Day 18 – Dublin, Ireland – Saturday, September 15, 2012

I'm baaaaack!

I write this as we are docking in Reykjavik, day 21, so I'm a few days behind, but happy to say that we are both doing well... now! Your prayers for a quick end to my cold worked, but then Karen got bronchitis, I got a cough, and I also was mildly seasick yesterday as we had extremely rough passage to Iceland. Consequently, we have had four visits to the medical department. Hopefully we have seen the last of them, although Karen will be on antibiotics for 7 days.

I had briefly described our trip to Loch Lomond in Scotland and the brief description is enough, so on to our next port of call, Dublin. We decided to explore Dublin on our own and bought a ticket on the HOHO (hop-on, hop-off) bus.

Our first stop was at Dublin Castle, the seat of English rule in Ireland for 700 years. It was built originally near a pool of black water, which in Gaelic is Dubh Linn, hence the name of the city. One of the pictures you will see eventually (if you come back after I have added pictures to the blog) is that of the statue of justice above the gate – minus the blindfold and admiring her sword – hardly the image of justice, eh? As Dubliners say (with apologies for minor bad language), “There she stands, with her face to the palace and her arse to the nation.”

Next stop was St. Patrick's Cathedral, which I would have assumed to be Catholic, but to my surprise it is the “Church of Ireland,” i.e. Anglican! I wanted to see this church primarily because this is where Handel's Messiah had its premiere performance as a benefit for the poor. It was well received in Ireland, but was ignored in London for about 10 years thereafter. The cathedral is also of interest because its dean for 32 years in the 18^th century was Jonathan Swift, author of “Gulliver's Travels,” intended at the time as political satire. The church was built in the 13^th century on the site where St. Patrick first baptized local pagan converts.

We had lunch at the Temple Bar, a famous nightclub in the best party district of Dublin. I didn't have a Guiness due to still suffering at the time from my cold. We didn't party much.

Because of time limitations I decided to skip the tour of the Guiness Storehouse, probably the most popular tourist attraction in Dublin. I wanted to get to Kilmainham Gaol (jail) which was highly recommended by my Rick Steves travel book. Glad we did, although I almost passed it up when I saw a long line to get in, but then decided if there is a long line, it must be worthwhile. After a 20 minute wait to get to the gate, I was told that they only accept cash (euros) of which I had none. But they were very nice, telling me there was an ATM just around the corner, and they would hold our place in line for the next tour, which they did.

The excellent docent for our tour gave us a very informative and inspired talk about the jail and its prominent place in the Irish struggle for independence from the British. It was opened in 1796 as a debtors' prison and was supposed to be a model facility, but very quickly became a terrible house of punishment for political prisoners, leaders of rebellions throughout the 19^th century, leading up to the Easter Rising in 1916. A major rebellion took place that year because the leaders felt that England would be too busy with WWI to deal with an uprising in Ireland. However, the rebellion was not successful and 14 of the 16 leaders were summarily executed in Kilmainham Gaol. The result of these executions by the British general without trial, was a major shift in sentiment by the Irish people from a preference for Home Rule within the British Empire to a strong desire for complete independence. Had this not happened, Ireland today might have a status like Scotland, which does have home rule. I learned more about Ireland's history in this hour than I had in my previous 72 years! There is a lot more to the story than I presented here, but you didn't sign up to read a book, so I'll move on.

Sweet Molly Malone and a tourist

By the time we exited the gaol, our time in Dublin was growing short and I wanted to make sure we had enough time on Grafton Street for Karen to take my picture with my arm around Sweet Molly Malone, so we took a taxi rather than waiting for the HOHO bus. And there she was, my Molly, or the “tart with the cart” as the locals call her. After a walk down Grafton Street and a stop for a latte at a coffee house, it was back to the ship.

The short time precluded so much I would have like to have seen, including Trinity College with the famous Book of Kells, a beautifully illustrated book of the four gospels preserved from the 8^th century on calfskin vellum! They turn one page per day for display.

One reason, as mentioned before, I don't particularly like cruises is that the time in ports is so short, it's like taking one sip of the finest wine, but then being told that's all you can have. But the one sip was indeed grand. On to Belfast and more history lessons of the Emerald Isle (from on board the Emerald Princess).

Jim

DAY 15, 16, 17 AND BEYOND!

Just a quick update to let you know we are still alive and breathing, just barely, in my case. I have caught a cold and have spent most of the time on the ship sleeping to try to shake it off. When I'm feeling better and we are at sea again, I'll catch up gradually. Since six of the last seven days are at sea, I should be able to catch up before we land in New York.

