It has been too long (yet again) since my previous post. I won’t bore you with long-winded explanations but suffice it to say that the past three months have been challenging and very busy owing to bereavements in the family and to health issues affecting both myself and a neighbour. The latter has just returned home after three months in a hospital near Cardiff during which I have visited twice weekly and looked after her house, two dogs and all those other aspects of daily life that she couldn’t manage for herself while in a hospital bed. Meanwhile, the National Health Service is getting revenge on me for my lifetime of good health by treating me to what feels like an avalanche of tests, scans and other appointments for treatment which will become even more frequent in early 2012. I have met more medical “ologists” of one sort and another in the past three months than in the previous 71 years, and all because I decided that it might be a good idea to have a general check-up in preparation for the next 71. It was indeed a good idea and I have been impressed by and grateful for the attention that I have been receiving (as an outpatient) from the University Hospital in Cardiff.
Once again it was Henry, our Tortoise, who prompted me to post on the blog after all this time. Having hibernated somewhat earlier in recent years, Henry has remained active this year and has stayed where he can be seen on our back lawn for several hours each day. Granny-Anne reckons that he has known for some time that the current spell of unusually warm weather was coming and has therefore made a daily appearance on the lawn (rather than remaining hidden under his bush or somewhere else under dense shrubs) so that I wouldn’t be tempted to put him in his winter quarters indoors. Now I will have to watch Henry, the weather and the forecast even more carefully during the days and weeks ahead.
Last year I gave up driving and got rid of my car. This was partly due to a loss of interest in the car following a couple of attacks by vandals and partly because the car was used so little. However, while the Cardiff Bus service from a stop near our house is very good to and from the city centre, it is not so good for travelling to and from local hospitals, the garden centre and other destinations that we might like to include in our wildly exciting lifestyle. So I decided to have a car again provided that it was a lot more interesting that the average eurobox. It is a long time since I found modern cars at all interesting and if I must tolerate the expense and general hassle of car ownership now that driving itself has become such a joyless activity, then the car had better have a bit of character about it to compensate.
Having reluctantly decided to have a car again, and a “classic” car at that, I made up my mind that it would have to be versatile and economical to run, though not necessarily the cheapest available. It also had to fit the garage, be easy to maintain and new spare parts would have to be readily available. I also decided to buy from a highly respected dealer/restorer (a company that I have known for over 30 years) and to return the car to that dealer for annual servicing and maintenance. Fortunately Cardiff is not far from Bristol, and the latter is the home of Charles Ware’s Morris Minor Centre, so I concluded that there was no need to look any further.
Travel
As I pointed out in the previous post, Granny Anne is writing the more detailed account of our recent cruise in her blog, Granny’s ramblings. By way of encouragement I have allowed her to pinch all my best pictures, to supplement her own, leaving me with a few odds and ends to which I can add random comments.
I believe that the above was the result of my first ever attempt to shoot a video. It didn’t occur to me to try that feature of my camera (I have owned it for only two-and-a-half years after all) until we were approaching Bergen, in Norway, our first port of call. It was intended to be an experimental one-off, as I was anxious not to run out of batteries and memory cards, at least until we were on our way home.
No, this wasn't our cruise ship (that would have been fun!) but I include it here for the tall ships enthusiasts.
This was our cruise ship, MV Athena, almost as old as me but probably better maintained.
At Olden, in Norway, we had to go ashore by ship’s tender because the Fred Olsen Line cruise ship, Boudicca had arrived before us and occupied the landing stage. In the photo above you can see one of Athena’s lifeboats, of which two were in use throughout the day as tenders.
It was interesting to see the lifeboats launched and to ride in them, not to mention reassuring to observe the rapid and obviously well rehearsed manner of their launching (admittedly in the easiest of conditions, but even so).
The small town of Olden is situated in spectacular surroundings at the inner end of a long and very pretty fjord.
Boudicca at the Olden landing stage.
Boudicca leaving Olden. We caught up with her again at our next port of call, Alesund. As she left there ahead of us, sailing only a matter of metres away from Athena, there was much frantic waving and peering at her decks, trying to recognise some of her passengers that we had met ashore.
The video above shows our approach to Alesund, our last port in Norway and a really attractive destination.
