After visiting St. Petersburg, we traveled overnight to the little country of Estonia. Our port of call was the capital city of Tallinn. For our tour, we chose to visit the "old town" part of the city, with its narrow cobblestone streets and a lively plaza where we were able to do a little shopping. We found cute, handmade dolls for great-nephew Felix and granddaughter Eleanor there. Buildings in these old cities very often have interesting features, like the clock and the dragon you see here.
Like many of the cities in Europe, old town Tallinn was once a walled city. We rendezvoused for our trip back to the ship at the city gate you see here, where vendors were selling flowers and other items.
Overnight, we traveled to Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm sits at the eastern end of a vast archipelago, so the last several hours of the trip, which occurred at dawn, were spent winding through beautiful waterways and between islands and other slips of land. For those of us who arose with the sun, it was a beautiful ride. Because Kathie and I had visited Stockholm some years ago, and because we were a bit tired from the many tours on preceding days, we elected to spend most of the day aboard ship, so there are no pictures of Stockholm itself to offer here. But, here are a couple of shots of the trip through the archipelago.
Our next day was spent at sea. Each evening, we dined in a formal dining room and always had four full courses from which to choose (appetizer, salad, main course, and dessert). The food was exceptional. We were assigned to a specific table, and so we became well-acquainted with new friends Johnny and Cindy from North Carolina who were seated at the same table. Here we are. You can see the Baltic Sea out the window.
Following this day at sea, we were in Poland. We docked in Gydania. However, we had chosen a tour of Gdansk, home of Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity Movement in Poland during the late 1980s. Like Tallinn and others, Gdansk was a walled city at one time. Below is a shot of one of the gates to the city. We passed through this gate to enter an interesting little shopping area, which you can see in another photo below.
The above picture was taken from a bridge just outside the gate. From that bridge, we were able to see this medieval port crane, a facility used to load and unload ships. Gdansk was a member of the Hanseatic League, a federation of trading guilds around the Baltic Sea. We eventually learned more about this league in Hamburg and other cities we visited.
The shopping area was filled with bakeries, cafes, and numerous jewelry shops that specialized in amber jewelry. We heard quite an interesting talk on amber and how to distinguish it from the plastic fakes that are sometimes pawned off on the unsuspecting. Did you know that real amber burns or that it floats in water?
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