Saint Petersburg and back to Kiel

Thursday, June 14 Saint Petersburg

Finally the excursion and reason we booked the cruise to begin with!  A full day was booked to see the Peterhof, Saint Isaac Cathedral and a tour through the city of Saint Petersburg.  We were in port with 4 other ships and had a perfect view of the "communist" apartment housing that lines the coast of the Baltic Sea. 

Other ships in the Saint Petersburg port

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Mass housing like this around the port

We boarded a bus with a Spanish tour as well but thankfully the guides used separate mics!  Out English tour only had 17 people which was great. (Plus 2 problematic French people that were put on the English tour because we had room!)  We left a little late with our Russian guide Julia on the way to Peterhof, the summer residence of Peter The Great.  It was quite an eventful ride as the French man, who we will call the French Mr. Bean, was getting sick all over himself and didn't use the plastic bag.  Wonderful.  There was so much discussion between the Sasha the driver, Julia and Natasha the Spanish guide that it was not setting the tone very well for the day.  We were in the front so we had a birds eye view of all that was going on and it felt very tense.  Dave said that is how the Russians communicate - as if they are trying to talk over one another and yell at one another - but it's totally normal I guess!   Come on, we just want to see this magnificent city!

We finally get to Peterhof, what a spectacular place.  The facade is 300 meters across and the residence as well as the gardens take up 114 hectares.  It was enormous and beautiful. 

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The Peterhof

We were not allowed to take pictures inside but took many of the grounds as I describe in the captions.   It all reminded us very much of Hellbrunn Palace in Salzburg as we toured through.  Many of the same types of decorations that the Tzar used at Peterhof were also inspired by those around the world  especially those in Versailles just as King Ludwig's castles and others were.   There were probably a few thousand people there as we moved room to room and through the grounds.   Julia did a great job of keeping us all together and giving us info, tidbits and history about the Peterhof.  She gave us a little while to take some pictures and wander the grounds and when it was time to meet up again who was gone but French Mr. Bean.

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Guess who in the blue - yup, French Mr. Bean....just wandering around!
Do-do-do-la-ti-da....

He held us up for at least a half hour and we were just about to leave when I saw him leisurely walking up to the group.

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The canal in front of the Peterhof that brought visitors right up to the palace from the Baltic Sea

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Looking up at the Peterhof

So we thought we were on the way to lunch when the driver was analyzing something with the bus, something was wrong.  Go figure - Dave and I do NOT have luck on buses as most of you know.  He fixed whatever glitch there was and we were on our merry way for a traditional Russian lunch.  It was great, whatever it was!  The first salad was diced peppers, cukes, tomatoes, cabbage, some type of cheese, thyme, and an oil based dressing.  Second was a sweet and not too spicy potato soup, it was delicious.  The main dish was a borsch and for dessert was something like an apple strudel.  It was all very good and would not have been complete without Russian vodka! 

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Vodka and water (in the bottle :)

We sat with the other tour mates, 3 from Thailand, 2 from Belgium and 4 from Denmark who all spoke English obviously.  It was fun.  What wasn't fun was going out to the bus after lunch to find out that it didn't run and another one had been called....oh we'd been there before!  Trying to stay positive we hoped for the best and Sasha managed to fix whatever was wrong.  Our time was so limited in Saint Petersburg and we just didn't want to miss a thing, it's an enormous city with 5 million people!

We went to Saint Isaac's Cathedral and and were shown to a new bus, yippee! The Cathedral is beautiful and I feel that we've seen so many that I have the right to critique!

