Baltic Cruise 2010 - July 26 through August 10

We opened up the shades in the room to watch the Stockholm Archipelago go by as we lay in bed (it's comprised of over 14,000 islands). After breakfast we grabbed a shuttle bus with Pete & Kevin, which dropped us by the Vasa Museum (they recovered a 300 year old ship which had sunk on it's maiden voyage after the king ordered an extra row of canons to make the ship more grand, causing it's center of gravity to be too high and the ship to be unstable).

We walked along the water towards the city center, then rode two different hop-on/hop-off buses which gave us a good overview of the city. We had lunch at a Swedish pub, then took the shuttle back to the ship.

At 1:30pm we were all picked up and taken to a field a few minutes from the ship for our helicopter tour. We had two helicopters (one with a very hot pilot :-) for a 30 minute tour over the city and part of the archipelago. The city is just as beautiful from the air! It was Pete, Kevin and Alex's first helicopter ride and they really enjoyed it.

After the helicopter ride we were dropped off a the Absolut Ice Bar where we donned silver parkas and each had a vodka cocktail in a block of ice. Very tasty!

We walked back through the old town and it's tiny, twisty streets. Back on the ship we worked with the staff in the Neptune lounge to plan a cocktail party for Thursday afternoon for the new friends we had met on the boat, they were very helpful and sent invitations out for us. Then we had a "sail away" party on the top deck where we watched the ship navigate back out through the channel between the archipelago islands. We had dinner in the Tamarind Restaurant and then a quick disco nap in the room.

At 11 we met everyone in the Silk Den to toast Prop 8 being overturned (Yay!) and then headed out to the Lido deck for the "Conquerors" dance, which was lots of fun. Randy stayed late and had omelets as the sun came up.