We spent plenty of time between ports (and meals, and even some sleeping despite the very short hours of darkness) just leaning on the rail gazing at the sea, I could stand any amount of this!
And finally, our last view of Norway, for the time being anyway.
That’s it! I’ve done it now! I have got rid of my car. Well, actually, not quite but I have asked the disposal company to come and take it away.
This was a difficult decision, though totally logical. The car, a 1988 BMW 318i, has covered less than 59,000 miles in its 22 years and though in very good condition for its age (at least until the vandals attacked it just over a year ago) it may not pass its May 2010 MoT Test without some expenditure and I think it will be just the start of a series of repairs and replacements which will make the already unjustifiable annual cost even more so.
We do not need a car. Cardiff Bus provide free services to ancient individuals like me, every 7-8 minutes from a stop about 50 yards from our house and these will take us to all the important local destinations. Also, almost every week, my ever-helpful daughter drives Granny Anne to do the weekly shopping – followed by a light lunch here and a good old chat for a couple of hours before my grandsons have to be collected from school. So in the past twenty-one months we have averaged just 60 miles per month in our own car and this has fallen to 20 miles per month in the past five months.
Set against this, after 48 years of accident and claim-free driving my insurance premium is going up annually in leaps and bounds and, for third party, fire and theft, now exceeds the value of the car by a good margin. The governments “road tax” is simple robbery, no other word for it, and not even spent on the roads. Fuel is a ridiculous price (again, mostly tax) and the total motoring costs cannot be justified by our low mileage – on the rare accasion that it might be necessary it would pay us to take a taxi.
After 48 years of motoring (I had hoped to make it 50) it was not an easy decision but actually, I am rather pleased that I will no longer be paying excessive sums of money to parasitic motor insurers and undeserving governments.
Once again there were plenty of ships in the Kiel Canal including these two heading towards the Baltic Sea.
By breakfast time on September 8th our holiday was almost over. It was our 36th Wedding Anniversary and as a detailed description of the celebrations, and of the final stages of our travels, appears on Granny-Anne’s blog I will try to avoid too much repetition here. Ahead of us lay two days of cruising, first, through the Kiel Canal to the North Sea. then our course would take us south to the English Channel and along the south coast and up the Solent to Southampton. The next 36 hours passed very quickly, in retrospect, until later on the Wednesday evening I noticed with some surprise that we were just about within sight of “The White Cliffs of Dover”. I had never seen them from sea level before and we were a long way off in poor light, Even so, I had to try, at least, to take a few photos, one of which is shown here.
Part of our distant view of the White Cliffs of Dover in the poor light of late evening.
One good night’s sleep later and I awoke early to find that we were in the Solent already – another place that I had never been before. I was amused that at such an early hour of the day, one of the first vessels I saw was this ferry (?) seemingly sponsored (or perhaps owned) by IKEA – suppliers of nearly all our bookshelves and other storage units of which a few can be seen here.
This was a tremendous holiday from Page and Moy. It had been a complete change from our normal routine and we had been totally pampered by all the wonderful people who looked after us aboard Ocean Majesty. Though we had done little exploring in some of the ports, we were very happy with the whole experience and would return to any of them for a much longer holiday.
And finally, to my frequent visitor Shoreacres, I haven’t taken many photos of the sea but here are three, just for you!
Checkpoint Charlie, in a brief moment when the lone U.S, soldier was not surrounded by tourists wanting to be photographed with him.
The structure of the Berlin Wall was far less formidable than I had always imagined and I took this photo of the end of a surviving section to illustrate the point. It didn't need to be any larger as there had been several thousand East German guards watching every inch of the other side of it.
The concert hall at The Gendarmenmarkt, where I was out of sight of our tour group by the time I had wandered off far enough to get it all in the picture.
The German Cathedral, also at The Gendarmenmarkt.
The Brandenburg Gate
On September 7th we arrived at Warnemunde and, after an early breakfast, set off for a coach tour of the Berlin Highlights. The journey to Berlin took approximately three hours. A fine restaurant lunch was provided for us but the day’s schedule was delayed in the afternoon by heavy traffic.