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St. Isaac's Cathedral

It IS one of the four tallest in the world along with St. Peters in London (which we've seen), St. Paul's in Rome (which we will see in July) and the other I can recall. So its pretty amazing that we'll cross out 3 of them! The mosaics inside as well as the fresco's and decorum was just beautiful. The pillars were made of the stones Lapis and Malachite which I've gotten to know and love because of our nearby town Idar- Oberstein. 
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Inside St. Issac's Cathedral

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Beautiful Malachite Columns

We were supposed to be back at 5 but due to the incidents with French Mr. Bean and the traffic, we didn't get back till 6:30 and the ship was leaving at 7:00!  That is the security with ship excursions though, they will wait for you!  We would not have wanted to go any other way in Russia and take that risk.  All in all in was a good day, we saw some amazing sights and architecture, had a good meal, have some good stories to tell and hey - we were in Russia for a day!  We were definitely happy to get back on the ship.  We had a quick dinner at the buffet as the ship pulled out of Saint Petersburg and then went to the Pigalle Lounge for a bucket of (Belgian) beers and the Euro Cup game.  We skipped the entertainment in the theatre that night as the past two nights were not that spectacular.  Our cute little Bulgarian waitress brought us a "special" bowl of peanuts and 2 bowls of chips since Dave loves them so much.  Friday was a day at sea as we headed back to Kiel so we did not need to head to bed as early as we had been!  We were cruising right along as we enjoyed the sunset out our balcony...at 11:30 pm!  Isn't that crazy?! Our clocks had advanced an hour both of the last two nights.  That's why it was light so late.  It was beautiful.  There are about 20 pictures of the progressing sunset in the slideshow!

Link to Saint Petersburg Pictures

Friday I woke up with a sore throat and bad headache, guess the trip and germs from 3000 people enclosed in the same place had caught up with me.   But it was most likely sinus and allergy problems.   We were at sea and it was pretty cool and windy outside.  It was a relaxing day.  It was the last night on ship, a formal night and the last chance to catch up with our table mates before we disembarked the next morning.   Many pictures were taken and email addresses exchanged, we lucked out to have a good table!  The staff of the restaurant paraded through with baked Alaska.  Our waitress Elaina from Brazil was so nice and she brought Dave two pieces because she knew he liked ice cream.   The last show in the theatre was pretty good, a culmination of the dancers and singers throughout the week each had a part.

Pictures of the Entertainment on Friday night.

We did the "self-assist" luggage in the morning which meant that we had priority disembarking.  We still waited quite a while in one of the lounges with 100's of others but the process went quite smooth as we got off the ship.  A shuttle took us right to the Hbf and we were able to get on an earlier train than we had planned to head back home.  7-8 hours and 3 trains later we were happy to be back in Enkenbach!  It was a long, busy and fun week aboard the gigantic cruise ship and we saw more awesome cities, amazing architecture, iconic pieces of history and can cross a few more places off our 1000 places to see before we die list!   We can't say that we would do another cruise any time too soon but it was definitely an experience to add to the rest!  I actually wrote a review on Cruise Critic because I wanted to shed some positive light on the MSC Poesia since prior to leaving we hadn't read much good about it.  Hopefully you enjoyed the blog and pictures my friends, happy travels!

Tallinn, Estonia

We docked at about 9:00 and were off the ship shortly after.  The ship docked so close to the Old Town that it only took maybe 10 minutes to walk to it and to the Fat Margaret Tower which is home to the Estonian Maritime Museum but was previously a heavy guarded gate tower. 

Old Town Tallinn with the short round Fat Margaret Tower in the center

We walked through the great coastal gate which was the most important gate through the defensive wall in the Middle Ages.  Its also the beginning to Pikk Street which was the medieval merchants street and is now filled with neato buildings, shops restaurants, and other points of interest.  It's also right along the amazing medieval town wall that surrounds most of old Tallinn.

Just like Rothenburg o.b. Tauber!

We walked by St. Olav's Church that dates back to 1267 and was once the tallest spire in Scandinavia at 520 feet.  We climbed up the steep Pikk Jalg to Toompea Hill in the center of the Old Town that houses two churches, a castle but doesn't really look like a castle because it's the government buildings today, as well as some very pricey real estate.  Dave was happy to learn that when the Danish settled here around 1219 they started to build a fortress on top of Toompea - they called it Danneburg and today it's referred to Domberg.  The name "Tallinn" means "City of the Danes". No wonder DH liked it so much :)
 

Tall Hermann Tower and Domberg Castle

We popped into the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Virgin (Toomkirik) for a quick look around.  It is very old, musty smelling, dark and dreary, not pretty at all and completely unlike all churches we have been in thus far!  The walls were adorned with family crests and medieval coats of arms throughout centuries representing rich merchant families and that was really interesting.  The smaller the coat of arms, the older the family and they were all locally hand carved.  The floor was paved with tombstones.

