Changes

We have noticed some changes since we have returned from the cruise.  Some terms had a certain meaning for the 4 months of the cruise, and now they mean something entirely different.  We do not like these changes:

 

1)      “Doing the laundry” used to mean putting dirty clothes into a bag and filling out a card that said what items were in the bag.  The next day clean and pressed clothes would show up in the stateroom.  Now “doing the laundry” seems to mean doing many more steps with the clothes using two big metal boxes, and getting any pressing and hanging done ourselves.

2)      “Preparing for dinner” used to mean getting the correct clothes on and deciding which room you would walk to, or phoning for the food to show up in your room.  Now this task has split into two dreadful steps.  First, one must go to a big-box store and select items to pay for and transport home.  Then one must cook and deliver the food to the table.

3)      “Cleaning up after diner” used to mean pushing the chair under the table once your were finished.  Now it mean scraping disgusting food remnants from the plates, wiping the plates off, sticking them in yet another large metal box, and then putting the clean dishes back into the cabinets.

4)      And, if all this were not enough, Kathleen was out today for about 4 hours doing errands, exercising, and doing this new “buying grocery” thing, and when she came back home, nobody had made her bed and straightened up the house!

 

This is all a quite unwelcome change of events.  After 4 months, you would think that definitions of these types of things would not change.  We like the system on the cruise ship much better, and have found yet another argument for doing a big cruise again some time.

Packing Tip

As I unpack, I thought of a useful packing tip that we may or may not have shared before.  Buy and bring along some large (2.5 gallon, 14” by 16”) zip lock plastic bags.  These are sold the same way as the smaller zip-lock and other branded bags are sold.   These are great when you pack to return.  These function like a “vacuum pack” bag, just a little less robust…but really cheap.  These are nice because you can put items into them, squeeze out air, and zip lock them shut.  They take a lot less space than packing normally would have.  Plus, if you have some dirty clothes, just put them in their own bag(s) and they will not make you fresh clothes become “contaminated.”

UV Resistant Shirts

There was a specific type of shirt that Kathleen and I took on the cruise that we were quite happy that we had. These were made by the Columbia Sportswear Co, and were UV resistant as well as water repellant. (Kathleen’s shirt was several years old, whereas my two were new. Hers still resisted water, but did not bead it up as dramatically as mine did…so the resistance must diminish upon multiple washings.)

I had two shirts--one long sleeve, and one short--that looked like the “Silver Ridge” style that you find on the web if you google “Columbia Sportwear.” These shirts had two breast pockets with Velcro-closing flaps. These were nice to keep your passport and wallet in while in countries that are infamous for pickpockets.

I probably wore one of these two shirts 60% of the time when we had a shore excursions. The UV resistance, water resistance, and storage pockets made these the best choice, especially in the tropical climates. We noticed many other passengers that owned and seemed to favor the same shirts.

While you can find these on-line, I suggest that you find a place where you can try these on before you buy. The sizing ranges were not typical.

(We just saw a segment on morning tv that discussed the importance of UV protective clothing in high-sun environments that reminded me of this topic.)

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Water-resistance, breathable sports shoes were also part of our standard outfit for all shore excursions.

Pleasant Surprise on Cruise Economics

We have more money left in our accounts after the cruise than I had planned upon…a pleasant surprise. The apparent reason may be insightful for any of you who might be on the fence on whether or not to take a major cruise.

In preparation for our cruise, I set up a second checking account in addition to the main one that we have had. The base account handles 95% of the monthly bills with automatic payments. I established the second account to handle any new or unexpected charges that came in while we were on the cruise. I had a person capable of using this second, temporary account to pay these types of bills. I could use e-mail with her while I was on the ship for any questions about these bills.

This worked fine. There were two situations that came up that were a problem. First, we double paid a property tax bill. That was fixed with one of the two payments returned to us. Second, we had a mortgage for which an update of the insurance policy did not get to the lender, so the lender threatened to buy a policy at my expense, and charge me for it. They actually did this, but I was able to straighten the situation out after I returned and get the unnecessary policy reversed out without charge.

I funded the basic checking account prior to the cruise with funds that would cover my normal “at home” monthly expenses, plus an extrapolation of the “on board” spending rate that I saw from previous short cruises. I put sufficient funds in the temporary account to cover worst-case surprises.

We spent a lot less than this “worse case” scenario for which I had protected, and even substantially less than my “most likely” spending expectation.

Two things are responsible for this: “at home” and “on board” items.

The “at home” spending was reduced for us because we did not have: a) dining-out expenses, b) grocery shopping expenses, or c) gasoline and other automotive expenses. For us, over a 4 month period, these are about $10,000.

