Wednesday, June 30. Helsinki, Finland  

I think our day in Helsinki can be summed up in one word: WET. It was pretty much Copenhagen, revisited. The same strong wind, and blowing rain.  

We did take a morning tour "Helsinki City Tour - 3 hours." All things considered, that was probably the best way to see some of Helsinki in this weather. We certainly would not have enjoyed walking about on our own, getting soaked, as we did in Copenhagen.  

The contrast between Helsinki and St. Petersburg, which we just left last night, was very marked. This morning, the ship arrived in a clean, bustling port--busy with both ferry boats, cargo ships and cruise ships. Even a nice big sign on the side of a port building, saying "Welcome to Helsinki" (in English). Nary a sign of peeling paint anywhere.  

Helsinki looked very prosperous, but the "old town" with its medieval architecture either didn't exist, or was not included in our tour. I suspect Helsinki is living very much in the present, not the past, and that includes its architecture. We drove by lots of beautiful parks, not an abundance of flower gardens, but way more than in Russia. As with most cities, most of the housing was in the form of apartments, but they were very attractive. Also very spendy. According to our guide, an average apartment would cost about $400,000 to buy. Gulp!  

We had a few minutes at the Sibelius monument, in a very attractive park--viewed from under our umbrellas! Rhododendrons were still blooming in the park. Although Sibelius was a violinist, the sculpture that honors him is of a gigantic pipe organ--all made out of a bright silver metal, probably aluminum. Nearby is a bust of the composer, also of the same bright metal.  

We also drove by the home of the President of Helsinki--no Royal Palaces here. The guide gave us a lot of info on this current president--a woman, who had a few things working against her election--single, but with two children, and a live-in boy friend! But apparently she had done very good work in the country's legislature and is now not only president, but married to the boy friend.  

We saw two churches, the first being the very big, domed Lutheran Cathedral, a landmark with its huge green dome overlooking the city. The tour bus parked at the edge of Senate Square which had many important buildings, including the Legislature surrounding it. Our guide said these buildings were built by the same architect who designed many of the St. Petersburg buildings--and yep, they did indeed bear a striking resemblance in design, but painted the usual mustard yellow rather than the lovely pastels of the Hermitage and other buildings in St. Petersburg.  

The Cathedral stood well above the Square with several flights of steep stairs leading up to it. The steps reminded me too much of the Mayan temple in Chichen Itza, so I said, "uh huh, I'll stay down here in the rain with the umbrella." But Glenn volunteered to climb up and take a peek inside the church. He also had a vantage point from there, looking down at the city. The church interior would have to be called "stark" but also very beautiful in its white simplicity with just a few paintings and pipe organ to offset the plain walls.  

The highlight of the tour, however, was our visit to another church--the "Temppeliaukio Church" ( The Rock Church) right in the heart of the city. Two architect brothers shaped this incredible piece of architecture from a solid rocky outcrop in 1969, with a shallow dome of coiled copper wire. Guidebooks say it has superb acoustics, and is often used for concerts. The ideal would have been to spend a little time in a church pew, contemplating the architecture, the colorful rock walls, the beautiful simplicity of its pipe organ, and its simple pulpit. It was such a contrast to the medieval and Baroque churches that are usually on the tourist's itinerary.  

But again, the cruise ship had done a poor job of scheduling its various tours of Helsinki and allowed them all to converge on the church at the same time. The capacity of the church is about 900--and there were probably more than that many tourists, milling about, trying to use the bathrooms (no. 1 attraction on all tours), take pictures, etc. A woman was playing some lovely music (by Sibelius??) on a grand piano, and yes, probably the acoustics would have added to her performance. Today, they just accentuated the babble of all of us tourists. Too bad.

Finnish is a most inscrutable language! I don't think it is related to any of the adjoining countries, but instead to Hungarian. Our tour went back to the main shopping center of Helsinki with many modern, handsome stores--the major ones reminded me in size of the Portland downtown Meier and Frank store. At this point, we were offered the choice of getting off the bus, and catching a shuttle back to the ship later on. But, we passed on that and headed back to the ship, and lunch in the Vista dining room.  

While we had been quite satisfied with the ship, and our tours so far, our dining partners at lunch were full of complaints. Veteran Holland American customers, they a) didn't like the new $10 a day tipping charge added to every passenger's bill; b) they didn't think the waiters and room stewards are nearly as attentive now when it won't make a difference in their tip; c) nothing about this cruise is as good as on their former cruises; and so on and so forth. Before long, I found myself hearing their complaints and responding, "Huh, well, yeah, that's not very good at all!" Good thing we only had one meal with them or I might have been incited to riot against Holland America by the end of the voyage!  

However, they are not the only passengers we've heard grumbling about the required tipping charge--which is a big change for HAL, which has always emphasized their "no tipping necessary" policy. Wonder if the large body of (until now) loyal repeat cruisers will get this new policy revoked? In spite of our fellow diners' dire remarks, we really have no reason to grumble about the service we received from all the HAL staff throughout the voyage. Our room is always nicely made up, our fruit bowl is kept full, bathroom is spotless, room service is timely (except the one morning when they totally forgot to bring breakfast!--which may have been due to "operator error" but we are pretty sure we DID put out the breakfast request card), and our dealings with the purser staff were always handled promptly, politely, and accurately.  

I thought I wanted to view the movie showing this afternoon in the Queens Lounge (aka movie theater). It was "Cold Mountain" and we slipped into the theater just in time to see the last ten minutes of the film. Well, I read the book, and those ten minutes are really the highlight of that long, long book. I thought, "do I really want to make Glenn sit through this movie? No." So, we gave up on that. The shops and casino were closed; (it's an "in port" day), and the rain continued to pelt down outside. Afternoon Tea was offered in the Explorer's Lounge from 3:30 to 4 p.m. but more rich desserts didn't sound like a good idea, with dinner only a couple hours away.  