Cathedral of St. Mary (Toomkirik)

The other church on Toompea is the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, much more beautiful.  It was built between 1894 and 1900, during the period when the country was part of the Russian Empire. The Cathedral is Tallinn's largest and grandest orthodox cupola cathedral.  We didn't go inside due to the large crowds of people all around but snapped a few pics on the outside.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

We walked back down into the Old Town along the medieval town wall to find a place for lunch that had wifi. We lucked out, right in the Raekoja Plats or City Hall Square where they had a merchant market going on.  We enjoyed some of the local brews with lunch, utilized the free wifi and enjoyed the beautiful day. 

Raekoja Plats or City Hall Square

We tried to got into the towns oldest Apothecary from 1422 but the door was just closing.  It is still functioning today and looked very antique inside.  We had really seen most sights of the town so we leisurely made our way back to the ship.  Tallinn was a great medieval city much like those that we've visited in Germany. 

We rejoined our table mates that night in the dining room for dinner and then went to the theatre for a show called Isha which was more of the international dancers as well as the singers and some of the other acts.  It was an early morning the next day as we got into Saint Petersburg at 7 am and the clocks were advancing another hour so after putzing around the decks snapping sunset pictures we had to get some rest.  It's hard to go to sleep at night when 11:30pm looks like 4:30pm!

 
LINK to Tallinn Pictures

Stockholm, Sweden

Our tour met at 9:15 so we had plenty of time to get ready.  Dave woke up early and went out on deck to take pictures as the ship made its way through Stockholm's Archipelago - an 80 mile stretch of islands from the Baltic Sea into Stockholm.  He then made it to the fitness room for a run and I slept, shocking :) but I liked to ordered breakfast and coffee to the room so I could enjoy the view of pulling into the Stockholm port. 

Coming into Stockholm

We found out that there were only 125 or so English speaking passengers and that is out of almost 3000!  Our tour had only about 40 people so it wasn't too bad and half of them were from other countries!  Jeff and Colette as well as the couple from Miami that we met on the train were on the tour. 

We boarded a bus with our guide Peter, a native from Stockholm who spoke perfect English.  He did a great job trying to show us as much as possible in four hours.  There were 4 other cruise ships that were in port at the same time so we had to boogie. 

One of the other ships in port

We did a city tour of Stockholm which is also known as The Venice of the North (haven't we been some place else called that?) but it is made up of 14 islands and is 30% water, 30% land/parks and 40% buildings.  It is located at the meeting point where the Baltic Sea meets Lake Mälaren and it really is a beautiful city - wish we had more time to venture through it.

We did a guided tour through the Royal Palace which is the official royal residence of the king and queen.  It is adorned in Italian Baroque style and was completed in 1754.  We could not take pictures inside but it was pretty and I loved all of the tapestries. We were allowed into a special area of the 608 rooms that is NEVER open so we felt pretty special. :)

The Royal Palace

We then did an old town, or Gamla Stan, walk on the quaint cobblestone streets, much like Germany's!  The Prästgatan Lane, or the Priests Lane is a 15th century street that we were led down hearing abut the history of Stockholm. 

We also had a guided tour of the Vasa Museum.  This was pretty amazing and all I could think of was Goonies!  See the pics, you'll see why!  The Vasa ship was an unseaworthy, 3 cannon, deck fighting ship from 1628 that sunk 20 minutes into her maiden voyage.  It sat at the bottom of the harbour for 333 years before it was discovered in 1956.  95% of the wood is original but they spend mega money on restorations to keep this ship in it's museum.

The Vasa Ship from 1628

It was a super quick tour but a good one.  We chose the excursion due to the short time in port and didn't want to risk doing the city on our own and missing the ship!  Stockholm would be a great place to visit again, to do a canal cruise through the 100's of secret waterways, to see the magnificent Town Hall where the Nobel Prize banquet takes place.  The island of Södermalm is the location of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy and it would be cool to explore the hot spots of those great books.  It was a great short day in Stockholm and we were happy to get back to the boat anyhow as both of us experienced nausea and upset tummies for 1/2 the tour! (Guess that's what 2 days of being on the sea will do to us!)