The “on board” expenses were lower than expected. We knew how much we had spent by pre-booking excursions through Princess. However, we cancelled about 60% of these bookings during the cruise, and booked our own at lower prices. The cancelled tours essentially covered all of our other on-board spending. There were charges for the self-booked excursions that showed up on our credit card, but these were much lower than the typical “at home” credit card activity.

These effects were substantial…totaling about the cost of a single booking in an inside cabin or ocean-view cabin for the cruise.

Net of all this is that the practical cost for a long cruise differs from the figure that you see in the cruise in booklet in several ways. You have to add to that figure the cost of air flights (if this is not folded into your booking costs), excursions, gratuities, and any on-board spending (specialty dining, drinks, gambling, boutique purchases, and photographs). But, subtract from this the spending that you would have otherwise have had at home.

One passenger said that the cost of their simple room on the ship was “quite close” to what they would have spent staying at home.

Good Bye

Our cruise covered 38,933 miles (regular miles, not nautical miles) over the 117 days. That is 330 miles per day.

We visited about 50 ports.

This was a wonderful experience. We are very glad we did this trip. If you are thinking about such a cruise, I hope you do it sooner rather than later. One never knows when things change and you no longer have the opportunity to do such a thing.

I enjoyed doing the blog. We averaged 50-60 viewers per day to the blog, with a high of 150 on the day after the Normandy postings. This degree of interest helped inspire me to put extra effort into the postings. I thank you for that interest, because it means that we not have a more complete record of our thoughts as the cruise happened than we would have had.

I do not plan to do any more postings…until the next big cruise, that is J. If there is some comment that causes me to react, I could do another posting. Other than that, this is good-bye. The cruise is over.

Thanks for your faithful interest.

Retrospective Questions

Kathleen and I had agreed to answer a common list of questions about the cruise.  Our independent answers are in the postings below.

 

1)      What places did you enjoy the most?

2)      What would you do differently if you had the cruise to do over again?

3)      Would you do another cruise of this type again?

4)      What are your most memorable events?

5)      At any point did you think doing this cruise had been a mistake?

6)      What recommendations do you have for someone preparing to take a world cruise?

7)      How easy or hard has it been to keep in touch with loved ones?

 

Kathleen's Answers

1)      What places did you enjoy the most?,

It’s hard to pinpoint an exact place as almost every port had some aspect that I enjoyed.  If I did have to choose, I would say that Asia and the South Pacific Islands were perhaps my favorites because they were so new and foreign.   Easter Island was fascinating with so many of the large Moai all over the island.  How did the people move these huge statues without modern day machinery and why?  These are questions that perplex people even today.    Since we lived in Europe for 4 years, these ports although enjoyable, were not as interesting.  Having said that, the exception would be Normandy, France as one of the most memorable tours.  This was in part because of our excellent tour guide Ellwood.  He brought the battles of D-day alive and made us more aware of the enormous sacrifice our soldiers made during WWII. 

 

2)      What would you do differently if you had the cruise to do over again?

Investigate private tours thru the internet before I leave.  Time is always a factor, but it would be easier once you were on the ship to have it arranged ahead of time, especially since our internet was very slow and sometimes nonexistent.   One can normally find some other passengers willing to join you for a private tour.  This is especially true if you had been in touch with other cruisers on the Cruise Critic site before hand.  It is a toss of the coin as to whether or not you get a good guide but this is the same problem you can have with a cruise tour.  It takes more time and effort and some people would just rather leave it up to the ship—it is a matter of choice.  Usually a private tour you see more and the cost is less.

 

I would also have booked my own flight as it would have been easier to change and perhaps get a better connection.  Maybe staying overnight in the last port to see the city and then getting a better connection home in the morning.  Just something to think about for the next time. 

 

Buy international calling cards before leaving.  Sometimes it was difficult to find a card and if in a foreign country, the directions weren’t always in English.  Walmart usually sells them and the cost would be much cheaper and you wouldn’t be at the mercy of a tourist trap shop trying to jack up the price.  I would also investigate how much an international cell phone would cost.

 

3)       Would you do another cruise of this type again?

Maybe, but being away for such a long time was hard as I wasn’t able to make contact with the family as often as I would have liked.  Perhaps getting an international phone would have helped.  Over 100 days is a long time to be gone.  Probably my max for the moment would be no more than 60 days.

 

4)      What are your most memorable events?

There have been so many it again is hard to think of one specific event.  The whole trip has been an amazing adventure.  Seeing how people in other parts of the world live their daily lives with all the hardships and struggles has been a real learning experience.  The one port that is most memorable is sailing into Rabaul with the volcano smoking and still spewing out ash all over the ship.  These people live daily with this ash and many experience bronchial problems.  The volcano erupted 12 years ago and they are still struggling to make a living after half their town was destroyed by the ash.  Even with living in such a harsh environment and extreme poverty these people were very friendly and welcoming.  Swimming with the sea lions on Galapagos islands—Angkor Wat in Cambodia-- Great Wall of China—Taj Mahal of India-- the list goes on and on for memorable events and places.