As everywhere else where conducted tours were taken, I am sure that the selection of the route by the guides, inevitably, will have cast a somewhat rose-tinted light on the city as a whole and Berlin was no exception. It was elegant and impressive. We saw wide streets with many palaces and fine churches and other majestic buildings of an historic nature, many of them restored or rebuilt since World War Two.
We saw parts of the former Berlin Wall (1961-89) and also the amazing amount of reconstruction that has occurred since 1989. There were also many examples of modern architecture in glass etc. which I found impressive – and, coming from me, that is a compliment indeed.
It had been a long day by the time we returned to our ship, Ocean Majestry, for a late dinner. Berlin was one of the few European capitals that Granny-Anne particularly wanted to see and although there are better ways to get there from the UK, our Baltic cruise had presented the opportunity so we took it.
And finally, some of the many very relaxed-looking cyclists and other pedal-powered transport that I saw in Berlin.
We approached Stockholm at breakfast time in fairly calm water, though there was a brisk wind. The sun was shining and the view was beautiful of all the islands on each side of the ship, with various large and small houses right down to the water, and many moored boats.
Our docking time was delayed by the overnight storm which had been the first experience on this cruise of anything resembling rough conditions. Admittedly it had just started to become a little bumpy in the North Sea on our outward bound journey, before we diverted through the Kiel Canal, but last night was certainly rougher and as I referred to this in the first post in this series I won’t repeat it here.
We decided to have lunch on board then take the 1.30pm shuttle bus the short distance into Stockholm. We then had a boat tour of the harbour for about 50 minutes but reflections in the boat’s windows put an end to any thoughts of photography.
It was all quite pleasant but we had neither the time nor the walking capacity to see much of the city. In addition it seemed to be a very busy day, partly no doubt due to three very large cruise ships moored close to the city which could well have disgorged up to 3,000 tourists each into the city centre. Secondly, there was some sort of big-time EU Ministers meeting in the city that day so several self-important looking convoys were rushing about disrupting the traffic (as if paying their expenses wasn’t bad enough, we have to put up with their disruption!) – and doubtless this also explained the presence of lots of police personnel on the streets, many of them apparently armed to the teeth.
On Sunday, September 6th we had a full day of cruising across the Baltic Sea to Warnemunde, in what used to be East Germany. The day started grey and cloudy with a choppy sea but the ship was running smoothly. The wind was quite strong but didn’t seem cold until later in the day. In the Baltic Sea we were rarely out of sight of other ships and on this morning there seemed to be two or three others a long way off but running on a parallel course.
In the morning we attended a talk by Richard Jarmain on Warnemunde, Rostock and Berlin. After 14 years this was his last voyage on Ocean Majesty. All of his talks were well researched and illustrated and also entertaining.
Lunch was more than ample as usual and was followed by a short nap and then coffee upstairs. Then to the Majestic Lounge for the early quiz in which Granny-Anne and I formed a team with one of our new friends and managed to score top marks – nothing to do with me, I just wrote down their answers for them.
We watched a ritual being enacted by the entertainment team and involving the swimming pool on one of the top decks. This was all about asking permission from Neptune (King of the Sea) to enter German waters. I couldn’t hear what was being said (shouted actually) by the participants but the idea seemed to be that most or all of them would end up being pushed into the swimming pool. There was a very strong wind, which was no longer pretending to be warm.
Around 5.00pm we started to prepare for the evening activities which commenced with dinner at 6.00pm. On booking the cruise we had requested the early sitting for dinner as it suited us better than the later sitting at 8.00pm. It was the second of three evenings on this cruise for which we were invited to wear formal dress. Meanwhile, the sea had been growing from moderately choppy to much larger swells and I hoped that it would get no worse, at least until both dinner sittings were finished. I had visions of glasses tipping and plates of food sliding off tables – and almost everyone in their best frocks!
The day after St Petersburg we arrived in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. After an early lunch on board Ocean Majesty we took the shuttle bus to the edge of the old town. Not far from the bus stop we came to a craft market where good quality merchandise was on sale, including clothing and jewellery. I almost felt sorry for one of the very helpful stallholders after she had taken the trouble to demonstrate her wares in such a helpful way, only to be told that we would return later. I wonder how many times she hears that each week from people who are never seen again. But we meant it. We called again on our way back to the bus later on to make our purchases.
