October 5

 Flung the drapes open this morning to see Latvia! And some pretty grey skies…we are not going to be five-for-five today. It wasn’t raining, but it felt like it might. My hair is always a good indicator of the weather and it was fuzzed out like a Brillo pad. Who knew it would be humid in October in Northern Europe? 

The ship was docked almost on the grass. I am so happy that none of these stops need a tender to get to shore, it’s a joy to just be able to walk off and on whenever you please and not have to wait for those cramped little boats. 

We had our usual breakfast and then left the ship to walk to town. The skies seemed threatening so I tossed an umbrella into my little backpack, just in case. 

It literally took less than 7 or 8 minutes to get to the edge of the old town. There were two ways to go, one was longer and confusing and course that’s the one I chose. *sigh* I even had a map and still went the wrong way, but we ended up in Doma Laukums, which is the name of the town square, in minutes, so it all worked out. (We did pass a Circle K though, just outside the city walls, which seemed weird) 

Not sure if all the police cars here are electric, but this seemed like a good time to stage a heist as not only was it plugged in, there were no policemen anywhere in sight. Plus, one could dash down those tiny little twisty back lanes where no car could fit. Or, even if they could, it would be like those scenes from bad comedy movies where the doors wouldn’t open.  I resisted the temptation though, and besides I don’t know how to yell “This is a robbery!” in Latvian.

There were a multitude of souvenir shops on each side of the street, of course they all sell basically the same things at basically the same prices, but I did notice that the ones here offered a pleasant change from the usual souviner fare, there seemed to be an emphasis on craftsmanship and locally inspired pieces. Treasures rather than trinkets. I did buy some locally made touques.

Heading down the cobblestone streets towards the town square. 

I found the Latvian people to be very quiet. Their friendliness was expressed different than at home. They are not cold by any means, but definitely reserved. I had read about that prior to our arrival here, and it’s quite true. They don’t feel the need to smile and make small talk with strangers,  which is really rather refreshing. Their culture is often described as valuing privacy and personal space. A haven for us introverts! 

The country does have a complicated history with the Soviets, a time when a person didn’t say anything to strangers, and they only regained their independence in 1991, so I suppose that is a lingering effect. In any case, I absolutely loved it there.

We carefully picked our way to a coffee shop in the town square so that I could have my “Coffee in Another County” moment and watch the passersby. 

In Riga you see black cats everywhere. Not actual live ones, but in every souviner store you see them on paintings, jewellery, dish clothes, postcards, key chains and so forth, they’ve become one of the city’s most famous symbols. The story goes that a wealthy merchant applied to join The Great Guild and for whatever reason, he was refused admission. He was furious and so he had 2 large metal cats places on his roof, with their backs arched and their rear ends pointing towards the guild, a snub if there ever was one. There ended up being a court case as the guild was so offended, and the merchant was eventually admitted to the guild if he promised to turn his cats around, which he did. All’s well that ends well, and now you see black cats everywhere. I bought a wee watercolour of one.

The town square was surrounded by some pretty impressive buildings. Thank goodness as you get off the ship at each port, there are little tourist stands with maps with explanations of the different places, as well as where public toilets are and whether or not you need to pay for their use. So far I we just utilized the bathrooms in the places where I had my daily coffee…win-win.  

This was originally a bank, but is now a radio and weather station.

This was originally a stock exchange, built in the early 1800’s and is now an art museum.

The town square is surrounded by buildings built from as early as the 1200’s right up until the early 1900’s. The bottom floors are mostly cafés and restaurants. Lots of little stalls selling handmade goods are scattered in the square as well as lots of benches and flowers. 

This is the Riga Cathedral, construction started in the year 1211! The pipe organ inside was, at one time, the largest in the world. It has 6,718 pipes and the outer casing was crafted in 1601. I’d love to hear it, they play quite often, but the timing was wrong for us today. 

We did some more wandering down the little back streets and eventually worked our way back to the ship. 

He decided to have his afternoon snooze and I was going to read on the balcony, but man, that old town was so close that I had to go back.

Can’t sit here and read when secret places are so close! It’s still not raining, so it’s now or never. 

You can see the spires of the old town right there, it’s a couple of minutes walk down the path you can see to the right of the highway, then you cross a bridge and there you are!

How can you not enter that passageway? Just look at those old city walls!

Is he pointing me in the right direction?

I stood there wondering if I should dash across the street and risk my life, until I realized there was a crosswalk just ahead, so I decided to not break any laws and do the right thing.

This is the Evangelical Lutheran Church, started in 1209 (1209!). It was badly damaged in WW2, but has been carefully restored.

