it was a good experience. I can honestly say I’ve had true Russian vodka. I can say I had true Russian delicacies. We paid for a lunch and made our way downstairs. The driver was waiting for us so we got back on the van. I believe the next stop was supposed to be to a cathedral but because we are running late and it looks like the weather was changing our tour guide decided on the boat tour. We drove a short distance to a nearby canal. We got out of the van and went towards the water’s edge. Every trip is not complete unless we have some cobblestone. There was about a 50 foot downhill stretch of cobblestone from the top of the street to where the boat was going to pick us up. Mary muscled me down to the water’s edge as we waited for the boat. The boat pulled up and tied off. If you are looking for a safe way to do it, it was not here. I didn’t see a life jacket anywhere. The boat was kind of tied off, while others were holding it steady. They put a piece of wood between the boat’s edge and the street. It went smoother than it could have gone but we were on the boat. Anna didn’t want to do it but I think she felt obligated after I did it first. The boat tour itself was cool. We were on it for about an hour. We were able to see buildings and things that you were not able to see from the van. Mary took countless pictures and I got a time-lapse video of part of it. The downside was the weather was turning and got really cold and windy for the last half hour or so. Part of the problem was I got warm with my jacket and so that when I got cold and I got really cold. There were blankets on the boat and that helped a little. We were not tied down on this boat so it was quite rocky then our captain decided to cut off another boat which made the whole experience extra rocky. Like the van driver, the captain did not speak any English. During the entire trip the captain kept talking on the radio about something. As I mentioned the river was very busy so he may have been directing traffic for all I know. I was not afraid of flopping in the river, but it could’ve happened. If you can imagine a traffic jam on the street, there was a traffic jam of boats on these canals and rivers. We did come to an area that opened up wide and everybody went their own way. As with the entire tour, our tour guide had a story for everything. By this time I just tuned her out. It was just too much information. We made our way one huge circle back to where we got on the boat. The driver was there with the van. Much like getting on the boat, we got off. Getting off seemed to be a little easier because we were going backwards. What we couldn’t see couldn’t bother us. Again, we were loaded on the van. By now it was almost 6 o’clock. The tour was supposed to end at 5 o’clock. We made our way back to the ship. We set our goodbyes to the tour guide and driver. We would meet them again tomorrow at 9 o’clock in the morning. Mary and I went through the souvenir shop in the port building. We picked up our magnets and a few other miscellaneous things. We had to go back to immigration to get on the ship. This took a few seconds and we were on our way back to the ship. We came up to the room dropped the stuff off and then went up to 14 for dinner. 14 is the buffet area. Because there were 600 passengers that got off and took a train to Moscow, the ship had its dining rooms closed. There was one dining room that was open though. Mary suggested going to the dining room but I said let’s try 14. It’s one of those times I should’ve listened to her. We went up. None of it was good, except for the soup. We set up there for about a half hour before coming back to the room. That’s where I started this entry. Mary went down to seven to pick up pictures and get yourself some tea. As I write this line she is sitting next to me managing the pictures. She down loads the pictures from the camera her laptop and puts them in the proper folders. It’s about 930 at night. We are trying to go to bed early. We’ll see how that goes. As I’ve mentioned before when we have a personal tour it makes a world of difference. The first day in St. Petersburg is no exception. The park was cool. The lunch was cool. The boat ride was cool – literally in this case. If we did a Princess managed tour we would not have been able to do all three of these. We might’ve been able to do one but it would not have been to the same level. Tomorrow is a whole day where we get to see even more of St. Petersburg. Yes, it’s probably expensive, but it’s worth it for the experience. I can honestly say I know St. Petersburg a little better based on these adventures. That wraps up day 21. Six to go.