 

5)      At any point did you think doing this cruise had been a mistake?

                Maybe when it was really rough on the Tasmanian Sea and again from Lisbon to Ireland, otherwise no.

 

6)      What recommendations do you have for someone preparing to take a world cruise?

Do your homework on the ports before you leave.  Book your own flights so you have more flexibility as to whether or not you want to change or upgrade your flight.  Some people packed too much but I didn’t feel it was a problem for me.  I wore almost everything I brought and left quite a bit.  Take some older outfits and leave them—the crew will use it or it goes to shelters. Waterproof shoes were a must as some cities it really poured and if you are going to be in the rain forest—keeps the feet dry.

 

If you have maps of some of the cities you are visiting, bring them along.  The ships maps were very basic and they can be expensive overseas.  We had many maps of Rome and forgot to bring them.                                                      

               

7)      How easy or hard has it been to keep in touch with loved ones?

Very difficult.  Phoning wasn’t always an option because of the time difference and not all ports had international phones.  In some ports you were busy with touring and didn’t have time to call when you got back to the ship.  Other places it was difficult to find internet cafes and some had no skype.  The kids were easier to keep in touch with thru email and occasionally could IM.            However, many times I would have to switch from standard mode to HTML which wouldn’t allow any IM.  Having a mother in an assisted living facility meant that phoning was the only option.  It wouldn’t have been an issue if the ship didn’t block skype.          

David's Answers

1)      What places did you enjoy the most?

[I should have thought about how impossible this question would be to answer before I suggested it.]

 

I’ve had two types of experiences to flash back on our cruise history.  First is when I clear out photos from the camera after I have saved them onto the computer.  Second is when I scroll down through the text that I’ve done for the blog on a Word document.  In both of these cases, I am amazed at all that we have done.

 

In reality, this past 4 months has been like we have taken 25 to 30 significant serial vacations.  We have been to so many places.  Some have not been especially eventful.  Some have been spectacular.

 

Places:  Angkor Wat, Egypt (Egypt had less impact this second visit than it had been to us 20 years ago when we first saw it, but it is still amazing for its age), and the Great Wall.  The Taj Mahal and le Mont St-Michel were unique to the point that at first each seemed like it might have been some giant painting rather that something that we were actually seeing.

 

2)      What would you do differently if you had the cruise to do over again?

a)      Pack less…a lot less.

b)      Spend more time prior to the cruise figuring out the excursion plan.  I left this up to Kathleen this time, and neither of us realized the degrees of freedom and the financial leverage you had by setting up excursions on your own. 

c)       Look more at opportunities to do several-day excursions off the ship.  We never had more than a part of one day at any single place unless we left the ship for a night.  Think of the ship as a moving home base, and be okay leaving it several times for a day or so each time.

 

3)      Would you do another cruise of this type again?

Absolutely yes.  I have 3 that I now would like to do. First is a 60 day cruise around South America, that includes going up and back down the Amazon.  You can leave and return to Ft. Lauderdale, so we could do this with no airplane flights. The southern tip of South America is said to be more dramatic than Alaska.  I hope Kathleen decides that she will do this with me because she remains my first choice for a roommate.

 

Two other interesting ones are going around Africa, and going to Antarctica.  On Antarctica there are two types:  the cruise line sail by but do not land, and the ice cutter ships that land.  I want to do the latter.  This is going to be the toughest version to get Kathleen to agree to do.  (One passenger who did this one said that the ship rocked so much that the water line went above their port hole.  This is the cruise where they told people only to walk forward when the floor is moving upward!)

 

4)      What are your most memorable events?

Most of the answer to this is the same as to question #1, as it relates to the places. 

 

Animals:  the giant Galapagos turtles, kangaroos (napping with them, the baby diving back into his Mom’s pouch), Kuala Bears,  Tasmanian devils, camels (roaming the country roads in Oman), parrots engulfing us in Kuala Lumpur, swimming with a sea lion.

 

Most informative and enthusiastic tour guide:  Ellwood at Normandy.  Most informative and enthusiastic port lecturer:  Aki Akram in the Arabian Peninsula.

 

A very dear, close friend of mine (my age) passed away unexpectedly on the 3^rd week of the cruise.  Unfortunately, this will has to be on my “most memorably” list for its very sad reasons.  I won’t say much else about this personally emotional topic except for two things:  a) it certainly affected the lenses through which I viewed the rest of the trip, and b) it is worth considering each day of your life whether you are living it the way you would if you knew when your last day would be.