The port call at Kristiansand, Norway on Wednesday (Day 15) was canceled because we needed to beat the remnants of tropical storm Leslie and hurricane Michael to Scotland. Otherwise we would have been going right into the teeth of the storm. It was very rough anyway (8-12 foot waves and 40 knot winds) and Karen lost her cookies (and several other morsels) at one point. I managed to survive the rough seas, but didn't escape the cold germ. So we were at sea for two days and arrived at Glasgow, Scotland late in the evening yesterday (Thursday).

Today we had an excursion (in the afternoon, thankfully) to Loch Lomond, which was quite beautiful, but our loch, I mean, luck ran out on the weather, cold and rainy. At the quaint village of Luss, with quaint houses, quaint tea shops, quaint WC's, and quaint parking lot for tour buses, we had a great view of the Loch. As I walked out to the end of the pier, I noticed something moving in the water that had three humps AND I REALIZED THAT I WAS SEEING THE... No, wait, that is a different loch. I really messed that up didn't I? You could call me the Loch Mess Punster...

Check back in a few days. In the meantime, pray for a miracle cure for the common cold! And keep Karen safe from it!

Jim

DAY 14 – OSLO, NORWAY – SEPTEMBER 11, 2012

(Blogger's note:  Due to the agonizingly slow bandwidth on the ship, I regret to say that I will not be uploading any pictures.  I regret to say that because now you have to be entertained by text only, an infinitely more difficult task.  However, when I get home I will edit the post and add pictures, so then you can go back and read everything over again!) :-)

The second part of our cruise has begun, which takes us back to Oslo, then another stop in Norway, the port city of Kristiansand on the western coast. From there we cross the North Sea to Glasgow, Scotland, thence to Dublin, Belfast, Iceland, Greenland, and New York City. Although we are on the same ship, this is considered a separate cruise, so we are now on our second Princess cruise: Trans-Atlantic. That makes us Gold members of the Captain's Circle with so many benefits. Let me count them: 1. We get to attend the Captain's reception, along with a thousand or so of our closest friends, 2. We might get a discount on our next cruise.

After 15 cruises, we reach Platinum, for which we get the additional benefit of free laundry. Wow!

But enough of the cynicism. Upon disembarking from the ship in Oslo, we hopped on a Hop-On/Hop-Off bus. We eschewed (there's that word again) the center city stops in favor of seeing again the Vigeland Park which I described in an earlier blog (see Aug. 31). Since we were not on a guided tour this time, we could take our time and admire these incredible statues by Gustav Vigeland. We took our time until it started pouring down rain and we ran for the entrance. The only disadvantage of the HO/HO busses is that if you just missed one, as we did, then there is another half hour wait. So we went to the cafe in the park to use the WC. Oops, they are pay toilets! Need 5 kroner coins! Not very tourist friendly, I say. But the cashier in the restaurant was kind enough to exchange two dollars for two coins. Yep, a buck to pee!

Finally back on the bus and on to the Kon-Tiki museum, where we saw the boats of the famed explorer and scientist Thor Heyerdahl. You readers who are nearly as ancient as I am will remember his amazing voyages. . The Ra II was a boat of reeds, basically, that sailed 3,000 miles from Morocco across the Atlantic to Barbados in 1970. (It was the Ra II because the Ra I didn't make it.) The point of the journey was to prove that Africans of several millenia ago could have made that journey.

Even more fantastic was the voyage of the Kon-Tiki from the west coast of South America to the Polynesian Islands in 1947. They built a raft of balsa logs, which were light enough to float, but support a superstructure of essentially a large hut and a large sail. Instead of a keel it had four vertical boards that provided stability in the water. They had to cut the logs in the interior of Ecuador, construct a temporary raft to take them down the river to the sea and navigate south along the coast to their starting point in Peru, where they constructed the Kon-Tiki (the name taken from an ancient god). The voyage was 4,300 miles across the Pacific, which isn't always pacific, if you catch my drift. (See what I did there – drift, heh, heh.) The voyage established that the Pacific islands could well have be settled by Incans of South America (although anthropologists doubt that they did). For both voyages, nothing was used in the construction of the boats nor in the navigation which would not have been available to the natives of the time.

We watched a good portion of the Kon-Tiki movie, narrated by Heyerdahl, which actually won an Oscar in the documentary category in 1951. I will get a copy of the movie when I get home, for about half the price of the version being sold in the gift shop, I'm sure!

We also visited the Maritime Museum, which showed a wonderful movie about the western coastline of Norway on a 180 degree screen, a la a mini Imax. What an incredibly beautiful country! And what a hardy populace to live, farm (a little), and fish (a lot). No wonder they were, and are, such a sea-faring people, exploring all over the world, including the North and South poles, especially Roald Amundsen and Fridtjof Nansen in the early 20^th century. I may wax philosophic about the Viking spirit on our day at sea coming up.