I am writing this on the morning of the 20. I’m surprised we’re 20 days into this already. We were in the home stretch and we will be back in Florida before we know it. Before we get there though we have some cool things ahead of us. Today, for example we are in Estonia. How many people can you say you know have been to Estonia. Mary didn’t even know it is a country. We are in its capital named Tallinn. The ship only docked about an hour ago. We don’t have to get off for our bus trip until 12 o’clock. Mary went up and got breakfast and she brought me back some hash browns. She managed some of her pictures this morning. Between the Princess pictures and her camera pictures she probably has 2000 pictures now. I will write more when we return this afternoon. We are only in Estonia for about four hours. This weekend we are in St. Petersburg. We are both looking forward to that. But, that has to wait until it happens. That’s enough for now.

Saturday, September 7, 2019

I am sitting in our cabin. We spent the day in St. Petersburg, Russia. Before I get there though I need to finish up day 20. As I mentioned above, we were scheduled to get off the boat that 12 o’clock or so. We made our way down to the seventh floor. There we sat with some other people waiting for wheelchair access vehicles. After about 15 minutes we were directed to get off on four. As chance would have it, we were slated to be on the same bus with Gram and Anna, the couple from Australia we met. Anna is in a chair. She is a paraplegic. When we went outside it was about 50° and raining. By time we walked the quarter of a mile or so to where the buses were the sun was out. It was one of those days. Even though there were only two chairs on this van, the guy had troubles with the tiedowns. There were two scooters that were loaded on also. These people manage to walk to their seats but there scooters needed to be tied down behind us. Needless to say, we were all jammed in this little van. I wasn’t so worried about the tiedowns because I was wedged in so tightly. This means that it took extra long to get us in the van initially. He did finally get it situated and we are on our way. It was a driving tour and that’s exactly what it was. We drove around and through Tallinn for about an hour. Because of the position of the van with the chairs and everything it was difficult for Mary to take pictures of the windows. It was similar to Rome and that we drove by things that 10 to 20 miles an hour as they were pointed out. The tour guide was a very animated lady. She tried to be funny and in some cases she was. She had a flaky microphone and half of the things she said no one could hear. She tried to talk more loudly and closer to the microphone but that didn’t really help. So what this boils down to is she talked for about an hour or more and some people pretended to hear her. I’m sure Mary heard her because Mary’s get good hearing. We drove through several areas – most seem to be residential. They didn’t really seem to be a downtown per se. Estonia has been ruled by just about every surrounding country. They finally gained their own independence after the USSR failed. The tour guide said that they are relying on tourism. I was kind of strange because it really was nothing that comes to mind that I would go out of my way to the capital of Estonia. After driving through the streets for an hour or more we ended up at the top of a hill near a cathedral. It was our one and only picture stop. Unfortunately, the cobblestones up there were a nightmare. They were worse than some of the other cobblestones we have run into. I couldn’t get into the church, so I decided to stay in a sunlit area and watched the people. Mary was able to going to the Cathedral but she was not allowed to take pictures. This did not make her happy. We hung out in this area for about an hour maybe. There were a lot of other people from other tour groups wandering around. As I mentioned, there was very little in this particular town to consider having tour groups visit. This Cathedral, in my opinion, was a longshot at best. Anyway, we got in the van and we drove back towards the ship. It was only a 2 ½ hour tour and that might’ve been an hour too long. We made it to the port where the ship was. As we were coming into the port area I noticed a series of little souvenir shops. The van driver drove us up to the side of the ship and we all got out. Unfortunately, one of the scooters died and had to be manually lifted off the van. I don’t know what this guy was going to do because he relied on that scooter. I feel bad for him. We all got off the van. Because we were early and it was nice out Mary decided to walk back the half mile or so to the souvenir shop I decided to stay outside the ship and push around and play with my camera while she went back. She was able to get there and back in about 45 minutes. I took several pictures and I wandered around and basically did whatever I wanted. I did get yelled at for going to close to the water but oh well. Mary was able to get our