2022 Baltic Cruise

 Things went pretty smoothly most of the day, up at 6:00, breakfast at 6:30, leave hotel at 7:10, get on train at 7:20, arrive at airport at 7:40 and complete check-in, security and passport control by 8:40. We go on the train seconds before the door closed. It is an exceptionally smooth and fast ride with the speed up to 120mph for the middle of the trip. It probably takes 5 minutes to get up to speed and 5 minutes to slow down. The train goes right into the airport terminal so one just needs to take the escalator upstairs. The flight departed about on time and was pretty smooth although there was a strong headwind which reduce the ground-speed to only 480mph at times - it was about 525mph when the wind letup. We splurged on business class which is very pleasant with lie-flat seats, free beer/wine and food at least as good as any we had on our trip. The complications started when the plane landed. There was congestion which kept the plane from reaching the gate for a while. When I tur

 We got up and had our final breakfast on the ship in the World Cafe, meeting our friends Greg and Candice. They live in Southern California and we hope to meet up with them when we visit the girls over Christmas. Then down to find our taxi outside the ship. We had reserved one for 9am but waited for about 20 minutes and it didn't come. In the meantime, some other taxi driver had shown up whose customers didn't show up so he took us to the hotel. We were lucky when we arrived at the hotel as we were told that we could get a room immediately if we would accept twin beds, otherwise we would have to wait until 3pm. We said ok and were surprised when we go to the room that it actually had a double/queen bed! Our first plan was to figure out where the airport express train was which was a bit challenging but eventually found the correct platform and bought tickets for tomorrow morning. The trains leave about every 20 minutes and take just 20 minutes to get to the airport, stopping a

 At 4:30 this morning there was a beautiful sunrise over the islands to the east in the Stockholm archipelago.  At 7am we are sailing into the port passing many islands - Stockholm is famous for its many islands which have regular ferry service to all of the larger islands. There are over 30,000 islands although many are pretty small. We had an excursion this morning to the Viking museum and to the National History museum. The Viking museum is a commercial enterprise that has many replicas of Viking gear and what life was like. One part of the museum has ride with cars on a track that go through different scenes and story tellers of a Viking family where the husband has to go abroad to get more silver in order to avoid selling their daughter. His travels have many pitfalls but in the end returns triumphant. It was quite well done. We then went to the national museum which was opened just for the Viking cruise visitors in order to see the actual artifacts of the Vikings stored there. It

 Not much to see today except the ocean. At one point we passed a number of wind turbines so we must not have been too far from shore although we couldn't see the shore. At one point we did see the huge Swedish island Gotland in the distance. There were a number of interesting lectures today, "History of Scandanavia", "Spies, drones & microphones" by a retired CIA agent and "From Runes to Saga  - Norse language and literature". Carmen had an interesting Nordic Hot Dog for lunch which was a footlong smoked sausage topped with baby shrimp salad, salmon roe (eggs), pickled onion and dill with a side of onion rings. I had a regular hamburger and fries. For dinner I had grilled lobster which I think was the best I've ever had which is saying a lot for having eaten boiled / steamed Maine lobster for over 50 years. It was exceptionally tender and creamy, like grilled scallops. Carmen had prime rib. "Norwegian" hot dog

 This morning we are moored in the harbor of Karlskrona, Sweden as there isn't a dock for the cruise ship. We will be taking a "tender" to the shore. The "tenders" are also the life boats and are suspended from the side of the ship. The water is quite choppy and they are bobbing like corks in the water this morning - I've taken extra Dramamine! Karlkdrona is a city founded by the Swedish king in 1682 as a base for the Swedish navy so it is quite "new" in historical terms. We took the tender in at 9:30 and it wasn't as bad as I was afraid of - made it without getting sick. We were fortunate that we came into the tender dock and not the main ship dock as we arrived right next to the naval museum. We arrived at the museum just as it was opening at 10am which was fortunate as it became very busy. It is an amazing museum, especially as it is free!.  There are two full-size submarines in one wing, one from the 1930s and a recent one from the 1980s th

 We left Bornholm about 4 hours late due to some electrical system problem that caused all the fire doors to close and emergency lights to go on but the captain was able to speed up and we made it to Gdansk almost on time. The weather is again sunny and beautiful. The ship had to be turned around and backed up over a mile in order to line up with the dock on the starboard side. We headed off on a bus ride through the countryside to Malbork castle, a 13th century Teutonic castle about an hour away. We passed by many farms growing corn, wheat, flax and rapeseed. Part of the area is below sea level and Dutch technology was used to manage this. There were also many wind turbines and quite a few houses had solar panels on the roof. One of the small towns was famous for the storks and we could see the large birds sitting on huge nests atop chimneys and specially constructed poles. The Teutonic knights were part of the Crusades and retreated from Israel after defeat by the Muslims, going to V

 Another beautiful sunny morning as we sailed into the port of Ronne on the small island of Bornholm which is about 12 by 20 miles.  Outside our ship are a set of large wind turbine generators (the large housing one sees at the top) and what looks like sets of 3 parts for each tower. There are huge cranes to move the parts around. Our guide today said they were likely for installation at sea as due to NIMBY, no more wind turbines were going up on land and the existing ones would probably be removed over time. This morning we took the shuttle bus into the small town of Ronne adjacent to the ship. We are actually at an industrial dock about a mile from the center. We walked up to a 12th century stone church and then through narrow winding streets lined with brightly colored Tudor-style half-timber homes, some of which had strangely sloping walls - not sure if it was intentional or not. There were tall hollyhocks growing out of the cracks in the paving stones next to the houses - very col

 We awoke in the port city of Warnemunde on the coast of Germany just east of Denmark. By 7:30 we were on a chartered train to Berlin with about 400 other passengers. It was a pretty ride through the countryside with some old oak forest, pine tree farms, fields of wheat, hay, corn and sunflowers. There were quite a few wind turbines and we passed a number of large solar farms - Germany really needs this to reduce this from dependence on fossil fuels and in particular, Russian natural gas. We boarded busses for a short tour of Berlin with a stop at the Brandenburg Gate to take photos and see the bronze plaque where Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech in 1989, "Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall". The wall had been just a few hundred feet to the west of the gate and there is a cobblestone outline to mark the path. We were dropped off at a central square with the German and French Churches and the Berlin Theatre to start our 4 hours of free time in Berlin. We walked to Checkpoi

 Another pleasant morning when we awoke in Copenhagen. Outside our window is a mix of 18th century warehouses, new apartment complexes in the same style and across the canal, an ultra-modern round all-glass office building. We thought the small bronze statue in the water adjacent to the plaza below our window was the Little Mermaid but we learned later than it is not - it is actually a rather bizarre stature of a much older woman. The other side of the ship is facing the harbor which has many wind turbines along the shore and just off-shore.  We went for a walking tour of Copenhagen in the morning, walking along the promenade and soon came to the famous statue of the Little Mermaid. She is based on a character in Hans Christian Anderson's children's story. We then continued to walk around the part of the city going back to the 1600s and 1700s, including the royal residences. It was interesting to see so many people riding bicycles which 50% of the population uses to get to work