Day at Sea 2 (Cruise Day 9)

Finally, we got our day at sea. Unfortunately, having a day at sea on the last day means that # large portion of the day was spent packing and getting ready to disembark.

I was supposed to spend that morning catching up on blogs, but clearly because I'm writing here on the train to Budapest,  that didn't happen. Instead, I spent my morning sitting outside and freezing while waiting for people to come to our table. Jimmy also introduced me to the chocolate croissants. I'm sad it took me until the last day to discover those, but I generally try to avoid the pastry table.

We did morning trivia and it was crazy hard, so that didn't go too well. We all went to the morning Bingo. They did a raffle for a free cruise and because Chris didn't have any raffle tickets, he unwillingly got volunteered to draw the raffle ticket. He was hilariously awkward up there. He wasn't helpful either. You'd think that if he was drawing the raffle ticket he'd at least try to draw ours, right?

Jimmy would jump back and forth into the Bingo game. He came in a little while into the big jackpot raffle, so I let him use my card while I played with Mia's. Turns out he brought a bit of good luck because that ended up being the winning card and he jumped on stage doing the most entertaining dance.

We followed that bingo game with lunch and then some packing before our evening trivia. The most entertaining part of that game was that one of the questions asked what topographical feature is called gang in Korea. Korean classes apparently failed Mia and me because we had no idea. Halmony walked into the room at the right moment, so we tried to ask her what a "gang" was. This involved some miming but we finally got the right answer. Its a river, for the record.

Dinner was entertaining because Chabba unintentionally flirted with our flamboyantly gay waiter. Chris had given his wine glass back to the waiter and he said thank you in response. Chabba then said "oh, for a thank you, I'll give you my glass too." The waiter giggled flirtatiously as he walked away and Chabba remained entirely oblivious to what just occurred.

After dinner, changed clothes and went to the casino. Mia, Chris and I played a game of craps. Chris had his $50 of previous winnings and Mia and I both put in $10. All three of us came out with much more money than we started with, so we left the casino quite happy. Chris was the clear winner being $150 up. I believe that money will either go to comic books or soccer. We went downstairs and played some Machiavelli for a while before going to bed early so we cpukd get up in time for our 5 am wake up call

Tallinn, Estonia (Cruise Day 4)

Our day in Tallinn was a lot of fun. I wasn't really sure what to expect from Estonia, but my handy Rick Steves guidebook had at least informed me that a trip around the Old Town area was cute and worthwhile. In fact, we based our tour of Tallinn off of Rick Steve's self-guided tour.

The port led us directly into a touristy souvenier market, which made Mia very happy. There's been a running joke this entire trip involving the Russian accent that Mia likes to do and her insistence that there are only goats in Russia (having been there at least one day, I can safely say that there is definitely more to Russia than goats). In any case, apparently goats or sheep or something are a big thing in Estonia because there were a lot of goat-related products at the market. Directly following the market, there was a giant piece of wood that you sit on and make a wish on something. I'm not sure what it was, just that I made a wish that I passed the Bar.

Now that we were done with our port-related activities, we made our way to the old part of Tallinn. The walk to the Fat Magaret, which is the gate that leads into Old Town is about a 10-15 minute walk away from the port. A lot of it was uphill. Actually, half of the walk was uphill. Back in Medieval days, Tallinn used to be two neighboring (and feuding) cities that were separated by a wall. The lower part, I believe, was Tallinn and the higher part was Toompa. There's an interesting mix in the city of Russian influence and European influence from its days as a big merchant city. The old town area is really cute. Very medieval-y.

We walked through Fat Margaret tower and up Pikk Street (which is the major street of the old town). We walked by what used to be the building where they would send prisoners before sending them to Siberia. "Creative interrogation" methods were used in that building.

Then, it started raining. You'd think that on a summer cruise, we'd be hot. I think a lot of people packed for it. But, no. It feels like we've gotten rain almost every day of this trip. In any case, it's hard to do a walking tour in the rain, so we ducked into a candy store, which actually apparently is one of the best of the city. They had really cute Marizpan crafts, including some shaped into fruits and vegetables. I guess it was even a popular candy spot during Soviet occupation. We got some chocolates there to excuse the fact that we had used the store to hide from the rain. It was very good. If you ever happen to be in Tallinn, go to Maiasmokk (I think that is the name). It's got good stuff. It's across from the Church of the Holy Ghost.

Fortunately for us, the rain broke just as we exited the candy store, just in time for us to check out the Church of the Holy Ghost. We didn't go inside, but spent a few moments marvelling at the giant and very old wooden clock on the wall.

From there, we went to the Town Square, which was also very cute. After a bathroom break, we started our trek up to Toompa. There are a lot of great view points up in Toompa. Almost everywhere you go, you'll find a pretty view of the city.