Day 12-13 – At Sea and Copenhagen (again!) Sunday, Monday – September 9-10, 2012

Sunday – at sea.

Very often on a cruise you will have as many days at sea as you do in ports of call. But with the Scandinavian cruise the ports of call are all so close together that most are reached overnight. So in a way it has been a grueling cruise without time to breathe. So today (Sunday) it was nice to get up late, have a leisurely breakfast and wander around the ship.

But even this day was not without its busyness, because Karen and I are singing in the “Princess Pop Choir,” so we had two rehearsals and sang for our supper in the atrium area, where there was a good crowd on the three floors that open onto the atrium. We actually did quite well, considering that we only had four hours of rehearsal and sang from lyric sheets, no music. Since I'm not really into pop music, I didn't know half the songs. Nevertheless, I learned them, along with the choreography(!) and the audience was enthusiastic, cheering and giving us a standing ovation on every song. Of course, there were very few chairs, so they had to stand.

Our dinner table friends took pictures and even made a video recording which they will send to us, so you may even get to see it!

Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive

Monday – end of the first phase of the cruise – Copenhagen

This was the end of the 11 day Scandinavian cruise and about 2300 or the 3100 passengers got off here, with only 800 continuing on for the Atlantic Crossing cruise. However, new passengers came on board, don't know how many, but now we experienced sailors have to break in a whole new crew.

Karen and I went into Copenhagen and took the canal boat cruise, which was very nice, and we got to see (besides lots of buildings) the back side of the Little Mermaid statue. To see the front side you have to be on land, so we'll have to go back someday so we can see her front.

We had lunch in the Nyhavn area (where the boats depart from) and it was only $50 or so. (See how I'm not complaining?) I had raw salmon on bread and Karen had liver pate with mushrooms, so I know that certain in-laws will be very jealous they didn't get the chance to share these delicacies. (You know who you are!)

So back on the ship and sailing for Oslo – again! This is the only duplication from the first cruise, but since I complain about the limited time in the ports of call, I'm happy. We'll do the “hop-on/hop-off” bus tour this time and eschew the cruise line excursion. (Eschew is one of my favorite words...and I'm not even sure what it means.)

Enough frivolity for now. The serious educational in-depth travelogue will resume tomorrow.

By the way, if you are following the blog, drop me a brief email. It would be nice to know who is reading it (if anyone!). jimtraxler@gmail.com.

Day 11 Stockholm, Sweden - Saturday, September 8, 2012

(Blogger's Note:  Since it took 10 minutes to load one &*^%$#@ photo, that's it for this post!!!)

Well, Karen has returned once again to the home of her ancestors, Sweden. Karen's mother's side of the family came from Gotland, an island east of the mainland that we are probably passing in the night as I write this, and her father's side of the family was from Malmo, at the southern tip of Sweden, which we will be passing tomorrow during the day on our way to Copenhagen. (I am quoting Karen's heritage from my memory without reference to Karen's excellent records back home. If I got any of it wrong, her brother Ken will correct me.)

The Drottningholm Palace

Since both Karen and I have seen the old city (Gamla Stan), I decided to choose a tour of something we haven't seen, the Drottningholm Palace in the countryside west of the city. It is the permanent home of the royal family since 1981, despite a much larger palace in Stockholm. It was originally built in the sixteenth century, but after a fire (of suspicious nature) it was rebuilt in grand fashion at the direction of Queen Hedvig to be in the style of Versailles. Although not as grand, it is impressive in its own right and I felt good about my choice of a tour.

We began the tour at a remote part of the grounds where a “Chinese Pavilion” had been built as a surprise birthday present for the queen at the time (I think Luvisa -it gets confusing). Then we walked about a half mile through beautifully landscaped formal gardens to the palace. The style of the decorations in the palace was rococo or baroque, so no part of a wall, ceiling, or floor was without some kind of elaborate decoration, often in a Greek or Roman theme. Since the Swedish royalty didn't have a lot of money at the time, they cleverly painted the halls to look like marble, the ceilings to look like stucco work, and then loaded the walls with paintings, mostly of themselves or other European royalty, since they are all related one way or another.

One of the more interesting buildings was a theater constructed in 1766, again by Luvisa, if my sad state of memory serves me. She didn't have any money to build it, so she negotiated a loan from the architect. When it was done and the architect asked to be repaid, she said, “Sorry, we don't have any money left.” So he never got his money back, or his commission, but they gave him a permanent bedroom in the theater! After a period of dormancy in the 19^th century, it was restored to full use with the original sets, sound effects, seating, and décor in the 20^th century. It is the only known theater that has remained unchanged for over 200 years. The theater, the Chinese Pavilion, and the palace itself are designated as World Heritage Sites.

