Getting Closer to the End...

Hello again! Hopefully, this will be a bit more of an uplifting entry!
Tuesday, August 18th, 2008. We arrived in St. Petersburg, Russia and went on a tour of Catherine The Great’s Palace and gardens and the Hermitage Museum. Catherine’s Palace included a room considered to be the “8th Wonder of the World,” the “Amber Room.” It is an 11 foot square hall walled with amber and other semi-precious stones. Most of this palace, including “The Amber Room” were mostly destroyed in World War 2 and painstakingly restored.
We lunched at the Pvlovsk Restaurant which was considered the favorite restaurant of Russia’s Prime Minister, Vladamir Putin. Rod and I enjoyed a lunch of beef stroganov served with french fries!
After lunch our guide took us to the famous Heritage Museum. The Hermitage was the winter palace of the Catherine the Great. To give you an idea of how large the Hermitage is, it comprises over 1800 doors, 1900 windows and 114 staircases. And, yes, I was extremely tired after the tour. We saw famous works from Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Rubens. There was also this amazing moving golden peacock clock. I promise to add some pictures when we get back home. Rod bought a new camera that hasn’t been synched up with my computer.
Wednesday, August 19, 2008. Day 2 in St. Petersburg. The sites of the day included the Peter and Paul Fortress, the cruiser Aurora, the Bronze Horseman and, my favorite, The Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood. This church was built on the assassination site of Tsar Alexander the 2nd. It is one of those traditional Russian colorful “onion dome” churches. It took 30 years to build. It was also partially destroyed during WWII and restored. Again, pictures will be coming later. Sorry.
Thursday, August 20, 2008. Helsinki, Finland. We took another bus tour to see the sites of Helsinki. The absolute highlight was the Temppeliakio, The Rock Church. It is a church that was built by, basically, blowing up this giant rock! I wish I could show you pictures right now, but, just believe me when I say it is beautiful. The funniest thing we heard today was from our guide. She said that if you are “pale, Lutheran and middle class, that you know you are from Finland!” By the way, I’m sick and tired of having to pay to use a bathroom!
Friday, August 21, 2008. Stockholm, Sweden. The traveling kind of caught up with me so we slept in today and took an afternoon bus tour and shopping excursion. The craziest part of the day happened while Rod and I were playing the slot machines on the boat. For some reason, I decided to take a peek at my Flolan pump. It showed the word “low” which means I don’t have a lot of medicine left in the pump. It was so loud in the casino that I didn’t hear the alarm. Oh well, I just ran back up to the room, switched it out and went back to watch Rod lose all of our $20.00 gambling money!
Saturday, August 22, 2008. Sea Day. We spent the day sailing to the next port, which will be Oslo, Norway. We spent the day sleeping, eating, reading and knitting.


OK, one more after this one.

Thanks for reading.

Annette