Well, I’ve now finished posting photos from my Baltic cruise – one destination each day.
If you would like to see the whole lot (in reverse order), you can view the entire category.
And here’s a list of the individual posts:
And last but not least, some pictures of the ship.
Our final port of call was Oslo in Norway.
The port of Oslo is reached by travelling up some 60 miles of the narrow Oslofjord. Of course the ship has to slow down as it passes through the narrow channel, giving everyone on deck a stunning view. Here are my photographs of the approach to Oslo.
First we were met by a pilot boat to help guide along the fjord. The pilot boat drew up along one side of our ship then suddenly U-turned and crossed the water directly behind us, in our churning wake, before drawing up on the other side of us. I presume the captain of the boat knew what he was doing, but I wouldn’t fancy crossing only metres behind a huge ship with 20 megawatts of power!
Passengers stand on our ship and watch both sides of the fjord pass by.
It really is a strange experience, standing at the top of the front of a 90,000 tonne ship, gliding silently through a narrow fjord. Fortunately the cocktail waitress was waiting at the ready (at 9:30am).
We were treated to another day of fine weather. You can see from this photo how bright the sun is, and how little the wind is disturbing the Norwegian flag that was flown with pride on the Jewel.
And finally, the port was in sight.
Right beside the dock stands the Akershus Fortress. Once the ship was in dock, it was too close to get a good view of the fortress, but luckily I took this shot minutes before the ship docked.
Once docked, the first attraction we visited was the Akershus Fortress – a leisurely twenty paces from the ship’s gangway. Here are some of the family at the top of fortress, inspecting the ship.
The fortress also afforded nice views of the sailing boats tied up in the dock.
I saw an unusual sculpture a bit further into the town. When viewed straight on, it appears to be a standard sculpture of a face. It’s not until you see it from the side that you realise it’s carved into the stone, in a concave shape.
Perhaps not very typically Norwegian – we saw a huge bronze tiger which bit Oliver!
We went to see Oslo Cathedral but unfortunately it was closed for refurbishment. If you compare my photo with the one on the Wikipedia page, you can see how clean and shiny the spire is now – so they must be doing a good job.
The pedestrian crossing lights in Oslo have two red men and one green man. I couldn’t work out the purpose of the second red man, as you never see one without the other – only both at the same time.
The Oslo City Hall is a bit of an ugly building, and it also has too many architectural styles crammed into one build. It has brown brick, grey stone, classical carvings, modern carvings and a rather unusual carillon on the top.
This a photo of one of the more modern carvings on the side of the building.
As the afternoon wore on we returned to the ship, but not before I’d taken some photos of the sailing boats in the dock.
We were due to sail out of Oslo at 8pm (before it was dark). However, one of the lifeboats failed a routine safety check so the ship was unable to set sail until it had been repaired. It grew darker, and I went up on deck with my tripod and took some night shots of the cityscape.
Another day, another country. Today we are in Tallinn, Estonia.
Despite being quite far North and, you’d expect, quite cold, the climate was almost Mediterranean while we were there. The locals said it was freakishly hot and they never had weather like this. The sky was clear and blue and the sun was beating down.
In the port, there was a small market set up, mainly selling tourist novelties. The trademark gift seems to be palm-sized porcelain houses; some with a place to put incense so smoke comes from the chimney. But there was a large variety of different gifts, which was a refreshing change from some of the tourist markets we’d seen in other countries, where every stall had near-identical copies of precisely two varieties of gift.
This photo was taken from the dock market. You can’t really comprehend how huge these ships are until you walk between them.
It was only a short walk to reach the old town, which has a strange medieval feel and cobbled streets. For some reason, this building has a Swedish flag.
Only a few steps away from the building above, I saw this colourful door.
Minutes later, we reached the town square, Raekoja plats. There is a lively market here, and an imposing town hall (although behind the camera in this photo).
I still can’t work out what this shop sells. Textiles, glass, ceramics, and err, schmuck?
The old town in Tallinn is split into two halves – the upper and lower parts. You can get between the two parts in several places but the paths are quite steep. Here Edmund is walking up to the upper half.
