At Sea – Traveling to Denmark

Hi everyone -

Thanks everyone for reading the chronicles and sending me some e-mails and messages, it’s good to hear from all of you. I’m glad your finding the adventures entertaining!

We arrived in Helsinki, Finland two days ago – July 15th. I got off the ship with some of the activities staff and we took the $10 (ten dollars!) shuttle to downtown Helsinki. Or, at least, it was certainly the shopping district of Helsinki. They always take us straight there.

And I definitely took the bait this time. There’s a few things that I’ve really been needing to help experience and document this whole thing. A digital camera was one thing. Long story short, I scoped out the camera stores in the shopping district and, finding everything COMPLETELY overpriced, I bought the most overpriced camera that I could find. It didn’t help that it was in Euros and not dollars either.

But after getting over the buyers remorse, I decided not to throw myself overboard. I’m sure you’re all relieved. Whew!

So I didn’t see much of Helsinki, but I did notice that they have pickles in all of their sandwiches. I mean ALL of their sandwiches. Turkey sandwiched, egg salads sandwiches…everything. Also, I noticed a large contingent of my generation had taken to the gothic/punk life, and there was a lot of that fashion on the streets of Helsinki. We’ll be back there in a couple days and I’ll take a proper tour or something like that.

Yesterday was Stockholm, but I slept late and worked early, and we left by 4:30, so there wasn’t any time to see the city. Too bad. But – we’ll also be back there in a few days and I’ll do a better job of seeing the city.

Clearly, I’m still trying to establish some sort of regular sleeping and activity schedule onboard here, but I guess that’s the thing about these ships. The multitude of downtime creates an opportunity for personal growth or … the opposite.

For my Elgin friends, have fun at the reunion tomorrow.

Dave