This is Our Lady of Sorrows, and its spire is easy to spot from anywhere in town. It was right near the passage that I came in through, so I figured as long as I could see it, I could find my way back. These streets are so twisty and all look very similar, it’s so easy to get turned around and lost. 

Little cafés and bars are foud at the ends of so many alleys. It’s magical!

This park was across from the Royal Palace. Green and shady (if it were sunny!) with a lot of benches,  and very welcoming. 

Just a modern store in a very old building,

Little restful spots everywhere. I had read that Riga was a wonderful place for rest & relaxation, and it truly was.

As I walked, the buildings became more of an Art Nouveau style, many with modern stores on the ground floor, apartments and offices in the higher floors. I want to live in that turret.

I guess….if you’re a shoe person….

Hmmmm. Not my church…no cross on top. Am I lost?

I don’t recognize these cobblestones. Shoot, maybe I am lost?

I backtracked a bit, spotted “my” church and headed back to the ship. Crisis averted.

That night we went to the second of the Main Dining rooms, the Four Oceans and while I had a good dinner, his was questionable. I had potstickers for an appie, cordon bleù for a main and carrot cake for dessert. He had an Asian noodle salad, brisket for a main and cannoli for dessert. The brisket was unlike any brisket either of us have ever seen/tasted and I do not mean that in a complimentary way. It was SO tough that the knife could literally not cut it. This likely means a trip to the buffet later on. 

The entertainment tonight was Detroit Motor, and while the actual costumes and performance were outstanding, Motown is not my favourite music. There were a couple of songs I enjoyed, but I wouldn’t go again.

Another early to bed night, but we ran into a storm somewhere in the sea and holy, was the ship a-rockin’. It didn’t bother us, at least not as far as sea-sickness goes, but the motion was like someone shaking the bed and I wanted to holler “Will you just lay still?!” Getting up at 3am to go pee was an adventure in itself. I seriously wondered if I should put my shoes on in case we got called to “Man the lifeboats” in the middle of the night. I was truly a little bit nervous. Steven never moved all night. 

October 4

 This morning I flung the drapes open to see Sweden, and another day with blue skies! We are four-for-four now. We had breakfast in the Garden Café onboard. The usual…..bread and cheese for me, PB&J toast for he, bowls of fresh fruit, OJ and bad coffee. The fruit is fabulous, huge mixed bowls of watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, canary melon, pineapple,  grapes and strawberries and all SO juicy and full of flavour. It makes me wonder why our fruit over here is not as good. Still no line-ups and not a lot of people in sight.

An interesting apartment building at the port of Stockholm. 

The old town and city centre were too far to walk (a half hour drive) so I decided upon a shore excursion today. 

There was a small café and a fairly decent souvenir store right as we got off the ship, which was where we waited for our bus. There were about 8-10 tables outside and honestly, why are Americans so loud? I know it’s a cliché, but it is so true. I now know who’s from Vegas (a very overweight & blustery man), who’s from Colorado (a woman with purple hair) who’s from Pennsylvania (a younger woman) and who’s from Arkansas (an older, white haired lady). I know who had the government job, who is a vegan, who doesn’t normally drink but had a Bloody Mary for breakfast and who has now been to 104 countries. I was not sitting next to them either….everyone in the café now knows all about them.

The drive into the city was nice, the guide on the bus was really funny and also very informative. Stockholm is built on 14 islands, but the Stockholm archipelago has over 30,000 islands! Some of them are very isolated and thus there is a lot of inbreeding. One uninhabited island, Öland, shows particularly high inbreeding and low diversity and over the years the moose have become very short….more like great big dogs. Apparently they look very ridiculous and I would love the see them!

The trees are still full of green leaves and haven’t started to turn yet. I really expected much colder and more “wintery” weather, so this is a very pleasant surprise. We toured the city, which was very hilly and I don’t know why that surprised me. I pictured Stockholm as very flat.

We stopped at the top of one hill and had a photo op looking over the Norrström River. I think it would be beautiful at night. 

Then we had a stop at the IceBar, the world’s first permanent ice bar. 

It’s kept at -5C so it really wasn’t too cold for us, or for me at least. I wore gloves to hold my drink, but other than that I didn’t need them, or a hat although everyone had to wear the thermal capes.

We each had a drink, mine was a non-alcoholic really sweet fruity sort of thing and was SO good,  and his was Absolut vodka, which he said was excellent.

We drank our drinks and looked at all the incredible ice carvings, as well as tables, chairs, walls all made of ice.  It was really fun, I’ve always wanted to go to one. 

Showing the thermal lining. 

Chariots of….not fire, but ice!