Perhaps the most impressive building we saw in Tallinn is the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, an orthodox church.
I love the cathedral’s onion domes.
We went into the cathedral too. It was filled with lavish gold decorations and paintings but we were requested not to take photos. So you’ll have to make do with another photo of its beautiful exterior.
A short walk brought us to St Mary’s Cathedral, a the city’s Lutheran cathedral.
Just as we had looked up into the upper town earlier on in the day, we found a viewpoint in the upper town to look over the lower town. Here you can see the new city in the background.
This view shows St Olaf’s church, and you can also see our ship in the dock.
Descending back into the lower town on our way back to the ship, we spotted some seats on the slope for fat tourists to rest on as they climb the (short) hill. My young, fit brothers apparently needed a break on the way down, though.
After we left port it was a long journey to Oslo, and we sailed off into the sunset.
Oour route took us back under the Great Belt bridge (Storebæltsbroen) which joins two Danish islands. It was truly spectacular to sail under the bridge, but near impossible to capture on camera. These photos are awful, but hopefully interesting.
Apparently the ship was designed with this bridge in mind and passes only a couple of metres below the bridge deck! As we passed underneath, I was almost certain there would be a loud scraping noise as the Viking Crown Lounge was ripped off.
To be continued…
Our first taste of Russia, the view of St Petersburg from the ship, was unimpressive to say the least. It’s a mile or two outside the city and all we could see were some shabby, grey tower blocks. And when we disembarked from the ship, we soon discovered that the security in Russian ports is as strict as Heathrow airport.
Still, once we’d had our passports stamped there was a coach waiting for us, complete with a tour guide. She must have been about 60, and as mad as a hatter. As the party filed onto the coach, she said:
And now I count you in Russian like precious stones - один, два, три…
Our first destination was the Hermitage – a museum comprised of several palaces. There are hundreds upon hundreds of rooms, each of them filled with sculptures, paintings and lavish decoration. The ceilings and walls were covered with gold leaf – I simply couldn’t comprehend how much of the interior (and exterior!) of the Hermitage was gold.
Of course, photos can’t do justice to such grandeur, but here are a few of my favourite shots. This first one is the small throne room.
Yep, this is all gold too.
You guessed it – this is the large throne room. Although if I were the Tsar of Russia, I would probably want a small table to put my drink on.
Oh look! More gold!
This urn is huge! (Yes, yes, I know. Those people are just far away). It’s carved from solid malachite.
This guy is lost because there are so many rooms. Nah, not really. This is Orpheus, sculpted in 1777 by Antonio Canova.
Leaving the Hermitage, the sun had just come out.
We were taken to an old, converted palace for lunch. It had grand marble pillars, and we were served a traditional three-course Russian lunch, including caviar and, of course, a shot of vodka.
A traditional Russian band with singers and dancers performed for our entertainment. After a few songs, they grabbed some of the tourists and made them play musical instruments on the stage. My brother Edmund was selected to be the conductor, and given a wooden spoon and a hat, much to his embarrassment (and our delight).
After lunch we were taken to see St Isaac’s Cathedral. It took 40 years to build and at the time of its completion, it was the tallest church in Russia. During the Soviet era the building was turned into a museum of atheism. These days it’s a general tourist attraction.
The exterior, while being large, tall, and grand barely hints at the lavish opulence of the interior. And if you were wondering, yes, that’s real gold on the roof.
The interior is incredibly grand, covered with gold leaf, paintings, sculptures and precious stones. Here’s a view looking up inside the centre of the building. In the very centre of the dome there is a metal sculpture of the dove of peace.
The inside of the cathedral is lined with yet more malachite, this time in the form of columns. Apparently each column weighs 114 tonnes!
The columns were apparently lifted into place using a huge wooden framework, with ropes and dozens of labourers. There was a model of the setup in the museum.
Above the door as we left, I saw this enormous sculpture.
And here’s the family, standing outside the cathedral. (You can see the above sculpture in the background). Aren’t we cool with our tour radios and earphones?
We went into a shop which claimed to have all traditional Russian goods, and was aimed at tourists. The shop served free coffee and vodka – and they just couldn’t give you enough of the stuff! But the products were high quality and with a couple of vodkas inside me, what better way could there be of spending the holiday rubles?