The time in Stockholm was way too short. I would have liked a couple days to explore, but we had to be back on ship by 2:00, because the water passage out of Stockholm through its “archipelago” is 80 miles long and takes about 4 hours to navigate before getting out into the open waters of the Baltic Sea. Sweden requires cruise ships to be out of the archipelago before dark for safety reasons. There are literally thousands of islands in this area, most of which are inhabited. I enjoyed sitting on our balcony watching the sights go by, even though the temperature was about 60 degrees. At one point we went through a hailstorm! I was just barely smart enough to retreat from the balcony during the storm. But after the storm we were treated to a gorgeous sunset over the islands.

I haven't mentioned the food on board so far. The dining is nothing short of exquisite. We have had a four course gourmet dinner every night with excellent service. It is a gourmand's paradise! Last night lobster, the night before scallops and orange roughy, the night before, beef Wellington, and so it goes. And it's all free! Well, except for the umpteen thousand dollars we paid for the cruise, of course. The efficiency of the galley and the wait staff blow me away. Just imagine the responsibility of serving 3,000 four course dinners every night!

Tomorrow, a day at sea, returning to Copenhagen. The Princess Pop Choir makes its debut (and final) performance in the atrium, to a potential audience of thousands! Well, maybe hundreds. Or maybe a few dozen. Our reward will be champagne and chocolate covered strawberries afterward.

Day 10 – Helsinki, Finland – Friday, September 7, 2012

In my post about St. Petersburg, I left out an important place we visited, so I wanted to back up and mention the Church of the Spilled Blood. Besides I have a rare picture of me in front of it.

Church of the Spilled Blood, St. Petersburg

As you can hopefully see in the picture, it is a beautiful church with multicolored and gilded domes. It was built in honor of Czar Alexander II, who was murdered by terrorists on that very site in 1895. Many of the czars deserved that fate perhaps, but not Alex II, who was the “Liberator Czar,” having freed the serfs from their virtual slavery and implementing many other reforms. But the terrorists were determined to overthrow the royal family, which did happen 22 years later, as his successors were weak and incompetent rulers, bringing about the revolution. The royal carriage which was bombed is displayed inside the church on the exact spot on which the dire deed took place, and his blood stains are still there 117 years later.

Incredibly, the Lenin government, which closed and destroyed many churches, was going to blow up the entire building, but decided not to because it was too close to residential buildings. So they turn it into a warehouse! After the communists lost power in 1991, it again became a place of worship, but it took 17 years to completely restore the interior.

OK, on to Helsinki. I remember again coming to Helsinki on the Promise tour, as we flew from Moscow to Helsinki, thence on to the USA. It seemed to me at the time that we had been in a black and white movie in Russia, and suddenly stepped into technicolor in Finland, a la Wizard of Oz movie. The contrast was not quite so stark this time, but Finland is such a beautiful country with smiling people, good government and economy, and so technologically advanced, ranked # 1 in the world in that category. (USA is #2.)

18th Century Rural Lutheran Church

I picked a tour which took us to Finland's version of an open air museum, a staple in Scandinavian countries. It was called Seurasaari and it contains rural houses and churches as they were in 18^th century and earlier times, including very crude homes of Lapplanders, the people of the Arctic Circle. We walked about, experiencing what life was like without running water, indoor plumbing, central heating, electricity, and... the internet!! Interesting that in those days, the Lutheran church was the civil authority in small towns, meting out punishment to miscreants. We were treated to delicious cinnamon buns and coffee in the equivalent of a cafe in the 18^th century, a nice respite under cover, as we were walking around in a light rain. (Our extremely good fortune with the weather came to an end today.)

Sibelius Park Monument - Helsinki

An obscure Ohio composer with a world famous composer

On the way back into town, we stopped at Sibelius Park. My musical friends will know Jean Sibelius and Finland's greatest composer, producing seven symphonies and a large body of other works. He is most famous for “Finlandia,” composed to keep the Finnish national spirit alive when threatened by Russia. I've had the privilege of conducting that dramatic piece several times. So the park is unusual, in that the principal monument is a sculpture that resemble organ pipes and do produce sound when the wind is right. This monument to Sibelius was so controversial that the sculpter put up the portrait of Sibelius next to the pipes to mollify the critics.

Next stop was Senate Square, dominated by the Lutheran Cathedral, a magnificent structure. As with all the other Scandinavian countries we have visited, although nominally Lutheran (80-90%), most people do not go to church, except for weddings and funerals.