We made a stop in the beautiful ship's Library where I picked up a mindless mystery and was reminded that the book is either returned by the last cruise day or I'm billed $25. That's a pretty hefty library fine, so I was sure to take it back. The Library had comfy chairs for reading/relaxing, a huge table covered with a jigsaw puzzle "in progress" and some nice atlases which were very popular. I think lots of people wanted to see in more detail just exactly where we were. Unlike other cruise ships we've sailed on, this one was very lacking in detailed maps of our route. They had a snazzy-looking wall display that would light up when buttons were pressed, telling you the longitude, latitude, type of seas (in case you couldn't look out the window) and a very generalized map of Europe showing more or less where the ship was. On other ships, there have been large and very detailed nautical charts posted so you could see little details, like all those interesting islands in the Swedish Archipelago. (Oh oh--I've been infected by the grumbling lunch partners.)  

Back in our cabin, I found that the video movie on one channel sounded even more interesting than my mystery book, so I watched most of "Tea with Mussolini."  

While we refused to be enticed by the afternoon tea, we didn't feel that a beer and jar of those tasty peanuts in the Crow's Nest would spoil dinner. From that vantage point, high in the ship, we had a good view of the ferry boat and container ship activity. Helsinki, with a population of 500,000 is obviously a very busy and prosperous port. Quite a contrast to the empty ship berths in St. Petersburg, pop. 4.2 million.  

And then....time to eat again! The sick dining mate, Tom, was still missing, as was his wife. Bob and Elsie reported that he is not improving, now they suspect his kidneys are involved. Not a good way to spend a cruise!  

After dinner, watching a juggler didn't sound any more entertaining than the magician act of an earlier evening. We just relaxed in our cabin, watching a little TV which promptly put us to sleep. The ship left Helsinki about 8:30 p.m. At some time during the night, Glenn woke me up to say he had heard an announcement over the loudspeaker (which broadcasts in the halls, but not in the cabins), saying that there were 50-knot winds (equivalent to about 55 mph) coming from the starboard side, and they were going to have to "re-balance" the ship. They never explained just what that entailed, but they certainly didn't ask everyone to get up and run to the other side! Glenn thought it meant moving their water ballast. The announcement also said they were changing course. While this seemed a little bit alarming, it didn't stop me from going right back to sleep--where I had a very vivid dream that involved a ship (sailing up the Willamette River !!) that was in some danger, and I asked to please be allowed to get off the ship...Right now! I guess my subconscious was more worried about the announcement than the rest of me.

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Thursday, July 1, At Sea, heading for Germany  

Time to rest up today--
At 6:30 a.m. we were wide awake and surprised to find that the skies are clear and the sun is shining. Apparently last night's strong winds blew the clouds out of our path. We had a leisurely breakfast, then walked around the Lido Deck pool, taking a few pictures in the sunbeams. To our amazement (ha!) we discovered that the casino was open--already!! So, we stopped by and donated a little bit to them in the morning, later we donated a bit more in the afternoon. On our THIRD visit in the evening, Glenn managed to reclaim some of his nickels.  

We also took in a morning lecture on our last two ports: Arhus, Denmark and Oslo, Norway. The woman who presented these lectures did a great job--and if we missed any part of her talk, it was all available on our cabin's TV later on.  

We moved right from that lecture, to a second one, with the catchy title: "A Crash Course in Art History." It was given by the man who handles the daily art auctions on board. While he certainly had his ulterior motives, he actually gave a pretty good, albeit brief, overview of the various periods of art--and he was able to illustrate some art media by the example of the Rembrandt etchings, and more contemporary art that is for sale via the art auctions.

Probably the juiciest tidbit I learned is that the latest thinking is that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of Da Vinci! There! You heard it first here, folks. He said, "If you don't believe me, check it out on the Internet." Something I have yet to do. The lecturer could not heap enough praise on Picasso and explained why he considers him the greatest painter of the 20th century, no maybe the greatest painter, period. This tied right in with a movie I watched in our cabin on Picasso and one of his later mistresses. After seeing that movie, I might concur that Picasso is a great painter, but as a human being he gets a very low rating!  

Re-invigorated by lunch, we were game for one MORE lecture--this one on the "Imperial Treasures of the Tsars." We expected to see more of the Hermitage, but no, this was just a plug for another offbeat gemstone, which cruise ships seem to tout. On other cruises, it's been "tanzanite" but this time it was "alexandrite" which coincidentally, they had lots of in the ship's jewelry shop! Now only mined in Brazil, it was first discovered in Russia. We slipped out early on this one and spent our time more profitably--taking a nap and/or reading.  

Since the passengers did not have to spend their time on excursions today, it was assumed they had plenty of time to prepare their formal wear, and so it was another "formal night" at dinner. They pull out the fancier entrees for formal nights--so filet mignon and roast duck were featured. Glenn opted for the steak, I gave the duck a try and was pleasantly surprised. It was very tasty, and not greasy. The last time I tried duck I found it pretty uninteresting. The missing dinner partners continued to be missing. Obviously, the gentleman from Colorado has serious problems.  

For a change, we decided to give the lounge entertainment a try. But we again played it sneaky--taking a little nap, then getting up in time to get a good seat for the later show. Tonight, the entertainer was a Scottish singer, named Brenda Cochrane who specializes in the songs and style of Edith Piaf. For a Scot, she did an awfully good imitation of a French singer. We really enjoyed her singing.  

After the show, our visit to the casino garnered $20 for Glenn. Another reminder in our room--instead of "forward" please turn your clocks backward one hour tonight. A sure sign that we are now traveling toward the west.

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