All of the Baltic countries we’d visited seemed crazy about amber, so I bought a silver and amber pendant for Hannah, while Edmund bought a shapka (which showed up on the receipt in Cyrillic script as Шапка).
Outside the the shop, I asked Edmund to try and look cold and hungry, and I took this photo.
This is the Russian ship Aurora, which fired a blank shot to signal the start of the assault on the Winter Palace (now part of the Hermitage).
Of course, no visit to Russia would be complete without the obligatory shot of a Lada. These cars are everywhere!
This is me standing in front of the Church of the Spilled Blood. The blood reference comes from the fact that Alexander II was fatally wounded on that site in 1881.
In the evening I managed some night shots of the city skyline, as seen from the ship.
Overall, I thought that Russia was a strange juxtaposition of extreme wealth and extreme poverty – but certainly a fascinating country nonetheless.
To be continued…
The next day, we sailed into Helsinki, Finland. The weather was grey again, but we disembarked the ship and got straight onto a tour bus that was waiting in the port.
One of the first sights we saw was Helsinki Cathedral. I think the steps and paved area of the Senate Square add to the grand impression it makes.
Not far away there is an abstract sculpture in tribute to the composer Jean Sibelius, who studied first law and then music in Helsinki as a young man, before moving to Berlin. At the time it was commissioned, there was debate about whether or not it should include the composer’s face. It was eventually decided that an effigy of Sibelius should be included – sadly you can’t see this in my photo.
Perhaps the most interesting thing we saw was the Temppeliaukio Church, which has been carved out of rock. The roof is partly made of glass, and the rest of it is made from a single piece of copper wire that has been coiled round, several kilometres in length.
Unfortunately the dim interior coupled with the large windows and bright floodlights didn’t make for ideal photographic conditions, but I took a few pictures nonetheless.
Just around the corner from the church, there was yet more evidence that the Finns are obsessed with Father Christmas. Santa’s Minimarket is partly a Christmas decoration shop, and partly a Happy Shopper with groceries and newspapers. Strange. Nevertheless, I bought a Snickers and a cuddly moose.
The tour guide also pointed out a market where the stalls are held by members of the public – basically a car boot sale, but larger and taking place weekly.
Finally, as we returned to the ship, I spotted a guy cleaning the windows on the 8th deck, and was immediately glad that it wasn’t my job.
While it’s great seeing any new place, I couldn’t help but think that Helsinki was the most similar to Coventry out of any of the cities we visited on the cruise.
To be continued…
Another day on our cruise finds us on our way into the Swedish port of Stockholm.
The day immediately got off to a fascinating start, as Stockholm is surrounded by an archipelago of tiny islands. Great fun if you have a motorboat to whizz round the sharp corners, but for a 90,000 tonne ship there are only two or three passable routes and the ship has to slow right down to only a few knots.
You can see the archipelago in the mini map below, plus the shipping routes in dotted lines – or you can see for yourself on Google Maps. We approached from Copenhagen in the South-West, circled the archipelago and ultimately homed in on Stockholm from the North-East, along the path of the shipping routes.
I woke up early specifically to stand on deck and watch the ship carefully navigate its winding way through the archipelago. It was a little misty but absolutely beautiful, and I hope some of these photos have captured but a pinch of that beauty.
The city itself is spread across several islands, which are connected by a few bridges. It would be a long walk to visit all of the interesting islands, so we bought a day pass for the bus boats that are constantly whizzing around between the islands. This gave a unique view of the city, too.
Here we are standing by the water on Djurgården, an island which is home to an amusement park, several museums and lots of open land.
Later on, in Gamla stan (the old city) we witnessed the changing of the guard. It’s a grand ceremony with soldiers in full costume on horseback, accompanied by a mounted brass band.
We also visited Storkyrkan, the oldest church in Gamla stan. It was built in red brick rather than stone, and had all the usual features you would expect in a large church. It was also fairly dim inside so there wasn’t much scope for good photos, but this unusual stained glass window did catch my eye.
