Hello Again!!

Hello from the Baltics!
Well, it’s taken me a while to get my act together in order to bring you all along on this wonderful vacation! It’s been a bit difficult to get online, to be rested enough to figure out what to write, and, actually , just to be awake!

Anyway, it is now Saturday, August 23rd and we’ve been traveling since Wednesday, the 13th. We left Omaha, Wednesday evening and flew to Detroit. Detroit is a HUGE airport and we had an extremely long distance to travel to get from our arrival gate to our departure gate. Rod had been to Detroit before and decided that the best way this was going to work was to get a wheelchair for me. I hate getting special treatment and I really hate doing anything that will bring extra attention to myself and my problems. But, I was really, really glad to have that wheelchair because we had a very, very long way to go and not much time to get there.
We flew from Detroit to London, sleeping the entire time thanks to Ambien! After arriving in London, (it was Thursday) we took a taxi to a Holiday Inn that was about an hour away from the airport. We were in a nice little trendy area where we found a perfect little London pub that served typical fish and chips! We had another good night’s sleep, due to Ambien, and left the next morning for the cruise ship. It was suppose to be about a 2 hour drive (we had a driver) but turned into a 3 ½ hour trip due to some goofy man dressed up as Batman, and hanging from some bridge by the airport! He was supposed to be protesting something. Our driver didn’t know what it was, but, he said there is a group of men that dress up as Batman, Superman or any other “super-hero” then hold up traffic while they protest ridiculous things.
Anyway, we eventually made it to the cruise terminal, got on board and immediately fell asleep! (It was now Friday, the 15th) Luckily we woke in time to get to dinner! (We hate to miss a meal, especially on a cruise ship!) We lucked out by having 4 nice “table-mates.” One couple is from Canada and the other is from the Washington, D.C. area.
The first two days of the cruise were spent at sea. Each day we lost an hour of sleep due to the direction and speed in which we were moving. So, by the time Sunday night came along we were 9 hours ahead of our “home” time. As you can imagine, if we weren’t eating, we were sleeping!
We arrived in Tallinn, Estonia on Monday morning. Tallinn has only been an independent, democratic country since the 1990’s, when they won their independence from Russia. It was actually a somewhat sad little country. It’s history is filled with fighting, killing and invasion. Having the situation with Russia and Georgia did not help lighten the mood of our tour guide. She also told us that Estonia has the highest rate of AIDS of all the European countries. Alcoholism is also a very common disease. The “panoramic tour” unfortunately involved quite a bit of walking, with much of that being uphill and/or over cobblestone roads. It was a tough day. But, a very comfortable bed and some delicious food was waiting for us back on board!
OK, that’s it for now. I’ll add more later.

Thanks for reading.
Annette

ps (I just reread this entry…it is very depressing! I promise to try to lighten things up for the next entry.)