 

People on the cruise are memorable.  Most notably, we were pleasantly surprised how quickly you establish an extended temporary family on a long cruise.  After only a few weeks we had established a group of 30 to 60 passengers who we would feel comfortable to do some activity with us, or that we would gets requests from for an activity.

 

People from all of the countries are memorable.  (I’m going to write a lot more about this in the “supplementary comments” posting below.  It would seem distorted if I put all of my thoughts in this overview.)

 

Finally, I should add that my very most memorable event has to have been simply to be with Kathleen all of this time.  (What a sweet guy I am!)

 

5)      At any point did you think doing this cruise had been a mistake?

No.  This never came close to being a thought.  I wanted to extend our cruise by 12 additional days, but Princess was stupid with us about how they would handle the airline rebooking costs, so it was their loss.

 

6)      What recommendations do you have for someone preparing to take a world cruise?

a)       Pack less, pack less, pack less.  (And after you have done this, remove some items beyond this.)  Do not focus on what you think you will need; think about what you will have to bring back after you have purchased extra stuff.

b)      Bring extra cash.  (Okay, not a huge issue because you are talking only a 3% premium on whatever extra money you need to capture, but think about avoiding this.)  Bring at least two different credit cards.  (Several passengers had one card stopped due to the unusual  purchase activity or a compromised data base.)

c)       Plan more excursions on your own.  Spend the time prior to the cruise to figure this out.  You can do a lot of ports “on the spot” with a cab and get a better tour and better value than the ship offers.  Whenever there are a lot of sea days, look for an opportunity to take a flight and be off-ship for some days.  [This is your biggest cost leverage item, after the basic tour booking, of course.]

d)      Do it sooner rather than later.  You are only going to get older and less able to enjoy it.

e)      Figure out your computer situation prior to taking the trip.  Perhaps buy a new computer.  Kathleen was delighted that she had bought a compact Acer computer of her own.  Get the right software installed so that you can do you e-mail offline.  If you are doing a blog, learn the off-line method to handle most of this.

f)       Buy a good pocket camera with a zoom, and also a “sports” setting that handles fast-motion photos.

g)      Visit the cruisecritic.com web site ahead of your cruise to get info and ideas, and to make contacts.

 

7)      How easy or hard has it been to keep in touch with loved ones?

We did have e-mail and the blog.  Those seemed to work well.  Phone calls were a disappointment.  We signed up for Skype (a cheap phone system over the internet) prior to the cruise because that was said to be possible.  However, Princess blocked Skype, so we were greatly constrained on phone contact.  This bothered me a little; it bothered Kathleen a lot.  If this had not been an issue, she might have been more interested in extending the cruise.  As is, I expect she is going to have a whole lot of long phone calls the first week that we are back in the US.

 

David's Supplementary Thoughts

I have some additional thoughts about the “most memorable” topic that I want to do here under a separate heading. I’ve started and edited this several times. It keeps getting too complicated, and seems like a philosophical dissertation. (I would not want to have a history professor grade this, because I know I am being free and loose with some of the details.) You may choose to skim or skip this posting.

Start with the big, big picture. The universe is 15 billion years old. Our sun (a second –generation star) and earth are about 5 billion years. We are “recycled” from a large first-generation star that died in a supernova explosion. (That’s the only way that you get elements heavier than iron.)

Humans have been around on the order of 100,000’s of years. We’ve only done a decent job of recording human history for the last 5,000 to 10,000 years. So, in terms of the history of our universe, everything that we know about the history of man has happened “just now.”

Kathleen and I visited about 50 ports during our cruise, so we probably saw 40-45 different countries. Often we saw many different countries on sequential days. We got serial exposure to many people within their own countries where we had chances to engage them in conversations. The collage of those conversations is one of the special memories I take from our cruise.

So I have thoughts about “people” and “social choices” from the various countries.

People. Simply put, we are mostly the same: biologically, beliefs, values, future hopes. We have some differences that mostly make for interesting variations on the same themes.

By “social choices” I mean those ways that various countries have deal with such issues as: who makes what choices (eg. government vs individuals through free enterprise), what forces have happened on very successful societies, how have the societies dealt with these forces and how have they been able to sustain or lose their successful situation?

Start with Egypt. They were amazingly successful 3000-4000 years ago. They built amazing pyramids and temples. Today, you cannot help but ask what happened because they are more of a “developing” rather than “developed” economy.

China has a history that spans 3000-5000 years. The vendors sold a “history of China” wall chart that was 6-ft tall that had small print to show all of the dynasties, sub periods, and external invasions. Yet, the locals talked about China’s current period of growth as having only begun about 20 years ago with a period of “new awakening.”