magnets. She bought me a T-shirt. After this we made our way back to our room. We had the manage our pictures that we took that day. We do this picture management so we stay ahead of it. What this basically means is moving the pictures from the cameras to the computers and putting them in the appropriate folders and stuff. It was a formal night on the ship so we had to get dressed. Mary put on her pink dress. I already had on my black pants so Mary just put a shirt over my shirt. We added a tie and we were out the door. We brought our last red bottle of wine. Before going to dinner though we stopped at the Explorers Lounge. They were having a lecture on the art museum in St. Petersburg called the Hermitage. The art director was going through some of the paintings that we need to see when we visit the Hermitage. This took about 30 minutes. Hopefully, when we go to the Hermitage will be able to see some of these masters. From the lecture hall we went to two picture taking spots. We made our way to the dining room and were seated in the same area we have eaten dinner the whole ship. I’m not complaining. For my appetizer I wanted the crayfish dish. Somehow I ended up with a pineapple dish. Instead of saying anything I just ate the pineapple which was actually pretty good. Mary had a big salad for her appetizer. For her entrée she ate roasted pork belly. She had never had this before, nor had I. Turns out she really liked it. I had lobster tail and crabcake times two. Our waiter, Meow, asked if I wanted another lobster tail. I said yes. Instead of another lobster tail what she brought me was another entire dinner. I had two lobster tails and two crabcakes and two sets of vegetables. I managed to eat them all. I think we got away without having to pay for the corkage fee on the bottle of wine we brought. That is a mini win. For dessert we both had cherries Jubilee. I’d never had this before and wasn’t sure what to expect. Overall, it was good. We set our goodbyes and managed to work our way to the casino. They had a blackjack tournament going on so Mary and I both tried one time. Neither of us made the board so it was a tried but failed effort. You could spend more money but the chances of getting on the board were slim the nail because the numbers that were already up there were pretty big. You need a lot of luck to get on the board. We then wandered over to the Texas hold ‘em table. There were four people playing so we sat down and played for about 45 minutes. I ended up almost doubling my money. I’m not sure how Mary did. We knew we had a big day coming up so we decided to head home a little early. We were actually both in bed by 10 o’clock which is early for us on this trip. Overall, it was another good day. The visit to Tallinn was okay at best. We can definitely say that we visited Estonia. I’m not sure I’ll ever make it back unless by mistake. We did have quality time on the ship after our trip. We had a good meal. We learned a little bit about a fancy museum. We tried our hand at winning some money and was partially successful. This closes out day 20.

Day 19 found us approaching Stockholm. The ship did not actually dock in Stockholm until 9 o’clock or shortly thereafter. When we got up we could see the ship moving down a long access way to where we actually docked. Stockholm and the surrounding area is made up of hundreds of islands. I did not look at a map but I imagine we worked our way through these islands to get to Stockholm. I actually got a very good video of us leaving Stockholm. So we got up about 830. We went up to 14 and got some breakfast. We didn’t have to be to our meeting point until 10 o’clock. I had hash browns for breakfast. And some orange juice now that I remember it. Mary had omelette and bacon. After our quick breakfast we made our way down to six. We were supposed to meet in the casino. Once there, we waited for about half an hour. From there we got off the boat and made our way on shore. This was the test – today have the lift on the bus? As it turns out, they did. It was very mild confusion because there were a couple of people in scooters who thought they should stay in their scooters but were not categorized that way. They took the scooters up the ramp and then they had to walk to a seat on the bus. It worked out for me. There were three other chairs on the bus, but the boss could accommodate them. So once we were all strapped in the boss it took off. We were pretty close to downtown so we saw the sites right away. I would say we drove for about 45 minutes through the different areas and across the different islands that make up Stockholm. The bus pulled up in this strange area that reminded me of Lower Wacker in Chicago. That was actually pretty much what it was. We were let off the boss and we had to take an elevator up to a higher level which would be street-level. However, street-level at this point was a big area like a Plaza that went for half a mile or so. Initially, we did not know what we were supposed to do up there. Because we took our time – was my