One day out of St Petersburg and we are back at the other end of the Gulf of Finland in Helsinki almost opposite Tallin.
We'd opted for a quiet day. Ross stayed on board all day whilst I had booked to join an organised afternoon trip out into the countryside to visit Sibelius's house.
However, we began the day with a right royal shag on the bed with the curtains of our room wide open so that everyone on the Promenade Deck could have seen what we were up to if the glass wasn't mirrored. I think that my Rossi rather enjoyed the covert exhibitionism of it all.
After a light lunch, it was down the gangplank and onto a waiting bus.
I'd seen the property on television documentaries about the life of Sibelius so it was interesting to visit it. I have to say that it was somewhat clinical. Although everything that is in the house belonged to Jean Sibelius and his wife, Aino, it is now all too clean, tidy and pristine.
The grave is a special place and I said thanks there.
Then we were off to a nearby hall for a short concert given by students of the Sibelius academy. Works included the Valse Triste and Finlandia. It was a pleasant and very different way to spend the afternoon.
Evening time, we spent a couple of hours with our dining chums partaking of a special buffet of Indian food. This was rather good food. However, we all staggered away from the dining table positively stuffed to the limits of physical endurance.
By the time we left port, we were at Beaufort 6-7 which is identified as a Strong Breeze Getting On for a Gale with Large Waves and White Crests. So, there was a danger of some tossing on the high seas. Fortunately, this did not materialise.
So, we have arrived at our final Baltic capital - we have a couple more places yet to visit but they are (forgive me) minor places. Ross and I have decided to explore this place under our own steam. We've not booked any tours but we have done a bit of research as to what is available. Initially, we've got our eye on the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery.
A quick courtesy bus ride into town dropped us outside the opera house thus enabling me to take my obligatory photograph (there was an opera house in Helsinki but it is outside the city centre and, though we drove past it, there wasn't time to photograph it).
First impressions of the city centre were good. The Royal Palace, seen on the right above, dominates the scene and looks like a cake tin. The other architecture, both ancient and modern, is pleasing and humane in scale.
A short walk onto one of the many islands that make up the city took us to the Museum of Modern Art. I liked the works the older they got. There were tremendous examples of early twentieth century art including one fabulous late Matisse. And there were plenty of examples of Swedish and other Scandinavian artists which was pleasing to see. Only after 1950 or so did the art become less interesting to me. And, interestingly, it also became almost exclusively North American based. Even when there were works by Scandinavian artists exhibited, they were artists who had moved location to New York or California.
After our last visit to Tate Liverpool, I was musing about the shift of sensibilities post 1945. One of the things that I can see that I left out of that equation was the shift of emphasis from Europe to North America. I suppose that, being a younger culture (given the failure to engage with anything from the indigenous population), it was easier to attempt to throw away the rule books.
We then moved on to the National Art Gallery for another hour's immersion in the visual arts. The collection was larger than that in Olso but much smaller than that in St Petersburg but it was a gem and it was approachable. They had seven or so Rembrandts as opposed to the twenty-seven or so in St Petersburg but I got the chance to spend some time with them. I loved the representative selection of French works from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, Fragonard, Watteau, Bouchet, Oudry, Corot, Courbet, Manet, Sisley, Bonnard.
But what I liked best were the Scandinavian artists. Names I have never heard of. Ernst Josephson, Carl Larsson, Anders Zorn, Eugène Jansson. But, once again, I want to know more.
We had a splendid lunch in the atrium of the Gallery and then decided on one last piece of culture before heading back to the ship.
It was a bit of a schlepp but were we rewarded?
I remember (just) when the Vasa was raised from the sea bed in 1961. There was much talk on Blue Peter and there was live television coverage which seemed interminable until the first timbers appeared above the waves.
In the flesh (or timber as it were), it is just staggering.
It wasn't possible to photograph the whole thing - it is just too big. And it is there. In front of you. A whole ocean going vessel from the early seventeenth century. Out of the water. Just sitting there. It's just a jaw dropping experience. It must be one of the single largest man-made objects in any museum. I guess only the Atlas rockets at Cape Canaveral must top it.
The restoration is very tasteful. The wood used is different enough to suggest that it is modern without standing out too much. And in a couple of places, they have tried to paint the timbers so that they look something like how they would have looked originally.
I'm every so glad that we went and it certainly rates as one of my best experiences of the holiday.
All in all, I think that Stockholm goes to the top of my list of places to re-visit with Copenhagen and Tallin close behind.
After the evening meal, when Ross had gone to bed, I went up to the Sun Deck, Deck 9, the topmost deck on the ship. Stockholm, like Oslo, is some considerable distance inland. Oslo is up a fiord. Stockholm is up a river at the head of an archipelago. I stood and watched as we passed many islands most of them topped by summer houses in ones and twos and threes. Little boats bobbed by. Harsh granite shorelines. Coverings of pine trees. Little girls waving from jetties. The sun setting in the clear Northern air. I felt as though I were flying in an aircraft of my own devising.
I spent most of this morning in the laundrette sorting out clothes for the final few days of the holiday. It has come down to that now. All of the real excitement and expectation is done. There's a few days to rest up and relax before the return to normality.
I have actually begun to think about home and work again. Not to fret or worry. Just simply to consider what has been going on in my absence.
For the first half of the holiday, there was the buffer of the second half to make the time seem endless. Now the sands are conspicuously passing through the timer.
And outside events have impinged. Israel has invaded the Lebanon. And the Holy Land is once again, as it has been for four thousand years, the scene of battle and strife. Is it easier to go to war when your god is a god of vengeance who demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth rather than suggesting that you love your neighbour as yourself? Well, even Christianity's record in that regard is not immaculate.
I asked Melwin, our Cabin Stewart, if he got any time off during the day. He said, "Two hours, sir." So this really is like living in a country house with the staff working long hours to ensure that the family and guests have an easy time of it.
So, having idled the day away, we had an uneventful meal. Well, I say that but everyone round the table voiced some sort of dissatisfaction with the meal - venison that lacked taste, pastry that lacked texture, profiteroles that weren't profiteroles. I know that this isn't luxury (if it were then none of us could afford it). And I know that it is a bit much when you are saying "Oh no, not quail, salmon and venison yet again". But there is something not quite right on this ship.
From day one, when it took such a long time for all the bags to be distributed to the various cabins that there was an apology the following day in the ship's newsletter, there has been a lack of coherence about the service as a whole.
Coupled to that, there is an air of desperation in certain quarters. The casino is empty. The photographers are doing a dire trade. No-one wants to buy the appalling art works that are for sale at auction. The cybercafé has lost business owing to the reduced levels of satellite connection. Fewer and fewer people are booking on the shore excursions. The Chocoholics event this afternoon contained, we were told, not one item which contained chocolate. I am surprised that there was not a riot.
Ross and I went for a drink before bed time. He, like me, thinks that the cruise has been good for us in that it has given us an insight into a few places that we might want to re-visit sometime in the future. He also feels that it has increased his confidence about travelling beyond British shores. However, he like me, wouldn't want to become cruise regulars like some of our fellow passengers.
Ross had another of his non-alcolic cocktails called a Pussy Foot. I had a Planter's Punch. Like the cruise, it was fine but I wouldn't rush to have another.