Cambodia was very advanced 700 years ago. Angkor Wat had a population of 1,000,000 people at a time when Paris and London each had fewer than 50,000 people. What happened? Cambodia 20-years ago looked about as bad as North Korea does today. There leaders emptied the capital city of about 3,000,000 people, and moved them to group farms using manual labor. They executed anyone who had an education.

The Roman Empire encircled the whole Mediterranean Sea and lasted about 1,000 years.

Three European countries that small today and do not get much attention—Portugal, Holland, and Denmark—all talked with pride about the global strength and influence that they have on the order of 300 years ago when countries with strong naval capabilities could exert their will on distant lands. Portugal still had control of Macau until as recently as 20 years ago when they gave it to China.

The British Empire circled the world 60-100 years ago. Most of it is “divested” today. The Arabs blame the British for screwing up the Middle East by the way that they set up the borders between countries and selected the clans or sheiks to be in charge.

Russia had been the center of the Soviet Union up to 20 years ago. At that time one dollar bought one rubble. Today the Soviet Union has broken apart, and one dollar buys 35 rubbles. The tour guide said that the social changes and the devaluation were devastating to elderly retired people in Russia. Think about your savings only being worth 3% of what they had been, and all of the social services that had been free now being items that you had to pay for.

Our Russian guide and a Ukrainian waitress (same devaluation happen in Ukraine as in Russia) both thought the loss of value of their currency was “some game played by the bankers.” I think it was an unavoidable development based upon the unwinding of the low productivity that was inherent in the communist approach to government and economy.

Estonia went from being a member of the Soviet Union, to a free country, to a member of the European Union in only 15 years. Today they look more like Finland than like Russia.

Singapore and Malaysia focused on encouraging personal initiative, and they have modernize quite well. Other countries in Southeast Asia focused on redistribution of wealth instead, and their economies have languished for a decade. Dubai is a phenomenon, with unprecedented modernization and construction. Typical infrastructure in Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) or Dubai has a good chance of seeming more modern than a typical infrastructure in the US.

So against this background, consider the US today. We have a very successful country, of which we can be proud. However, at only 233 years old, we are still an infant. Our position today strikes me as similar to that of the UK about 60 years ago. The UK lost the British Empire because it was not possible to sustain dominance over the colonies. The cost in cash and public opinion on the spending and military steps necessary to sustain dominance were too great to sustain. The US may not be doing it today with colonies, but we have assumed a role of “global cop” that does put financial strain on us that is not shared by other advanced countries.

The US also is entering into unprecedented spending on economic bailouts, and expects to do the same unprecedented spending on health care. We have social security and Medicare challenges that government continues to ignore.

I’m left wondering: when people look at the history of mankind 1,000 in the future, will the US make a list along with Egypt, Rome, China, and Cambodia as countries that have succeeded in sustaining a position of power for 500-1000 years, or will we flame out after only 250 or 300 years? Will we learn from the lessons of history, or, ignoring them, are we destined to repeat the problems that eventually conquered other successful powerful countries in the past? Are we going to continue to foster individual initiative and see growth, or are we going to move toward wealth redistribution and have our economy languish?

Back Home

We drove back to our Naples home this morning. We are buried in unpacking and rearranging things. Not only do we have the 6 bags that we brought back from the ship, but we have all of the personal items that we had strored away in the home due to guests while we were gone.

Day 118 - 5/13 - Trip Back to the US

I anticipated a bad day getting back to Florida. Our agenda had: a) doing the alway-fun disembarkation from the ship, b) a one-hour taxi ride to the airport, c) a 2-1/2 wait at the Stockholm airport, d) a 2-hour flight to Amsterdam, e) a flight delay of the Amsterdam to Detroit flight due to equipment problem, f) an 8-1/2 hour flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, e) a 2-1/2 hour layover in Detroit, f) a 2-hour flight from Detroit to Ft. Lauderdale, and finally e) getting to the Sheraton Hotel, check in and go to bed.

We made it. It was not as bad as I had feared. It is nice that they now have personal movie players in the seatbacks with a choice of about 30 movies. I watched 3.

Day 118 - 5/12 - Stockholm, Sweden

We sailed into Stockholm this morning. It was light at 5:00am, and the approach were littered by the type of tree-covered small islands shown in the pictures above.

We left at about 8:00am to get to the airport far too early, so we only saw Stockholm on the sailing in and on the one-hour taxi ride to the airport.

Tahitian Princess

These photos show the size of our 600-passenger Tahitian Princess compared to a typical 3000-passenger cruise ship. (Our ship is obviously on the left and in forefront.)

