Today was our first full day in London, England. We decided to start with a panoramic hop on-hop off bus tour. To get to the bus tour we had to go to Trafalgar Square to get tickets. We went to the Shepherd’s Bush metro/tube/underground station and bought passes. The man that assisted us was very helpful. To get into the subway, you have to touch your card on a sensor (I’m guessing it uses NFC) and a gate opens for you. We took the Central Line to Oxford Circus (which apparently doesn’t have anything to do with a circus) and then transferred to the Bakerloo line to Charing Cross. It was a neat experience, especially for a suburbs boy like me.

Today was entirely travel. We woke up early, ate breakfast, and headed out to the shuttle to the airport. We flew directly to London, Gatwick airport (not Heathrow). Then a driver who we had hired picked us up and took us an hour and a half to the apartment we had rented using HomeAway (which is like Airbnb). Our dad, who had flown in a few hours earlier, met us at the apartment. After leaving our stuff in the flat, we headed to the grocery store, Tesco, to get foodstuffs for our stay in London.

Today we were in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is our last port on the cruise. We fly out of Copenhagen to London tomorrow.

We began our day by doing a MeMover tour. MeMovers are kinda like a mobile elliptical, but not. I can’t really describe it, so I’ll post a picture that our guide took when we were parked in front of a water feature. Our guide had virtually perfect English and his son, Otto, who made the caboose of our caravan, had terrific English also.

Today we were in Fredericia (fred-er-esh-eeuh), Denmark. We got off the boat late because we didn’t have anything scheduled until the afternoon. When we did make it into town, we walked around for a little bit. It is a very nice town, but there isn’t much to see. There were a lot of pedestrian streets and I liked the water features along and in the street. We did manage to buy a new SIM card that will work in Denmark so we can call dad. We bought it from a Sri Lankan in Denmark.

Today we docked at the port in Warnemunde, Germany. We had to go out earlier than normal because 1) we docked earlier and 2) we drove into Berlin which is a 3.5 hr drive. We didn’t have much trouble finding our driver, and the ride into Berlin wasn’t very interesting. We stayed mostly on the autobahn, the (basically) no speed limit highways. The driver didn’t seem to be very experienced, but we didn’t die. He did drive us to the wrong spot in Berlin though. It was his second time in Berlin, so he didn’t know the city very well. Our guide had told the driving company to take us to a certain part of the Berlin Wall, but the company had told our driver the wrong place. It took half an hour or so to find the right spot.

Today we were at sea, only sailing. I really don’t want to write all about it, so I won’t. I will tell you that it was fun. Just combine what I’ve described to you about the last few evenings on the ship and add some swimming to that and you have a good idea of what happened today.

Today we were in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Unlike Tallinn and Riga, Klaipeda is not the capitol of Lithuania. The capitol, Vilnius is 300 km (186 mi) away and the second largest city is in between Vilnius and Klaipeda. Klaipeda is the industrial centre of Lithuania. The large number of container ships was an indicator of this economic status.

Klaipeda was historically German, specifically East Prussian. It was not until the Soviets came after WWII that it became part of Lithuania. All of the German population left Klaipeda (which was at that time known as Memelis) and the Soviets renamed the city to its current name. The Soviets then incorporated the city into Lithuania. During WWII, like all of the Baltic States, Germany invaded and occupied Lithuania. Then, the Soviets came back and reoccupied Lithuania.

Today we took it a little easier than the other days. We didn’t do any tour of the city, but we did ride the shuttle into Riga and walked around. The shuttle dropped us off at the main square called Town Hall Square. The architecture of Riga is a mix of old, Soviet, and modern and the buildings of Town Hall Square demonstrates that perfectly. There was an old structure, the House of the Blackheads, that was built in the 1300s, an ugly Soviet building that housed a museum, and just around the corner was a modern (post-Soviet) building. There is a statue in the middle of the square of a man holding a sword. In ancient times, the sword was used as the geographical centre of the city and all measurements were based off of that point. We then wandered to St. Paul’s church (I think it was Paul’s, it might have been Peter’s though, I can’t remember). It was like many other small town Germanic churches. We continued to wander through various streets and eventually made it to Dome Square named after the domed church which is the dominant landmark in the square. We walked around, took some pictures and ate some Latvian ice cream. Then we headed back to the Town Hall Square.

Today we were in Tallinn, Estonia. We arrived in port at about 7:00 and, after breakfast, we went out to meet our guide at about 8:30. Unlike Russia, there was no passport control or anything (which was quite refreshing). Our guide’s name was Siljva (or something like that) it was pronounced like Sill-vuh. Her English was very good and she was very well educated (she is writing her thesis to become a information technology lawyer). She was able to answer our questions much more easily than Maria in St. Petersburg.

Today we were again in St. Petersburg. I will start describing today from when we met our guide outside the cruise terminal. We first drove to a souvenir shop where the travel company headquarters was located (it appeared that the sublet space from the souvenir shop). The lady who was accepting payments for the tour said that all of the kids could get 15 Euro credit for anything in the store. (I think that that was so that the parents would stay and spend money.) I got a cool knife with a CCCP (USSR in Russian) symbol on it. It doesn’t seem very high quality, but it is cool.