Meanwhile we had walked up through the old town until we reached the highest vantage point. We passed a very colourful flower market and another street which contained large covered areas with tables and chairs at which people were finishing their lunches and enjoying their drinks. It was a fine day and a good time to be outdoors. We visited a few shops, climbed some very steep steps and, eventually, arrived at a high vantage point that overlooked much of the old city.
Shortly before we arrived there a wedding party with the same idea dashed past in a small group of cars with horns blaring. When we caught up with them they were engaged in a strange but apparently humorous ritual, seemingly being conducted by a weird character dressed like a very colourful scarecrow. We assumed that the actual wedding had taken place already and that this was some sort of local custom being played out afterwards. We didn’t intrude at the time other than to take a photo or two so we are no wiser.
We cast off from Tallinn at 6.00pm while we were heading for an early dinner. We both found ourselves with greatly enhanced appetites on this cruise. which were only encouraged by the excellent food in generous quantities. I am sure that the freedom from both cooking and washing up helped as well.
Our visit to Tallinn, about which more details are on Granny-Anne’s blog, was too short for us to see very much but it was most enjoyable and we would certainly go again should the opportunity arise.
Today's post starts with a couple of pictures from yesterday's river cruise showing some of the elegant buildings alongside the river.
It is hard to believe that it was a whole month ago but on September 3rd we were up early to have breakfast and be ready for the St Petersburg City Tour by 8.00am. The coach tour was provided by Arctur Travel and our guide for the trip was a very pleasant young lady who had a detailed knowledge of her city, a fine command of English in a lovely local accent, a sense of humour and a fashion-conscious image including the big sunglasses so beloved of certain celebs because it enables them to avoid the full make-up treatment before the school run each morning.
The Winter Palace
Today we saw the exteriors of several churches and of many grand palaces, some of which are now museums or colleges. Clearly a great deal of restoration has taken place and still more continues. There were a few stops to let us out of the coach to take photographs and I took a few shots from the moving coach (like the one above) as well, always a bit hit and miss but worth a try. The parts of St Petersburg that we saw certainly support its reputation as a beautiful city. The architecture was very grand in both design and scale.
The cruiser "Aurora" from which the shot was fired that signalled the storming of the Winter Palace in the October Revolution of 1917. The ship was built between 1897 and 1900.
This city’s continuing reputation was built on the huge wealth of the excessively rich governing families of the past. It would have been interesting to have visited an ordinary area of the city – comparable with our home shopping environment – just to see how it compared. Our scope for shopping was limited to tourist souvenir shops – in locations which appeared to be well away from other shops – in which the main goods were Russian dolls, jade jewelry and various icons, all of variable quality and a major tourist shop that had a very much wider range of goods including fur hats, glass and ceramics, watches, paintings and decorated boxes.
The Church of Our Saviour on the Spilled Blood, named in honour of a Czar who was murdered on the site. The church was built in the 20th Century in a 17th Century style.
We returned to the ship at about noon and almost immediately went to have lunch in the restaurant. After lunch we relaxed in the cabin and reflected on what had been billed as the high point of our cruise.
- A detail from the church shown above.
I came away from St Petersburg feeling that I was little wiser about Russia as a whole than I had been on arrival there. Perhaps this was to have been expected, given the shortage of time, only two days, and the fact that Granny Anne and I had chosen, as first-time visitors, to stay with organised groups rather than obtain our own visas so that we could explore independently. I wonder how much independence we would have been allowed? It was certainly worth going there but I wouldn’t think it worth a second visit just to see grand architecture and a diet of over-decorated interiors.
The fireplace from the bedroom shown in the previous post.
This time a rather fine wooden ceiling
And part of a wooden floor (avoiding the glare from a window).
The corner of a particularly beautiful ceiling.
It must be admitted that this sort of decor makes our plain white ceilings and magnolia walls seem a little lacking in ambition.
Some of the furniture in The Red Sitting Room at the Yusupov Palace.
The ceiling and lights in the art gallery
The Yusupov Palace has its own private theatre where I could have wished for a wide-angle lens or more space to take photos. This is one of the boxes overlooking the stage.
One of many spectacular chandeliers in the Yusupov Palace - one or two of which incorporated real diamonds.