[Lots of problems with the internet, so I cannot get the second photo up. We fly back so the final postings may be delayed 2 days. Still more, just after a few days.]

Day 117 – 5/11 – Tallinn, Estonia

Estonia is closely related to the Finland. They had been part of the Soviet Union until 1991, when they gained independence. Because of their close relationship with Finland, they progressed rapidly post independence.

We were in port a short time: from 9:00am to 3:00pm. We kept it simple and walked into the old city, less than a mile from the dock.

The older city, “Upper Town,” is one of Europe’s best preserved medieval towns. It looks German, because of early trade with the German.

Tallinn Photos II

1)      Town Wall

2)      Dome Church

3)      Kathleen at flower market

 

Tallinn Photos I

1)      Upper Town map

2)      Dave with a statue (taken for Kathleen’s brother, Tom)

3)      Entry gatee to Upper Town

 

Gratuities

Cruise lines run on a gratuity system. The staff (waiters and room stewards) get a token salary, and room and board from the cruise line. They have to buy their own uniforms, and they have to pay for a company physical (over $400!) prior to the start of each contract. They even have to pay a substantial “finder’s fee” to the agency that sets them up with their first contract to work on a ship. Their contracts run about 9 months, with them working every single day for that period.

Guests are “suggested” to give a gratuity of $10.50 or $11 (depending on the size of your cabin) per person per day of the cruise. This is set up as an automatic charge against your account, under the heading of “hotel charge.” You can give something beyond that if you choose.

For a 7-day cruise, that is about $150 per couple, and is something expected by the passenger when they book the cruise. For the world cruise, the number becomes quite large…in our case over $2,400. The cruise line helps make this even more palatable for the world cruise given the size of the number…they fold the gratuities into the total quoted price for the cruise.

However, this is still a gratuity. If a passenger refuses to pay it, it is possible for them to go to the passenger services deck and ask for the hotel charge to be reversed out.

We were shocked and sickened to hear that some of the world cruisers had done just that! They decided that for $1,000 they were willing to be cheapskates. We think this is despicable. The young kids that work these jobs work very hard, are always pleasant, and put up with a lot of demands. Their base pay is only $50 per month, so when one cabin decides to behave this way, it is a significant negative financial impact on them.

We first learned about this gratuity system 30 years ago on our first cruise. I remember reading that this had been the main reason behind the explosive growth in cruising. Prior to that, cruises run out of New York had been staffed by US labor union jobs. The cruises were much more costly (about double what they are today), and they went out of business.

I sometimes start to feel badly that, in a way, cruise passengers exploit the inequality of labor rates around the world. However, we do this same exploitation (perhaps “take advantage of” is a less unpleasant way to say it) of this every time we shop at Wal Mart or at another major importer.

But, given the system, you really need to see the gratuities as part of the price of the cruise. Appreciate the roll that this system plays in making your cruise affordable. If you cannot make yourself comfortable with this size of the tip, then don’t book the cruise. It is just not right to stiff these hard-working young kids by refusing to pay the “hotel charge.”

Sailing out of St. Petersburg

It was interesting sailing out tonight.  The deep water channel is really narrow.  The port lecturer told us that this is natural.  They do not need to continuously dredge it out.  The current makes a narrow, deep channel, but you do need a pilot to know where it is safe to go and where it is not.

 

The Russians like it this way.  Peter the Great 300 years ago focused first on getting the entry from the north on the sea and river in to be fortified.  We saw the islands and guns as we sailed out tonight.  The band stopped and the port lecturer pointed out the naval installations and the guns.  The Swiss never were able to attack from these defenses hundreds of years ago, and the Germans could not penetrate this sea route in WWII.  (They got in by land.)

 

Today the Russians are building a huge concrete rotating breakwater that they can close when a high-tide flood is coming.  (Of course it has the side advantage of locking enemy subs out if they are out, or in if they are in.)

 

Photos:

1)      Tight fit sailing out.  (This looks more narrow to me than the Panama canal did.)

2)      An interesting sun set.  The sun seems trapped between two layers of clouds.

 

Day 116 – 5/10 – St. Petersburg, Russia

We have been sailing eastward, so we’ve had two nights in a row where we have set the clocks forward by one hour. This is unusual because most of the cruise has been toward the west, so we will net out for the entire cruise with 18 more days of gaining an hour versus losing an hour. Regardless this makes us a little more tired.

Add to this that St Petersburg involves some delicate navigation to get into it. The ship picked up a local pilot at 3:30am to spend 3-1/2 hours of help to get into port by 7:00am. To get to St. Pete, you leave the Baltic Sea, sail through the Finland Sea, then up the Neva River. The Finland Sea is shallow and has lots of islands, so the route in involves lots of gentle maneuvering. While we have developed some excellent sea legs over the past 4 months, the frequent, gentle adjustments of the ship early this morning had a different “feel” that did cause us to wake up. The ship might only quiver a little side-to-side at each fine tuning of direction, but it was something that we noticed as we slept.

