Well folks, firstly, apologies for the silence - the weather throughout the sea was, well changable to say the least, and internet coverage very patchy. So what you'll get is a retrospective highlights (which is probably a good thing!).
All Aboard! We sailed about 3pm, had a quick bite to eat at the buffett then it was time for a welcome drink (unfortunately not free!). Lanson on the aft deck, sun shining - what a way to start a voyage!
A quick tour of the ship revealed a gym, several cafes and restaurants and many bars (yay!) including The Golden Lion, an English pub style place which, as you can probably imagine, became somewhat popular. Why? That's where they held most of the trivia games of course!
That evening we experienced the restaurant for the first time -oh the food, and the wine list -fabulous - knew we would have to do lots of exercise to work off the pounds!
Day 1 was at sea, with Renoir deeply involved in finishing the first draft of the Terry Pratchett for next year. There was much laying around the pool, and enjoying the spa, just generally relaxing. Won our first trivia game – and this was just the beginning! Eventually one of the Trivia hosts described us as the Eggheads – apparently they are a mastermind team on tele who hardly anyone ever beats – so we took it as a compliment! I think our biggest win was all the trivia hosts started including at least one Australian question in their very British-centric quizzes – as Brits, followed by Americans, made up the majority of the passengers.
Day 2: Copenhagen: We started the day with a spa, and saw some poor lady stretchered out from the morning buffet (no, we are assured it was on the food! She was one of 5 people who had heart attacks in the first few days).We only had a few hours at this port which was a real shame, it is such a pretty place - exactly like the front of old fashioned chocolate boxes - all low rise, different coloured buildings but very 17-18th century - a real fairy tale town. We did a lot of walking around just viewing the sites, including one of our favourite things - wandering through the botanic gardens. It was sunny and clear and just the right weather for walking. All through the town were interesting little diversions, such as handrails beautifully shaped into birds, decorative moldings on buildings, and many many big busty mermaid statues! In a wander down the canal which led to the bay we even managed to find a Scottish pub - McJoy's - and had a bevvy to recover from our strenuous walk. Five hours was not a lot of time to fit much in, but we left Copenhagen knowing we would love to return and see more of this picturesque city.
Day 4 at sea where we enjoyed some of the activities on board. I did a yoga class, Renoir caught up on his fencing. Later that morning we won at trivia again! The prizes were little gold cards that we collected and chose from a number of different items on the last night of the trip. Much bemusement by the other players that 3 Aussies are so good at answering questions that are so UK centric! We even managed to get some right that the Brits can’t – like when did the pound change from paper to coin? As it was a sea day, the demand for the launderettes was high, so we spent a bit of running around finding empty washers and dryers. Dixieland Jazz was a highlight over lunch, there are many musicians on board; the orchestra; a harpist (her playing was exquisite); Funch, soul man who played in The Golden Lion every evening; a soloist; a string trio; as well as whatever musical number was being performed (two shows a night) in the 3 level Royal Theatre.
There is also Hemispheres the night club, which we only went to for afternoon trivia games; The Queen’s Room, where many seminars took place – Stevie and I attended one about Faberge, which was fascinating and gave me more of a context for the exquisite work Carl Faberge created. There were even some more modern Faberge pieces on board created by Theo, and Sara – the cheapest being a broach designed by Sara for US$990 (sorry mum!). The Wintergarden is a conservatory style area which separated the buffet from the midship pool and spas and was a favourite with many on the cooler days; an internet room where they ran classes and of course the usual shops with clothes, handbags, jewellery, and Cunard memorabilia and of course, what ship would be complete without a Harrods agency?
Day 5 in Stockholm. Stockholm was bloody cold, there is no other way to describe it. It bucketed down all day (until very late afternoon when we were all back on the ship!) It was so cold it even snowed – in summer! Still, we didn‘t let that stop us from enjoying ourselves. Stockholm is made up of a number of islands, so there are many bridges, and travelling around by wide, broad-bottomed boats is part of the everyday. Starting with a short boat trip to get a feel of the place, we disembarked on Djurgarden – where we had discovered a number of museums were located. First was the Nordic museum, which was originally designed to display key themes from all the Nordic countries – but ended up just being Swedish.
We wandered through the fabulous display of daily life from about the 17th century on – looking at their textiles, furniture, reading how they celebrated things like weddings (usually they married around Christmas time which gave a focus to the time of year that was so gloomy, and usually the pigs were fat enough to eat!) Then we viewed a wonderfully informative display about the Sami, Sweden’s indigenous peoples. They too, have had the short end of the cultural stick over the centuries, but now have a strong political voice and have greater representation in all walks of life.
Next we searched for a particular museum and found ourselves wandering through their gorgeous gardens (do you see a theme here? Our first date was in Brisbane Botanic gardens!) Even though it was so incredibly cold, the flowers were vivid and glorious – in fact in every port we visited all through Scandinavia, St Petersburg, Tallinn and Belgium the flowers were everywhere, like the city was celebrating! We eventually found the Biologica Museum – but damn, unlike the Nordic museum, they only accepted the local currency for the entry fee. We must have looked crestfallen because after a wee chat with the attendant, and explaining to her we only had another three hours in the city, she let us in for free!
It was fabulous! Imagine a two-story donut shaped building - with you going up the spiral staircase in the middle. It showcased the many different creatures in their natural environments. Now taxidermy is not everyone’s cup of tea – but this was fabulous. Looking out we were at bird level – with owls, woodpeckers, eagles and many, many sea birds just to name a few. Looking down were the ground level creatures on the land- bears, wolverines, foxes, big cats like the lynx, then as we walked around we came to the beach, and saw many many different types of sea birds, seals and other marine animals in their settings. The attendant said it would only take us about 10 mins to view everything, I’m sure we were there for over 30 – it was just so fascinating. We always carry little clip-on koalas and boomerang key rings and the like with us to give to someone who has been kind to us – so naturally she earned a koala – and she loved it!
Then it was off to the Vasa Museum – one of the highlights of Stockholm. The Vasa was a 16th century vessel that sank on her maiden voyage after only sailing 1300 metres! Despite this, her hull was only located in the middle of last century, and she now stands as the only complete example of a ship of her vintage in the world. She wasn’t quite as big as the Queen Victoria – but she was certainly impressive! The display the Swedes have created is a wonderful tribute to her, and to the sailing craft of that time. There is one exhibition where they project the aft of the ship onto the wall, then superimpose the colours she would have been painted when she sailed; then in the next display case they had examples of the colours (in powder form) and their origin. We could easily have spent a full day exploring, but had to back on the ship by 5pm, so back to wait for the fat bottomed boat to collect us.
We were a little bit early for the boat so wandered (blissfully rain free by now) so wandered around the wharf and lucked onto a small maritime museum which has the most wonderful historical long boats with massive carvings at their fronts. Also kept here was a ceremonial barge that is still used today by the Royal Family for visiting dignitaries and special occasions – all gold and white and blue – just beautiful!
Then back to the ship to win more trivia!
Well if you’ve made it to the end you’ve probably read enough by now – so more later – off to explore York today!
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