Helsinki, Finland

For today's tour of Helsinki our guide was Casper (the friendly host).

He was a very funny guy. At one point he was trying to tell us about a plague that had killed a high proportion of the city's population, but he couldn't remember the year.

"It was in .... uh ... in .... well it's over now anyway." 

Our first stop was the Sibelius monument.

Then we went to the famous Church of the Rock.  A few years back I visited a church in St Emilion which was described as the largest underground church in Europe and someone commented that it couldn't be as big as this one in Helsinki.   Having now visited this one I can resolve the disagreement by saying that the Finnish church is not underground.  While the builders may have blasted a crater into the rock to clear the area where the congregation sits, the top half of the church has windows and there is a metal roof.  The one in St Emillion truly had been carved out of stone  100% underground with columns of stone left untouched to ensure the "roof" didn't cave in.

Our final stop was the main square with the goverment buildings.

As it was our last night onboard, Denise and I went to the Italian restaurant for a special meal, before putting our suitcases outside the room for collection.  Tomorrow we disembark in Stockholm.

Talinn, Estonia

Estonia is an even less populous country than Latvia.  1.3 million in the country as a whole and 450,000 live in the capital: Talinn.

We had a tour of the city, that included a visit to this open air arena where they hold a singing festival.  Estonians are obviously very into singing and the take it seriously.  This arena holds 30,000 singers and has space for over 100,000 spectators on the grass in front.  That's 10% of the population.  The score for the competition is published 2-3 years in advance and local choirs practice and compete to be in the last 30,000.  At the top of the tower next to the arena is a torch. They have a whole ceremony along the lines of the Olympics where a flame is brought across the country and burns at the top of the tower while the competition is taking place.

We walked around the old town, including the old city walls and fortress.  The old town is up on a rock, so there were some good views from there.

There are an assortment of churches including Russian Orthadox and the famous St Olaf's Lutheran, which was apparently the tallest building in the Baltic at one time.

To end with a fascinating fact.  The Estonian national anthem and the Finnish national anthem use the same tune, albeit with different words.  The Finns like to point out that they had it first and the Estonians "stole" it from them.  During the time that Estonia was part of the USSR, the Estonians were forbidden from singing or playing this anthem. Doing so could mean imprisonment.  But the tale doesn't end there.  The 1980 Olympics were held in Moscow, but Moscow is far inland. So the sailing events for those Olympics were held in Talinn. One of the sailing medals was won by a Finn, so the Russians had no option but to play the tune of the Estonian national anthem during the medal ceremony.

Riga, Latvia

Riga (population 600,000) is the capital of Latvia. The spot where we are docked is much more attractive than Gdansk or Liepaja.

We had a tour of the city.

We were treated to a concert of Latvian folk dancing.

Riga is famous for its art deco buildings.

This cat weather vane (where the cat looks like it's spraying) is very well loved and has become the symbol of the city. The story behind it is that there was a rich merchant who was denied membership of the merchant's guild. So he bought this house (which is just across the road from the guildhouse) where the predominant wind direction meant that the cat usually looked like it was spraying on the guildhouse.

Liepaja, Latvia

This morning's docking location in Liepaja rivaled Gdansk in its attractiveness. 

The included excursion "Liepaja city highlights" was somewhat lacking in highlights. Despite being Latvia's third largest "city", Liepaja has only 60,000 inhabitants. So there wasn't that much to see. 

Highlight of the tour was an organ concert in St Trinity's Lutheran Cathedral.

Other than that we were treated to the local market and the beach.

Liepaja is sometimes known as the city of wind, and it was certainly very windy today. Rather than hang around in the town for "free time", we took the shuttle bus back to the ship and I washed my hair.  We won this afternoon's trivia quiz and this evening we had a nice meal at the hot rocks grill restaurant on the pool deck, where you cook your own meat.

Tomorrow we will be visiting Riga, Latvia's capital. The sea is a bit choppy this evening.

Gdansk

This morning we are docked in the port of Gdansk, on the Vistula river, and this was the lovely view from our veranda.

Fortunately, the old town, where we were taken for our excursion, was a lot more attractive.

Amongst the main attractions is the statue of Neptune. His "package" is strategically covered by a seahorse fin. Apparently, this was necessary because of the historical tradition that unmarried young women who touched him there would be married soon after. 

The Fahrenheit monument pays tribute to Daniel Fahrenheit,  the inventor of the Fahrenheit scale, who was born here in 1686.

St Mary's church, built in 1502, is the largest brick church in the world.

Buildings often have decorations on their roofs indicating the coat of arms of the family that lived there, or the purpose of the building for public buildings.  This particular building was an amunition warehouse and the metallic decor represents an explosion rather than a flower.

Back onboard in the afternoon, Denise swept the field at bingo. After a nice meal at the main restaurant we had a nightcap in the observation lounge. The clocks go forward an hour onto Latvian time overnight, so we didn't stay up too late.

Bornholm

Today we are docked at Ronne (population 14000), the largest town on the island of Bornholm (population 40000).  Although this island in the Baltic is part of Denmark, it is physically much closer to Sweden, and the population are fiercely independent.

We had a coach tour of the island, starting at the ruins of the fortress of Hammershus, which is the largest fortress in Scandinavia.  

After this we moved on to the quaint fishing village of Gudhjem.  Denmark is a very flat country and this one of very few towns that is built on a hill. 

There are 2 smaller islands just off the coast from Gudhjem and every morning at 10am the local choir sing as the ferry to these islands departs, in order to wish the ship a safe journey.

Our final stop of the tour was at Osterlars church. There are 7 round churches in Denmark, and 4 of them are on Bornholm.

Back onboard, Denise did unfairly well at the bingo, winning multiple times. We then teamed up with an Australian couple, Lynn and Rudi, to come 2nd in the trivia quiz.

We had an evening meal at the poolside grill, where we got to cook our own meat on hot rocks.  Then we went for our evening nightcap in the observation lounge as the ship sailed away from Bornholm and on towards tomorrow's stop at Gdansk, Poland. 

All Aboard Silver Dawn

Short entry for today as we're not doing much except boarding the ship.

We checked out of our hotel this morning after 2 lovely days in Copenhagen,  and took a taxi to the port to board our ship: Silver Dawn.  

After a quick cocktail and a buffet lunch we were allowed into our suite where a bottle of champagne was waiting. 

We sailed out of port just as we were finishing dinner, so Denise and I headed up to the observation lounge on the top deck for the best view.

We spent the rest of the evening up there having a few cocktails while we tailed another cruise ship out to sea, passing the Oresand bridge that connects Denmark to Sweden and also passing some huge wind farms.