We watched our ship reverse in and parallel park in a small inner harbour on the Baltic Sea side of the northern tip of Denmark, then receded down to brekkie. After that we were off on our Voergård Castle and pastry tour. Along with 2 other coaches. Voergaard Castle was originally built by a bishop, to give him somewhere to meet up with his lady friend when he was visiting this part of the country. It was confiscated from the church by the crown after reformation, and changed hands many times over the next 200 years - at one stage it was one of the largest estates in Denmark. In 1955 it was bought by a Danish man who’d been living in France since 1906 and had married a countess. Her title didn’t not transfer to ... read more

What a lovely day! Cruising on our way to Copenhagen (pronounced like Copp-en-hargen). Nowhere to go, nothing to do but be looked after! This morning we woke very late (for us). Brekkie up on the deck of La Terraza, then off to the enrichment lecture about Denmark. Oh dear. Nice little old man but so out of touch. “Small fact that no-one realises is that Denmark has a royal family. Fancy that! And they have their queen, but of course she’s not as famous as our queen!“ No recognition of the fact that they have Aussies on board, and that the crown prince married an Aussie from Tasmania with Scottish Ancestry. And then ”the little ?‍♀️ mermaid -written by Hans Andersen who also wrote the Nightingale”. That would be Hans CHRISTIAN Andersen who also wrote The ... read more

Our feet are really tired from walking 65,000 miles each day, give or take a mile, so we were happy to have this morning free. Free to do the washing and just to be leisurely! We have met some delightful people - from Camden, Newport and Riverview in NSW, and the Gold Coast and Townsville in Qld, Melbourne in Victoria and Perth in WA. Such a small world. We’ve also met some lovely English and Americans. Tom has been told twice that he reminds people of Robin Williams - the first day, on arrival at Stockholm airport the passport control man commented, and the second time was our second night on board the ship at formal dinner - the American family at the table next to us. St Petersburg has been delightful. Such a beautiful city, ... read more

We were making our way through the entrance to St Petersburg as we awoke this morning. The sky was heavy with dismal looking clouds and we thought it was wintery but by 10am the sun had burnt the cloud off and it was a gorgeous blue sky day. We breakfasted in La Terraza and then found some more parts of the ship we hadn’t seen before, making our way up to the library lounge at the top of the front of the ship. We spent some time in there before wandering back down to our suite. I’ve been madly reading my book and just want to sit and read (The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton), but this is not to be done. We had an early lunch up at the pizzeria above the pool deck - ... read more

What a wonderful end to the day! We had a leisurely start to the morning, followed by a leisurely breakfast, for today we join our ship. When we have a voyage ahead of us we don’t go out and occupy ourselves for the morning, we just bide our time in our hotel room, packing, tidying and just waiting till it’s the right time to leave. We had our room until checkout of 12 noon, but we took ourselves down to reception at about 11.30am, checked out and went outside to the waiting taxis. The first cab on the rank was driven by a young guy in his 20s, born and raised initially in Baghdad. Tom showed him the map clearly showing our cruise terminal and the berth number of our ship and off we set, making ... read more