Baltic Cruise: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Amsterdam was awesome. It was overcast and chilly ... and I still loved it. There was so much to see.



Mom is Amsterdam!


On the riverbank where we ate lunch

We headed straight to the Reijksmuseum when we got to Amsterdam, which was under construction. I'm actually thankful we weren't there when it was in its full glory. The works of the museum were  condensed with the construction & they displayed only the Master Works ... and that was painful enough. I think I don't like old, dark, Dutch paintings of people I don't know. The Night Watchmen was the highlight of the tour.

After that we went to the Van Gogh museum which was packed ... and still absolutely amazing. It was probably one of the highlights of the entire cruise for me. Rooms and rooms of Van Gogh's art arranged chronologically, and with an audio tour to explain what was going on in his life as he was going through different stages in his artistic career. 
Finally, we went to the Anne Frank house - which was certainly sobering. It really tells a different story, when you are actually standing in the spaces where those families lived for so long.

Anne Frank, outside her temporary home.

Mom and I meandered our way back to the ship after that. We walked along the edge of the disappearing red light district and saw some interesting shops, and lots of 'coffee shops'.

One last thing I want to point out ... check out the shield of Amsterdam below. Notice the 3 X's? Those are St. Andrew's Crosses, and represent different things, depending on your source of information. But I just thought it was amusing, given Amsterdam's somewhat lewd reputation.

Baltic Cruise: Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn wasn't one of those places that would have been on my travel list of places to see, but I really enjoyed it. It was a really cute old town, and the weather was beautiful, so that always helps. We ended up joining some of the other families on our cruise to do a bike tour, which was a lot of fun ... except for my butt. My butt was really unhappy. :)

Sunken Ship Memorial

The beautiful day

Presidential Palace, and me looking like a Giant Dork - it was kind of on purpose though, one can't help it when one is wearing such stylish clothing

'Fat Margaret' fortress walls outside Old Tallinn

Awesome Statue!

We toured an Open Air Museum on our bikes too ...

It's not better without the helmet, is it?

A view of a church in old town - the locals never took to the Russian Orthodox religion, but ironically, this church is what saved the city from heavy bombing in the war.

View over the city

Baltic Cruise: St. Petersburg, Russia

First off - I highly recommend St. Petersburg. It turns out that you can make a pretty beautiful city when you have years and years of tsars collecting money from the citizens and never really having to give any of it back. Everybody had a palace, the Tsar, the Tsar's mom, the Tsar's brother. And every time there was a new Tsar you had to build a new Winter and Summer palace. Absolutely insane. 

Mom at Catherine's Palace

Me, looking like a dorky Tourist, at Peter's Palace

Inside Peterhof

Random Russian Church

We stayed in St. Petersburg for two days, so since it was the home of Tchaichovsky, we had to see some Russian Ballet. We saw Swan Lake - it was pretty great. I loved the Champagne intermission - we should do that at every show.

I'll throw in a random Rodin - because I love it. The Hermitage museum was full of amazing art and sculpture.

The Church of the Spilled Blood was certainly a highlight - it was absolutely amazing to see in person.

Amazingly, we managed to catch a glimpse of the Solar Eclipse while we were out there. It was tough to get a picture of it, but the camera did manage to capture it when it was showing through the clouds.

Mom and I took approximately a billion pictures in St. Petersburg, I imagine you'll be satisfied with just a taste. :)

The

Baltic Cruise: Helsinki, Finland

Finland turned out to be pretty great. Mom and I navigated our way to an old sea fort in the morning via ferry. Navigation turned out to be an adventure given the ridiculous number of vowels in all of the street names.

We took approximately a million pictures there.

Then we hoofed it back to the ship to meet up with our tour which went to the Open Air Museum. Basically an outdoor museum displaying different types of housing and traditional buildings from around Finland.

Last was the Rock Church - which was awesome... And then my camera died.

Baltic Cruise: Berlin, Germany

Berlin meant a 3 hour bus ride in from the coast, but it was completely worth it. The most fascinating part was seeing the contrast between East and West Berlin. Historically, West Berlin was the place to be - there was money and capitalism, so they could afford to rebuild. East Berlin was communist and poor, and consequently they couldn't really rebuild. An interesting after effect is that decades later, East Berlin has become the place to be. When west Berlin was rebuilt, it was rebuilt in a rather utilitarian, unimaginative style. It was after a war, the important thing was just to get the city functioning again. East Berlin was barely rebuilt at all during that time, and remained in ruins for decades ... but the good news was that as it has started to be rebuilt, the builders are taking their time, and the architects are getting artsy. East Berlin is now where all the cool cats hang out.

Bombed out Old Church, and the ugly new 70s church

Posing

Berlin Wall Markers

Holocaust Memorial

Burn Before Reading

I saw Burn Before Reading last week & I really enjoyed it. It was fun & funny, and it's always amusing to see how movies portray the government... the stark gray offices, the empty hallways ... the boss that doesn't know what to tell his inferiors ...

"Report back to me when ...

I don't know...

When it makes sense."

And at the end of a series of ridiculous occurrences and unfortunate mishaps ... the conclusion:

"What did we learn?

I don't know either.

I guess we learned not to do that again.

F*ck if I know what we did."

*sigh* how very, very true. :)

Baltic Cruise: Copenhagen, Denmark

Our first port was Copenhagen. We started with breakfast, a necessity for two Swingle women.

Then we hopped a bus for a city tour. We saw the classic Little Mermaid statue. It was built in homage to Hans Christian Anderson's famous tale ... but no one from Copenhagen can understand how it got to be such a big deal.

Then we saw some other sights ... fountains, the Queen's Winter Castle...

Tivoli gardens turned out to be less spectacular than we had originally hoped. It turned out that we were there at exactly the wrong time to see any of the performances, so it was basically an Epcot Center crossed with a Six Flags for kids. We amused ourselves anyway, and then used the extra time to plan our next stop.

Rosenburg Castle - the home of the Danish crown jewels.

We navigated our way back to the ship on foot . . .  just in time.

Baltic Cruise: Days at Sea

Our first day on our ship, the Carnival Splendor, was a day at sea. Mom and I were very lazy during our days at sea. But that's what vacation's for, right? It turned out that after several days in a row of hard core sightseeing, we needed some time to relax anyway. But complete nothingness gets boring after a day too. We didn't do much on the ship - so I'll let some pictures tell you about it.

Reading on the windy deck

Mini golf

Self-Portrait in front of the 10:30 pm Baltic Sunset

In the cabin before formal night

Who says I need to put clothes on? This bathrobe is so comfy ...

Baltic Cruise: Dover, UK

Continuing the posts about my recent trip ... We took a bus from London to Dover to get on the cruise ship. 

We stopped on the way at Dover Castle - and it was fricking freezing & breezy. I was definitely starting to worry that I should have packed warmer clothes. Anyway, the castle was a castle ..

From Europe Cruise

 but the really cool part was touring the "Secret Wartime Tunnels". 

From Europe Cruise

Apparently the tunnels have been used throughout the years to fortify the city of Dover against attacks from the Sea. The tunnels were set up as they used to be in WWII - as a hospital. Unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures inside, but it was pretty neat to see the setup in there, and kind of amazing to imagine what it must have actually been like during wartime. All I can say is, thank goodness for modern medicine!