We are far enough north that the sun start up around 6:00 am and has still not yet set tonight by 10:15pm.

St. Petersburg is built on 42 islands. In a way, it is similar to Venice. Because it is only 300 years old or so, the city is laid out with big rectangular city blocks, wide roads and very wide buildings.

St. Pete has 100 museums and art galleries. It is the undisputed cultural center of Russia.

We did a Princess excursion. If you do the ship’s excursion, you do not need a Russian visa. If you wanted to go on your own, you had to spend a couple hundred dollars in advance to get a personal visa from the Russian embassy.

The exchange rate today is 35 rubles to the dollar. I thought that I remembered it being 1 ruble to 2 dollars, and asked the guide. She said that the rate had been 1 to 1 in 1980, so I may remember earlier than that, but regardless, a 35-fold change in 20 years is dramatic. I asked her why she thought that happened. She thought that it was just a “game” by the financial institutions. Wow! Clearly the market had decided something about what the value of the Russian productivity was when they attempted to open up their economy.

I remember that several decades ago a Russian said of their old system that it involved an agreement between the workers and the government: “we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”

The guide’s view was that whatever change Russia is making is obviously necessary, but it affects different age groups differently. The elderly, who cannot now work, have not had to save for retirement because all services were provided by the government. If they do not get help from their extended family, they have lost all savings they may have had from the 35-fold relative inflation compared to US, and they now have to pay for services that had all been provided free. Young people have a chance to adjust.

We did a tour of the city and had a couple of stops. The three big stops were: a) the Peter and Paul Synagogue, b) the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, and c) the Hermitage. I’ll add text with the photos from each.

When we got back to the ship, they had a show from the Troyka Ballet of St. Petersburg on the ship. This was nice, but I just cannot get good photos from the show floor using my camera. (They turn out slightly blurred, and red in color due to the lighting.)

Other St. Petersburg Photos

1)      Two Russian subs near our dock location.

2)      A welcome band.

3)      St. Isaac’s cathedral.  This is the 4^th largest cathedral in the world.  The dome is in gold, but done is a manner where it was applied mixed with mercury.  They used slaves, so they did not care that the toxic method would kill the workers.  This made the gold more substantial as a coating.

 

Peter and Paul Cathedral

This cathedral has all of the Czars buried in it.  All is marble, or gold gilded, or similar exotic materials.

 

Photos:

1)      Exterior.

2)      Alexander the Great’s tomb.

3)      The side altar.

 

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

This was built on the site where Czar Alexander II was assassinated.  He abolished slavery 3 year prior to the US.  He was assassinated 20 years later.

 

Hermitage III

1)      Another random room I selected.  I picked this because it shows the scale of a single room.

2)      A Rembrandt.

3)      This is a sled that the czar built for the kids to use.  (I guess they did not have injection-molded plastic back then.)

 

Hermitage I

This complex was built after Peter the Great’s death by his daughters: Czarina Elizabeth and Czarina Catherine II. The complex involves their winter palace and annex buildings (boy is this an understatement) to house their artwork collection. The whole complex is the Hermitage Museum, and the artwork sections dwarf the living quarters, which is called the winter palace.

The whole complex contains over 3,000,000 pieces of art. Someone figured out that if you wanted to look at each piece for half a minute, you’d spend 10 years, assuming that you did not stop to eat or sleep.

The Hermitage has: 2 of the 10 existing Da Vinci’s, 26 Rembrandts, Rafael, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, van Gogh, Gauguin.

They had 3 rooms where we were not permitted to take photos. (I was surprised that they allowed photos almost everywhere…but avoid flash on paintings.) These rooms had painting the Russians took from the Nazi’s after WWII. If there is a descendant’s claim within 50 years, the paints must be returned. I suspect they do not want photos so that it does not help possible claims to be made.

I cannot possibly capture this place in text or photos. I’ll have 3 sections of photos and add some text, but it was way too big and over-the-top to capture it in this simple blog.

The scale of this structure is hard to comprehend. Our guide told us after the tour that we had walked over 2 miles within the building…and we never went outside! There are over 1000 rooms and over 100 stair cases. And a “room” can mean a room that is 100 feet long, 50 feet wide and 30 feet tall.

One passenger offered the observation that if Bill Gates and Warren Buffett decided to pool their entire assets and buy the Hermitage, they would not have sufficient capital. I had to think about that for a while, but I think they may be correct.

Photos:

1) Exterior shot from across the Neva River. I did not even capture the whole width of one side.