We came back and had lunch at the zoo a.k.a the buffet as did all of the other tours that got back at the same time. There were a lot of people on that ship!  We relaxed till dinner time where we joined our table mates and the missing couple finally joined us.  They were from Omen and really nice.  That nights the entertainment was all about "Little Italy" with dancing and opera singing...and we decided that we could have done without it :) The clocks went ahead an hour on our way to Estonia so we called it a day.


LINK to Stockholm Pictures

The 1st days aboard MSC Poesia and port #1 - Copenhagen!

Embarkation Day

Up at 4:00 am is not usually the best way to start a vacation but we had to catch a super early train from Enkenbach to Bad Münster to Frankfurt to Hamburg to our port in Kiel, Germany.  There really isn't a good way to get Northern here efficiently but all in all the 4 trains went great!  On our final train to Kiel we sat next to a couple from Miami who was on the cruise.  More Americans....really??...I posted on Cruise Critic months ago to try to find fellow travelers for excursions and only communicated with one couple in Canada so I was totally shocked to meet USA travelers!  The double decker train was full with other MSC cruise goers so I was pretty excited to see what was going to happen when we got into the Hbf in Kiel.  It was about a 10-15 minute walk from the Hbf and we could see the huge ship waiting for us ( as well as a few others that were in port.).

The MSC Poesia at port in Kiel, Germany

The check-in process literally took maybe 10 minutes and then we walked onto the massive ship.  Our first big cruise ship, it was so exciting!  There was plenty of staff showing guests to their room and our housekeeping man, Gusti, gave us the mini tour.  What a great room, we were on the 14th deck with a balcony for amazing views! 

Cabin 14044 with balcony and great view!

The cabin was pretty good size, we didn't bump into each other too much :).  All of information in the room was in Deutsche...guess they were testing our knowledge :) but that night Gusti replaced everything in English during the turn-down service time.   We explored the ship that afternoon, purchased our drink packages and attended our mandatory safety meeting (with our life vests on and all) before heading into first seating (6pm does that really surprise anyone? :) for dinner.  Our table mates were Birgit and Lee from Wiesbaden, Germany - Lee is American and Birgit is German.  Then Jeff and Colette (she is originally from Paris!) from Connecticut.   There were two empty spots at the table.  It was good conversation and good food.  After dinner we had a drink in the Zebra Bar before heading to the overly purple theatre.  The entertainment was a variety show with fun dancers who did Michael Jackson tribute dances as well as others, two Cirque du Soliel type actors, three hip hop dancers dressed in ballerina tutus and a lovely singer. 

The theatre and first night's show

This was our deck (14) with easy access to the outside

The night-time was so beautiful and peaceful!

A pretty decent bedtime view!

We were tired so we sailed the night away into Copenhagen.


Copenhagen Sunday June 10th

After we were rocked to sleep by the cruising ship and a good nights sleep we hit the buffet breakfast (Dave made it to the fitness room first) and were off the ship by 9:00 on our own to explore Copenhagen.  It was about a 30 minute walk down to Kastellet Park where the Little Mermaid Statue is from our port, Nordhavn, and we only had to follow the tour buses to get there.  We found that she was exactly what she is called...little! 

The 'little' Little Mermaid

The Kastellet Park is pretty neat with it's star shape since its construction in the early 1600's it has been integral to the defense of the city's port. The angled bastions effectively deflected cannon fire and allowed more lines of sight to pick-off soldiers sieging the walls. It fell to the British during the Napoleonic Wars and the second Battle of Copenhagen in 1807, when Denmark's empire also included all of Norway and parts of Germany. Kastellet also fell during World War II and was occupied by the Nazis as a regional headquarters.

We were using a map that I received from the Tourist Info to walk the streets of the Old Town to the grounds of the Rosenborg Castle where we just snapped some pictures without going inside. 