On the way to the old town we passed by this bank, which was robbed in 1973 and hostages were taken and held for six days. No one was hurt. Why is this interesting? The hostages became fearful of the aggressive actions of the police and became attached to their captors. A criminologist and psychiatrist ended up coining the term we all know…”Stockholm Syndrome” 

We walked to the old town square which is bordered by the Royal Palace. The guards outside stand behind small fences and if you walk into their space, they will warn you to leave once, and if you don’t get away they can shoot you in the leg. I highly doubt that they ever would, but I wasn’t about to test them. They also have women guards there as well.

Don’t cross that black chain fence!

The royal palace.

The old town is just behind the royal palace, I imagine there are all sorts of other ways to get there, but there was a opening in the wall, and no one was being stopped, so that’s where we went. 

It was a surprise to me to see the buildings that looked so much like Amsterdam. We found a café that served hot & crispy roasted potatoes so we grabbed a seat and had a snack. 

The yellowish building you see through the leaves is the Nobel museum as well as where they announce the nominees for the various Nobel prizes (not where they award them, that’s in Denmark) but it made me think of you-know-who and his dismay about not even being nominated.

We then walked through the streets and admired all those amazing buildings. 

The historic merchant houses from the 17th and 18th century. Restaurants and shops on the bottom, and apartments and hostels/hotels on the upper floors.

Statue of the King of Sweden from 1818-1844

This historic fountain is now connected to the city water supply, so it’s potable and delicious!

The National Museum of Natural Fine Arts on the other side of the river from us. The white boat you see there is now a youth hostel.

This is fountain is on the outside of the Royal Palace, rumour has it that when the fountain is running, the King is home. Who knows? Rumour has it that it means the toilet in his private bathroom has just flushed. Those Swedes and their humour. There is a statue of Moder Svea or Mother Sweden (who is the female personification of Sweden, sort of like Lady Liberty in the USA) on top of the parliament building. The buildings architect placed the main chimney exhaust right behind her and on cold days when the parliament heaters are running, you could see smoke billowing out from her rear end. 

There is also a very sneaky sculpture called “The Cuckold of Skeppsbron”. 

You can see the face of a man, with an exaggerated look of anger or maybe despair, or according to the story, a bit of both. And below him you can see….ummm…is that….?  Why yes, yes it is….

(This picture is not mine, I’m not sure who the photographer is)

Anyhow, the story goes that a rich merchant discovered that his wife, who was his true love, was having an affair. In his rage he had her genitalia sculpted so that the entire city could see her betrayal. But he was also heartbroken so he had his face sculpted so that on rainy days the water would run down his cheeks like tears, showering the part of her that he had loved and lost. Good God. Can you even imagine if a sculpture like that was put up somewhere today? The pearl clutching would be like nothing we have seen before. 

After a few hours of people watching, coffee drinking and checking out the local shops and market stalls, we hopped on the bus to go over to the city hall. It’s a beautiful building, just over 100 years old, built with 8,000,000 red bricks. The oak tree you see was planted the same year, with over 8,000,000 leaves. OK, I lied about the leaves part, but it could be true. 

The City Hall has a nice park overlooking the river beside it, a great place for wedding photos to be leisurely taken. Why do I mention this? Read below!

A wedding was taking place today and I thought that we were lucky to see it until I found out that the city hall is such a popular place for weddings that you can see one approximately every 10-15 minutes! When you book your wedding you have to choose from the long ceremony, or the short. The long is 3-5 minutes, the short is substantially shorter! You are allowed 10 guests and that includes the photographer and any possible babies. No speeches allowed, you listen to the registrar and say your “I do’s”. Exchange rings and off you go! No rice, no flower petals, no bubbles blown or no confetti. Talk about IKEA type efficiency! Brilliant!

The taxes in Sweden are very high, but health care is free, university is free, day care is free to an extent, it’s heavily subsidized and free for many. School supply hot nutritious lunches. No wonder Sweden always ranks high on one of the happiest countries.

We got back to the ship in time for our reservation at Cagney’s Steakhouse. I had tried to get a reservation weeks and weeks ago when I first booked, but it sells out months in advance. When we got on the ship I figured I’d try again, and luckily there had been a few cancellations so we got a table. Oddly enough the whole time we were there, there were a lot of empty tables, but maybe they time them for the various seatings. 

I had heard about the bacon appetizer, and maybe it was delicious, but it was far too fatty for me, I cannot abide that texture of fat in my mouth. I ate the little meaty part you can see on the left, but other than that…ick.

And I know my steak looks sort of like a giant, ummm, pile of yuck, but it was a petit fillet and it was delicious!  The mashed potatoes were drizzled with truffle oil…oh so good. Steven had a ribeye, which he said was fantastic.

The entertainment that night was a young Scottish comedian and he was really, really funny. 

Off to bed, good night from Sweden.