fault because I was setting up my camera and stuff – the majority of the people got ahead of us. After a few minutes of bewilderment we followed the tour guide and she directed us in the correct direction. We worked our way up the Plaza to a place called Skyview. It’s hard to describe. We went into this building where after waiting a few minutes we sat through a video of what Skyview is. From there we went into this clear glass bubble, for lack of a better term. It allows you to see all 360°. Once you are in the bubble it started to rise on the side of the building. Guessing, it probably one of 200 feet or so. It provided tremendous views of Stockholm in every direction. There were guides inside the bubble that showed various landmarks. Mary took a couple hundred pictures. I played with my go Pro and got a decent video but it doesn’t do it justice. Going up and coming back down took about 30 minutes. There were about 10 of us in the bubble. When we got to the top we all shuffled around so we could get a view of what we missed on the way up. In some respects it was like going to the top of the Hancock Tower or Sears Tower in Chicago. Once at the top you could see forever. It was a pretty day out. When we first got off the ship it was cloudy and drizzling. In the bubble though it was clear. Earlier had put on my jacket and I was roasting in the sunlight of the bubble. It didn’t matter much though because once I got out of the bubble and back down to street-level I needed the jacket again. We managed our way back to the bus and everybody piled back in. We were only about 10 minutes away from the ship so it was a quick trip. After we got off the bus, Mary tipped both the driver and tour guide. Between the bus loading area and the ship itself was a small building that held a souvenir shop. Mary bought our magnets there. I bought a Swedish horse which has some historical significance which I need to research. I thought it would be a cool keepsake. In this building they had great Internet access so we spent probably an hour updating all of our accounts. After we were caught up on our Internet activities, we made our way onto the ship. Once were back on the ship we came straight to the room. We spent an hour or so managing the pictures that we capture. Mary takes some off of her camera and put some onto her laptop. I have to play with my GoPro camera to free up space. After that we both took a nap for a little while. There wasn’t much time because we need to get to the excursions office by 6 o’clock. There was some confusion on our ticket for Estonia. The one thing says it was accessible and the other thing said it wasn’t so we wanted to confirm. From there we had the appointment with the art office. As I mentioned earlier, we wanted to reconcile the things that we bid on. We also wanted to talk about a starter kit – that’s what I’ll call it – of pieces of art from modern Masters. Kristin, our art agent, set up eight works of art for us to view. There were two that were considered pop art. There were two that were considered metal art. Two that were female portrait paintings. And to that were landscape paintings. These are all modern painters and their art is in demand. We talked about one package price for all eight. Mary and I had some decisions to make. In the meantime we reconciled the list of things that we had already been committed too. We ended up committing ourselves to Warner Bros. scenes which was about $200. We also decided to buy the three landscape pictures that we won the option to buy in the auction the day before. We have one landscape scene picture in our bedroom now. We thought these three would complement that pretty well. It would make a nice set. So all these discussions took about an hour and a half. We can get to dinner until almost 8 o’clock. We were seated in the area with Meow and Nick. Again, Mary had her big salad. She chose to go with a street cheeseburger though. None of the main entrées thrilled her. Initially I was gonna go with the burger, but I decided to try a few things I had not had ever or recently. For my appetizer I had chicken liver tart which was really good. For my entrée I had a braised short rib dish which included vegetables and mashed potatoes. This too was very good. We killed the bottle of wine we brought the night before. For dessert I had ice cream. Mary had apple strudel with ice cream. We talked to Nick the busboy for a little while before leaving. Mary got his full story too. There was only one picture stop which we stopped at and talk to the photographer, Karen. Because we were so late they had already knocked down the other stations. We went to the actual picture area where we picked up pictures from the previous night. We probably picked up another 30 or 40 pictures. From the picture place we decided to go back to the casino. No one was playing cards so we walked in and walked out. We came back upstairs to watch the movie we had started earlier in the day. We were able to watch the end the because we stayed awake long enough. That was day 19.