04 The cruise

14 August 2007


You have heard the old Finnish saying, “if you don’t like the weather then wait 5 minutes.” After the morning deluge the skies cleared and the temperature returned to a delightful 26 degrees (everyone get out their Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion tables). The problem of course is that after the morning rain the humidity was about a gazillion percent. Many of the buildings apparently are not air conditioned, which makes sense since it is only hot about 20 minutes a year and all of them have been this week according to a man we chatted with in line at the cruise ship. His wife said she had been on a 3 week holiday and all of it had been above 26 degrees.

The trek from the hotel took about 30 minutes not including the 15 minute break to eat our ice cream lunch at our favorite Helsinki ice cream shop and to watch people in the Esplanade Park.















Lessons learned from people watching in Helsinki.



1. No tourist from any country (including yours truly) can walk and read a map at the same time (at least not safely).
2. If you have a long skirt you should check to see that the back is not tucked into something. (If you have not see the old Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn movie “Bringing up Baby” go immediately to Blockbuster and rent it for tonight.)
3. It is apparently Finnish law that if two or mothers are pushing their babies in prams at the same time they must walk side by side and force people into the street coming the other direction.
4. Reindeer Hats (the kind with the antlers) are never in fashion.






We got on the cruise ship and found our small, functional, clean room.











The room has between 1 and 4 beds depending on how many people are staying. The non used beds fold into the wall. Only one of the 4 was down and there was only 1 towel in the bath. Now having vast previous experience with cruise ships (1 trip) we thought that we would inform someone and they would come and put things right for us. We went to the information person and told him of our plight. He was very helpful. He told us to pull the bed down when we wanted to use it and that the towel was located on the bed.


We had purchase the smorgasbord dinner when we bought our tickets for the cruise a couple of months ago. We received our voucher when we checked in and thought we were ready for the 5:30 seating. On our search to find the information guy we happened to go by the buffet place and there was a que getting tickets or reservation or something. We decided to check and see if we needed to do anything further. We were on the reservation list but we did not have a table assignment until we checked in. We got a nice table by the window and could watch as we pulled out of Helsinki. The trip through the archipelago was very beautiful. Many of the Islands are just rocks sticking up. A few have houses and some have lighthouses. One that was perhaps the size of a city bock had a lighthouse, a house and a radio tower. The house looked like it had been built by blasting out a hole in the rock. I could not help but wonder what kept the sea out of the living room. Nowhere was the sea wall more than a few feet above the sea level. I wondered about tides and storms. I also thought about the task of supplying the residents of this rock. Obviously there was no well for water or electrical or natural gas lines. Everything had to be “shipped” in. This is not the island but you get the idea.






Dinner was very good. The smorgasbord was expansive. I passed on the head-and-all boiled shrimp, some kind of fish roe and the all-you-can-drink beer, but I had plenty to eat. Smoked salmon, baked cauliflower, a gratin potatoes, chicken skewers, roast beef, turkey and several other items (small portions of course). Dessert was sorbet, cake and some “the kid in front of me got three big servings so I thought it might be good” vanilla flan kind of thing.
After dinner we sat on deck for awhile and then inside in some cubbyholes with windows and planned our Stockholm adventure. We picked up brochures at the information desk and consulted Rick Steves’ book, but I am questioning everything he says now. We decided to get the Stockholm card which gives us transportation on buses, subways and some tours. Also free admissions to the main sights we want to see. A nice man from Korea sat down while I was waiting for Penny to return from getting more information from the information desk. Our conversation was limited to the very few words of English that he knew and to my zip Korean. (Jill where were you?). Despite the lack of much common vocabulary we discovered some things about each other. He is with a group of 50 Koreans and they had been to Moscow, Helsinki, and were going to Stockholm and then back to Korea.


It is about 9:30 and Penny is sleeping as I write this (I think). It has been another long day. Somebody remind me about what vacation means. Penny reminded me that each of the 3 nights so far that our sleeping facilities have gotten smaller. This cabin is rather tiny. We know that on Thursday night we will be living inside a match box (anyone seen “Tenth Kingdom”) as we take a sleeper train from Stockholm to Oslo. She is hoping our hotel in Stockholm is at least somewhere between ship cabin and train compartment sizes. I suspect it will be bigger than the ship cabin but like the ship we will not have a window in Stockholm (we decided to save money on the cruise and hotel by opting out of a window.)

Off to bed. I solemnly swear I will do my best not to wake up at 4:00 AM. I hope.

Ray