Rosenborg Castle houses the crown jewels and 500 years of royal knickknacks

We walked through the University District to the west side of the Old Town to the Rådhuspladsen or the City Hall square.
 

City Hall

This I would compare to most European cities' Markt Square that we like to see.  The entrance to Tivoli Garden is right across the street here, the worlds oldest and grandest amusement park from 1843.  We didn't pay the admission to go in but it looked super fun and we probably could have spent a whole day in there. The gardens are supposed to be really lovely inside Tivoli.

Tivoli Gardens Amusement Park Entrance

Instead we ate at The Hard Rock which was right next store.  I've said it before in blog posts - we always like going to HRC's in new cities, it's probably one of the most "American" things we do!

We followed Ricks walk after lunch that took us along the pedestrian and shopping street, Støget but since it was Sunday most all shops were closed.  Not only on Germany!   This is also a popular place for the street performers.  In this same area is the Old Square - Gameltorv where we wanted to see the Fountain of Charity.  A pregnant woman squirting water from her breasts next to a little boy urinating - this fountain has provided drinking water to the locals since the 1600's!  Too funny!  This was better than the Mannekin Pis in Brussels!

The Fountain of Charity

Next stop was Nyhavn and is probably one of the most famous places in Copenhagen, an adorable harbor area with colorful houses, many restaurants and amazing old boats. 

Nyhavn - established in the 1670's it is now filled with old and new sailboats and tons of trendy cafe's

We could have spent a lot of time sitting there people watching and taking advantage of the cheap take away beers!  We were pooped, had walked nearly 10 miles and were ready to rest our feet.  We went back to the ship and immediately went in the hot tub and pool before getting ready for dinner.   We didn't really like the menu at the main restaurant so we went to the Pigalle Bar on ship showing the Italy and Spain Euro Cup game where we were probably the only Americans and had a bucket of beers before going to the buffet. 

The bars on board had bucket of beers promos for the Euro Cup games

The entertainment that night was called "Sam" a dedication to the USA and was pretty good showing  dances from the different decades.  We were cruising overnight and the next day to Stockholm so after a day of 25338 steps we let the boat put us to sleep again.  

Link to Copenhagen Pictures

Monday - Cruising Day
It was a leisurely, do whatever we want kind of day.  We spent time out on the deck in lounge chairs that morning after breakfast.  It was a beautiful day. 

There were activities planned throughout the day including  a Beer Fest, dance lessons, games, demonstrations of cocktails and food and others.  We played Bingo in the Zebra Bar and were only 1 number away from €340!  So close! 

There were so many nationalities on the ship and we were definitely in the  minority.  It is an Italian cruise line.  Every announcement, activity, etc., was spoken in English, Deutsch, Spanish, French and Italian and sometimes Russian!  It was kind of interesting and kind of annoying.  Out of the 900 some ship employees there were 62 nationalities represented though, and I thought that was pretty cool.  For the most part everyone spoke English.  That night was the first of two gala nights for dinner.  We weren't dressed in a gown and tux but we did get dressed up enough!

It was fun and people weren't nearly as dressed in gala gear as I would have imagined they would have been. We enjoyed our table mates again and afterwards we met Susan and Mike (who I had been communicating with on cruisecritic.com) in the Zebra Bar for a drink before the entertainment began. The theatre was packed that night and the dance team were dressed as chess pieces which was kind of interesting. There was a beautiful singer again, a girl who did an acrobatic type of routine on the bands that are suspended from the ceiling, a man that did the type of routine you would see on the pummel horse in gymnastics but instead he balanced on two posts that actually rotated. His strength was amazing, the picture shows it in detail. Finally there was an international dance team of 3 men and 1 woman that did flips and balancing acts with their own body strength and who were not afraid of heights!  They were phenomenal!

It was a pretty good entertainment night again.  We walked around the upper deck afterward because the sky was absolutely beautiful.  It was after 10:00 and the sky was illuminated with the sun set and was so picturesque!  We were in bed by 11:00, the next morning we were docking in Stockholm.

LINK to pictures from the first day and our day at sea.