We are back

Arrived Southampton on schedule at 5:30 am. Early shower and breakfast then next stop home.

BTW Sorry I disabled "comments" in order to stop spambots from infiltrating the blog. They are turned on again, now that I can manage them from my PC, and I am expanding the cruise details.   

Final Day

It's a beautiful warm sunny day and the North sea is as flat as a pancake - just typical! Ah well, a bit more culture, chilling out on the lawn, bling shopping and packing.

Need an early night as the ship docks at 5:30am and we are due to disembark at 8:45am.

Home Run

Two days at sea en-route to Southampton and the end of our cruise. Time for some on-board enrichment. Russian history, scrap booking, talks on the ships systems, glass blowing, cookery demos, cocktail drinking and dining. One final DJ night and then its packing. Disappointingly cloudy and cool again so no sun bathing round the pool or on the balcony today . Apparently we can look forward to a hot BBQ weekend back home.

Copenhagen

Walked along the front to the royal palace to see the changing of the guards. We passed the famous little mermaid only a few hundred yards from our berth. It was almost hidden by Japanese tourists taking photos. We coffee'd by the old harbor, just to use up last year's Krone, then went back to the Eclipse for afternoon tea.   

Later we had an excellent dinner in the Qsine speciality restaurant with sushi lollipops, lobster snails and other weird and wonderful dishes. Everything here is different. You order any number of course you like, up to 20 that is, on an Ipad and just wait to see what appears! As they say - a unique dining experience.

Sea day and well deserved rest

After four days of intensive sight seeing - today we did - absolutely nothing. Cruising south and east now towards Denmark so we are only getting a bit of morning sun on our balcony.

Tallinn

Tallinn is lovely and relaxed, such a contrast with its next door neighbor Russia. Friendly, picturesque and compact old medieval town. As I write this on my phone we are sitting in a tiny alley cafe in the sun, sipping coffee and eating quiche, away from the hoards of tourists (must be at least 6000) from the cruise ships.

Lots of pavement cafes and good quality souvenir shops. Wonder what they do when the winter comes.

We are only here for a few hours so we must come back again for a mid week break before it is ruined by all the stag and hen parties.

St Petersburg again

Today we were taken to the Hermitage Museum complex (world class art in abundance), Church on Spilled Blood (iconic onion architecture) and St Peter and Paul Cathedral (where all the Czars are buried). So much gold in all the palaces and churches it makes your eyes water. There must have been a massive contrast between the rich and the poor, little wonder there was a revolution.

We lunched on typical Russian pies called Pioggia a bit like Cornish pasties but many different types fillings including the signature cabbage and egg ! Its been another hot sunny day so we have been lucky with weather. Back to reality tomorrow in Tallinn maybe. There is a barrage across the Baltic with huge lock gates to protect St Petersburg, which is not many feet above sea level, from being flooded by storm surges.
The outer ring road follows the barrage and there is a deep tunnel under the lock. Its 3 hours cruising and almost dark when we pass through the gates.