End of the Cruise

After St. Petersburg, we sailed overnight to Tallinn, Estonia. We arranged a tour with a college student. She took us around thecity, giving us special insight into current events and the ghost stories associated with the oldcity. We started by going through the gates of the city next to the tower they call "Fat Margaret." It is a beautiful city of narrow, cobbled streets and gorgeous buildings. We got to go up bythePresidential Palace and look out over the city, with the good view of St. Nicolas and the old tower walls. We stopped at the Parliament Building ("It's NOT pink...") which was across the street from the only Russian Orthodox church in Tallinn.We stopped at ate at a Pancake Place, called Kompressor. It was so good. A definite must for our next trip to Tallinn!

After Tallinn, we had a full day of cruising on our way to Gothenberg, which was good, because we were exhausted. We had lost a total of 3 hours of sleep as we moved further east. Now was our chance to make up a couple hours and get some extra sleep. We took full advantage!

Gothenberg was another lovely Scandanavian city. There wasn't that much to see as a tourist, but it looked like a really wonderful place to live! As we got off the shuttle from the cruise ship, Kent struck his most "Gustavus Adolphus"-like pose. We took a city bus tour and

also a boat tour on the canals that run all through Gothenberg.

The boat tour was made extra exciting when the guide announced that we would be going through some low bridges and would have to sit on the ground and duck our heads. We thought she was joking at first, but then we caught sight of the bridge!

We spent some time in a museum, tracing the history of the city through Viking times and onward--pretty fascinating.

We took some time to tiptoe

through the tulips throu

gh a beautiful park in the center of the city. We stopped for Swedish Meatballs and headed back to catch the shuttle to the ship for our trip back to England. This was truly a fabulous trip and we feel so blessed to have been able to take it with good friends and to have our kids safe at home with Grandma and Grandpa.