It so happened that Stockholm Gay Pride festival was taking place on that day, too. We watched the parade pass – it was absolutely huge and there was a seemingly unending procession of floats, singers, dancers and actors. I took a few photos over the heads of the crowd.
Sailing out of Stockholm in the late afternoon, I saw a dockyard where the cranes were painted like giraffes. Cute.
We were also treated to our first decent sea sunset of the cruise. It was hard to capture such a breathtaking sight on a camera, but here’s my best attempt.
To be continued…
Our first port of call was Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark.
Unfortunately the weather on the day wasn’t great (grey and rained on and off) but being British we put our brave faces on and walked around in the rain.
The walk from the dock to the centre of the town took us past the statue of the Little Mermaid, supposedly the most iconic sight in the city. I hadn’t actually heard of the statue before, but it was fairly unimpressive.
Getting into town a bit, we saw this advert. Sounds like the title of a cheap porno, but the translation from Danish actually means final sprint.
A few paces further on, we arrived at Nyhavn (translation: New Port), a 17th century waterfront which is now dominated by cafés and bars. The sun came out, so we took a boat trip with a tour guide, and I took quite a few photos.
Firstly of Nyhavn itself:
Then our boat ventured out a little, and we passed the new opera house.
Then the rain really started pelting. Fortunately our boat had a sliding perspex roof, but the passengers of the Sommerfuglen weren’t so fortunate.
We passed lots of other grand buildings but unfortunately with the rain lashing down and the perspex roof closed, there was no point in taking pictures. Coming back into the Nyhavn again a little later, I saw another Danish sign that immediately appealed to my immaturity.
We passed a moored boat on which there was a handful of bhangra drummers and dancers. A small crowd had gathered but I couldn’t see anyone throwing their Kroner into hats.
To be continued…
I briefly mentioned in the last entry that we cruised on the Jewel of the Seas. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, the Wikipedia page is in dispute for being written like an advertisement. So I think some pictures would give a better impression of the ship.
At the centre of the ship, there is an atrium called the Centrum that extends the full height of eight decks. The first photo shows the view looking at up from the bottom; but perhaps more impressive is the view from the top, standing on the plate-glass floor! Absolutely terrifying.
Here’s the Jewel (right), docked in Tallinn next to the MSC Ocean (left).
And another view of the Jewel, this time docked in Oslo.
Not a great photo, but I wanted to include this photo of the horns. The largest horn has a diameter of probably six feet or more. All three horns sound simultaneously and interfere to make a deep growly noise which is unlike anything I’ve heard before.
In St Petersburg, we took on more fuel. It took about an hour to set up the tanker, 3-4 hours to pump the fuel, and another hour to pack up. The oil tanker was pretty big, but dwarfed by the Jewel.
The crew extract some oil from the tanks using a small pot on a piece of string, and test it before it is pumped. I couldn’t tell what these tests might be, but it didn’t take long and the foreman jotted down some notes on a clipboard.
From what I could tell, the belly of the tanker contained twelve compartments, each with its own pump and hatch for testing. The crew sampled oil from all twelve hatches, and when pumping began I heard twelve pumps start working, one after another.
Some fat guy checks the counter to see how many litres have been pumped. Also visible is the black hose where the oil is pumped to the Jewel. A sign on the tanker said this hose had been tested to 10 Bar.
The oil tanker has what appears to be a jet-propelled lifeboat. It looks like it can go temporarily underwater, which makes sense when you look at the angle of its launch. I’m guessing it has to be pretty fast so the crew can bail if the tanker is in danger of catching fire.
To be continued…
Yes,I know. Harwich isn’t the most exciting, picturesque or romantic destination. But it was the port of departure for the Baltic cruise, which I went on with my family (parents and two younger brothers).
I took lots of photos over the fortnight, and now on my photoblog I will upload the highlights of each destination, bit by bit.
Like I said, Day 1 involved driving from Nuneaton to Harwich (about 3 hours by car), boarding the ship – the beautiful Jewel of the Seas – and setting sail. I didn’t take many photos of note, but I did capture a nice shot of my brothers on deck, and one of the sunset as we sailed out into the North Sea, on our way to Copenhagen.
To be continued…