On Wednesday, September 2nd, we arrived at St Petersburg at about 7.30am in bright sunshine but there was a cool breeze. Photography of the port area was not permitted so I went on deck without the camera to observe the docking procedure. Maybe I should get out more but I found it quite entertaining to watch the ship being rotated through 180 degrees by a tug, to face the right direction, before being pushed sideways to the dock and secured with two thick hawsers.
A detail from a ceiling
We had our usual breakfast around 8.15am while passengers who should have breakfasted earlier, were busy ensuring that they were at the assembly points in time for their morning shore excursions. For the inveterate people-watchers among us I am sure that the cruise ship provided an interesting environment. At our breakfast table there was a very elderly gentleman complete with walking stick, apparently travelling alone. He informed us, solemnly, that he would not be going on any excursions that morning because he was not feeling well and would be going to see the ship’s doctor instead. Mind you, apparently he hadn’t pre-booked a place on an excursion and his chances of finding a place at the last minute were nil, St Petersburg being the star attraction of this particular cruise. I was pleased to see that he ate a good breakfast – perhaps that was all he needed to make him feel better. Halfway through his breakfast he turned to me again and enquired whether we had arrived in Russia.
And another ceiling...
A lady (I use the word “lady” out of politeness), a “colonel’s wife” type, the sort that lives in a “hice”, sat down and demanded abruptly “Breakfast now” from the nearest waiter, no please, no thank you. The waiter politely explained that he was not the waiter who was taking breakfast orders (who was busily doing just that only feet away) . She then made a fuss about missing her shore excursion which was due to leave soon. We wondered why she hadn’t ordered an early call and got herself out of bed in time. Hubby joined her a bit later and didn’t have much to say – probably not accustomed to getting a word in. Another gent nearby addressed everyone within hearing distance (which should have been a lot of people) on the shortcomings of Britain’s foreign policy, despite the fact that only about two people within hearing distance appeared to be listening to him. It was all very entertaining, though I didn’t get the full benefit of his fake accent because I tend to become annoyingly deaf in noisy places like busy restaurants.
I have just noticed that I took rather a lot of photos of the Yusupov ceilings, which you will not think surprosong when you have seen them all. Meanwhile, by way of a change, how about a small mantel clock!
We had booked an excursion for the afternoon which included a visit to the Yusupov Palace and a river cruise. The uniformed immigration official checked our passports etc. while remaining expressionless, avoiding eye contact and saying nothing. The process was much quicker than we had been led to expect but the smiling (and indeed spoken) welcomes that we had received from the equivalent officials in Copenhagen and Helsinki were absent here.
At the Yusupov Palace the “guards”, who seem to have been recruited from Russia’s angriest women (and looking at them it was not hard to imagine why they were angry), barked their orders at us, which our very pleasant young tour guide was obliged to translate. Anyone wearing a “big coat” was despatched to leave it in the cloakroom downstairs before the tour began.
We walked all through the palace marvelling at the sheer extravagance of its interior decor and furnishings. Our guide gave a detailed commentary but I left it to Granny Anne to keep up with that aspect while I trailed at the back of the group taking photographs. indeed I was mildly surprised that we were permitted to take photographs so in doing so I made sure to keep up with our group. The next guide and her group were not far behind and the “guard” who was keeping a watch on us was pretty agitated throughout.
Afterwards we had a boat cruise on the river which was pleasant and enjoyable but not particularly infomative for me as I could not hear the tour guide for most of the time.
The coach returned us to the ship and, on misunderstanding the paperwork requirements as I passed through the customs office, I was bellowed at by another formidable uniformed female with two stars on the shoulders of her uniform. I concluded that Russia’s customs officials have no manners and from that moment on they became know as “Two Star Generals”. My fault had been that I thought we were supposed to hand in one of our two identical “Boarding cards” on each day, whereas the idea was to hand both of them in on the first day. Later I discovered that another passenger had indeed handed in one on each day, without a murmur from the two star general.
I hope that the pictures in this and subsequent posts will give you some idea of the enormous wealth that supported the Yusupov Palace and the beautiful craftsmanship that went into its amazing interior. What a shame that it is so hard to genuinely admire such works while strongly suspecting that the wealth that created them was acquired at the expense, one way or the other, of thousands of the poorest in the country at the time.