2) One of 3 entryway stair cases. This gives you a sense of the scale.

3) This “jar” is from a single piece of lapis. Kathleen has a piece of lapis for a necklace piece.

Hermitage II

1) A random room that I picked.

2) I liked this frame. I figure, if you make a nice picture, you might as well spend a little on a nice frame.

3) I forget the artist on this one. (Sorry.) What I did remember was that it was so expensive 200 years ago or so that the czar had to trade 100 towns (including land and buildings and population) to get it. The photo is not that good because of the thick protective glass. This just shows how “off scale” the values are on some of these items.

Day 115 – 5/9 – Helsinki, Finland

We did a tour here on our own. It was raining hard this morning, so we took a tram ride to the farthest point that we wanted to see, then worked our way back walking to the ship. Total distance was probably 2 miles. I’m guessing that if we added all the ports together, we probably have walked over 100 miles.

Our first stop was the Rock Church. This church was carved out of a wall of solid granite. The roof and many of the features were copper.

We next went through the Contemporary Art Museum and the National Art Museum. This was a high dose of culture for me for one day. We got some photos in the Contemporary Museum, but were not permitted to photograph in the other one.

We saw a folk art performance on the city square on our way back to the ship, saw two huge churches, and visited a number of shops.

When we got back to our ship, we saw another ship the same size as ours, but it was a ferry boat. It seems that the taxes are so high in Finland, and therefore prices so high, that people travel on these huge ships just to buy items that are duty free.

Other Photos

1)      Ateneum (National Art Museum).

2)      Folk dancing show in public square.

3)      Kathleen and some strange mascot at public square.

4)      Russian Orthodox church.

 

Temppeliaukio Rock Church

Quite unique church with all of the solid granite walls.

Photos:

1) Exterior

2) Interior

3) Altar area

Contemporary Art Museum

There were some strange things here.  One was a movie of a boys using shaving cream and a straight razor to attempt to shave a balloon.  One was a stack of debris covered in a thick layer of dust.  One was 3 photos of elderly ladies dressed in blouses and necklaces made from the entrails of animals.

1)      Some photos.

2)      4-shot sequence of giant model showing what happens when a drop of milk falls into a pool of milk.  (I liked this one.)

3)      Kathleen and a model of a giant wave.

 

Day 114 - 5/8 – At Sea

This is our last sea day. We and most of the world cruise passengers are already starting to pack the suitcases, seeing how much they weight, and giving away or pitching some items.

Kathleen had someone ask her if she was ready to go. She started to answer and thought about how little she has been able to talk to her mother, so Kathleen started to tear up. It must be time.

We learned some magic tricks from one of the entertainers for a little over an hour early afternoon.

We learned that they will have a special “survivor’s party” for the group of about 140 passengers who have been on all of the way since 1/14. That should be nice to get to say goodbyes. The reality is that we will not see most of these people again after next Tuesday.

Party Photos

We had a western party last night.

Photos:

1)      Us dancing.

2)      Kathleen pouring champagne onto the waterfall of glasses.

Day 113 – 5/7 – Copenhagen, Denmark

The day started overcast and rainy, but it cleared up early. We did a self-directed walking tour. The ship docked close to the center of the city, but we still must have walked 5 to 6 miles.

We had been to Copenhagen with the whole family about 19 years ago. The kids liked Legoland, a park where there are models of cities and all kinds of famous structures made out of lego blocks. We also took them to Tivoli Garden. This is an amusement park near the center of the city that Walt Disney visited often to get his idea for Disneyland.

(The computer network was down when we got back to the ship. This could be partly due to us being so far north, so any satellite in a synchronous has to oscillate far northward and southward. A second reason is that these are the seas that lead to the major Russian sub base, so the Russians notoriously jam signals in this part of the world. If my further postings are sporadic, that’s what is happening.)

Statues I

Copenhagen seems to be big into statues.

1)      The Little Mermaid.

2)      Another Mermaid statue.  Let’s just call her the Big Mermaid.

 

Statues II

1)      A statue of Hans Christian Andersen.

2)      A copy of Michelangelo’s David

3)      A strange statue guarding the City Hall building.

 

Swans

1)      Mama swan on her nest.

2)      Papa swan swimming pertection.

Kastellet

The old walled city.  It has a pentagonal shaped building with earthen walls surrounding it, plus a moat.

1)      Entrance.

2)      Shows the earthen walls.

 

Other Photos

1) Ripley’s Museum (believe it or not!)

2) A street vendor cooking a huge pot of mushrooms.

3) Bicycles. Most Danes own a good bike (that they lock when they leave it) and another old, cheap bike that whenever they leave it, they may have someone else take it, but they can also take any of the other old bikes. This is an interesting system.