Tomorrow Stockholm.

Days 8 and 9 – St. Petersburg, Russia – September 5-6

Day 8 – Hermitage and Ballet – September 5, 2012

The last time Karen and I were in St. Petersburg, it was 1995 with the Promise Choir of Bay Presbyterian on a mission/concert tour. I remember we had a concert at a Baptist church the day we arrived, when we all had jet lag. We warmed up in the basement of the church with a piano horribly out of town, and I thought “This concert is going to be a disaster.” The piano in the sanctuary was in tune, and all the exhaustion evaporated and it turned out to be a wonderful concert.

At that time Russia was just emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union, but just barely. I remember that the buildings along the Neva River were beautiful on the river side, but if you walked one block away from the river, things were gray and bleak, and the infrastructure was almost non-existent, barely paved roads, unreliable plumbing and electricity and people that looked very sad.

In 2012 there is a radical difference from that time. People seem cheerful, stores are full of merchandise AND people buying it. Infrastructure still needs improvement, but much better than 17 years ago.

Entrance Hall to Hermitage

Our first tour was at the Hermitage, the Winter Palace of Peter the Great, and later Catharine the Great is a spectacular building inside and out. The opulence of the furniture, furnishings, and décor is something to marvel at as you roam from room to room, of which there are over 1,000! The two hours that we spent there was like skipping a rock across a pond, barely penetrating the surface. Nevertheless, it was magnificent to see a great number of Impressionist works and two extremely famous paintings by Da Vinci and two by Rafael, all of Madonna and child. The Princess tour groups get in a little before the museum opens to the general public, so we didn't have much competition at first, but by the time we got to the Renaissance masterpieces, it was a mob scene. But it was worth a few minutes wait at each picture to get a glimpse and maybe take a picture of these marvelous works not seen anywhere else. With three million works of art, it is said that if you spent 30 seconds at each work, it would take 20 some years to get around to all of them. By which time I imagine there would be thousands of new works added.

Edgar Degas - Place de la Concorde

The Hermitage is a collection of five adjacent and connected large buildings. Across the plaza in front of the Hermitage, the former Army headquarters, an incredibly long semi-circular building, is being renovated to become a part of the Heritage museum. If you are an art afficianado, you must come to St. Petersburg and plan on several days in the museum. I wanted to shout at the guide, “STOP, STOP! I want to look at each painting!” But since we didn't have 20 years to spare, we had to move on.

Leonardo Da Vinci - Madonna and Child
(sorry for the reflection - picture is under glass)

We then had a couple of hours on our own to roam around the city. Karen and I had a very nice lunch at the Grand Europe Hotel, at Grand Prices! (There I go again...)

Swan Lake at St. Petersburg Ballet

Back to the ship to dress for our night at the ballet. Good news/bad news. The good news was that “Swan Lake” by Tchaikovsky was being performed, the principal dancers were excellent, and Karen and I should have won the prize for best dressed people in the audience, had there been such a prize. The bad news was that I was disappointed in the company's performance, they seemed underrehearsed. (I am a dance expert, because I have watched “So You Think You Can Dance!”) Other bad news, sort of, is that I was the only man in the entire audience with a tux on, and we almost missed the third act because of the long line at the only WC in the entire building. Infrastructure needs improvement there as well. But in all, a nice evening and the Prince and Odille defeated the evil magician and lived happily thereafter (I presume). The orchestra was good, except the tuba was too loud at times; that's the way it is with tuba players.

Day 9 – River Cruise – St. Petersburg – September 6, 2012

Karen on the River Neva

This was very special. Although cold (50's) and windy, still the sun shone part of the time and the architectural marvels along the Neva River are nothing short of spectacular, St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1702, so it is not an ancient city like most European cities. He wanted a European flavored city like Paris, London, and Berlin, where he had traveled, so it is laid out very logically and the central city is all neoclassical architecture in varying pastel colors. The cathedrals are magnificent, often with gilded domes with tons of gold leaf. In a way it resembles Venice or Amsterdam with many canals, although many from his time have been filled in. It is built on 42 islands by last count. St. Petersburg was the capital and royal family home from 1702 until 1918, when Lenin moved it to Moscow after the Bolshevik revolution.

Neoclassical buildings on the canal

And hey! We got cheap champagne in plastic cups. What could be better! Then more time on our own, mostly to search for WC's that did not require roubles to use. Yesterday we used the ones in the Grand Europe Hotel. Today we found free toilets in the basement of the Russian Museum. The terms “restroom” or “bathroom” are not used in Europe.