On the way up, we passed by the Russian Cathedral. According to Rick Steves, this church isn't too popular among local Estonians, but it employs that classic architecture style that you think of when you think of Russia.

We also saw and went inside the Dome Church, which is a pretty church in the middle of the city. It's pretty old too and you can see the walls of the church are lined with the crests of many wealthy families from back in the day.

We then visited two separate view points, Patkuli Viewpoint and Kohtuotsa Viewpoints, which both gave really nice views of the old town that also overlooked the sea. We could actually also see the ship from there. It was really cool. More importantly, we had, at some point also found WiFi to steal.

After spending some time at both viewpoints, we circled back down to the lower areas of Tallinn. We were a bit hungry by that time, so we decided to stop somewhere to both sample the local beer and to try some of the locacl cuisine. Thus, we found this beer house called Beer House. They had some good beer and apparently one local popular food is Estonian style garlic bread. They use rye bread. It's so good. We also had chicken gizzard, which was interesting.

After eating, we made our way back to the ship just in time for Jimmy and me to participate in the ship's scavenger hunt. This was an exhausting experience. We had to get people to sign things, had to find things, and eventually found out that Chris and Chabba were competing against us. After eventually deciding to join forces, we ended up getting a question wrong and losing anyway. Our failure at scavenger hunt was followed by failure at trivia. There are too many smart old people on the ship.

We had dinner and then Umma and I decided to go watch the performance for the night. Ten years ago, we saw this performer, Elvy Rose, on another NCL Cruise Ship and, well, she performed here too. I watched half of the performance. It was good, but I was tired and started falling asleep, something I feel would have been better done outside of the theater of a relatively interactive musical performance. Instead, I went and watched Chris play Craps for a while. He was actually doing pretty well and was up a lot of money...until I came around.

That was about it. The rest of the night was spent preparing for our day in Russia.

First Day at Sea

Today (Monday) was our first day at sea. After having taken walking tours around Europe for the past week, a day of just lounging around a cruise ship sounded absolutely amazing. Granted, many of us managed to fill up the day's worth of activities, but at least we weren't walking everyone along cobble stone roads.

We woke up relatively early (8) so that we could eat breakfast an make it to morning trivia. We didn't do too well. Let's leave it at that.

Chris, Jimmy, Chabba, and I did a morning mile walk before several us played dodgeball for an hour. I discovered today how bad I am at that game, but the balls weren't really great throwing balls. That's my excuse, at least. Nevertheless, there definitely was a pattern and I think with about three exceptions, I was on the losing team for almost every one of the games.

There was some aimless wandering for a while, before we decided to eat lunch and then go to the little gathering for people who've cruised with NCL before. It involved free alcohol and prizes, so we were in inclined to go. Also, you get to meet the captain of the ship, which is also pretty cool. The most memorable part of the meeting, was seeing Chris run onto the stage, knocking over several elderly people in order to win entrance to a free Blackjack tournament. That was fun.

Hung around the casino for a while, with hopes of seeing Chris in his Blackjack tournament. We ended up gambling away a good ten dollars or so before discovering that there was Name That Tune at the same time as the tournament, so we ditched him. Name that Tune wasn't great. There is definitely an older clientele on this ship, and that Name that Tune definitely catered to that clientele. The most modern songs on there were Beatles and Queen. Ragtime music was involved.

There were two alcohol tasting events scheduled for the afternoon. One was a martini tasting and one was a "global beer tasting." We all thought the beer thing would be more fun. Both of them are paid activity. When Chris and I got to the beer tasting and found out that we would have to pay $15 to taste the likes of Guinness and Stella, we decided the beer tasting wasn't as cool as we thought it would be. Unfortunately, this also caused us to miss the martini tasting. Oh well.

There was also an evening trivia. Since the first day, trivia's become a very popular event. There was hardly space left for us to sit, and even then we were in the back of the room and not where all of the jokes were being made. We actually did relatively well today though, even though none of us won.

Tonight was one of the ship's formal nights, so we all had to fancy it up for dinner.

After dinner, I went with Umma to see the evening's performance, which was a medley of Broadyway circa 2003-2006. Many of the performances were really fun. Others, not so much. It was a fun performance though. No Cats :p

Other highlight of the night: losing Mia. At around 11, when many people decided that they wanted to go to bed or, in my case, wanted to blog, we decided that no one knew where Mia was, so we decided to create search parties for her. I went with Chris, who spent the whole time trying to perfect his Russian accent. James and Jimmy were pretending to be the Mystery Team. By the time we found her, it was almost midnight and apparently the search was must have exhausted us nutritionally, because we all needed hot dogs.

Tomorrow is Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Hopefully, we will have time to find Internet there so I can post a few days' worth of blog entries.