Operation Scenic Route to Spain

In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two (1492) Columbus sailed the ocean blue. In two-zero-one-one (2011) we did too; it was tons of fun!

In the summer of 2010 we followed a big ol' Mouse all over Northern Europe.  We had a great time on board Disney Cruise Line's (DCL) The Disney Magic, so much so that when I blogged that trip  I wrote at the end that I might just "space-A home for a visit next spring simply so we can cruise back to Europe with the Mouse."

we spent a lot of time holding shirts

Well, that's exactly what we did.   The Disney magic left Port Canaveral May14 bound for Barcelona, Spain.  She arrived two weeks later and in between stopped  in the Bahamas; Funchal, Portugal; Gibraltar; and Cadiz, Spain. Of the 14 nights on board, 6 of those were  at sea crossing the Atlantic between Castaway Cay, Bahamas and Portugal's Atlantic island, Madeira.  Almost everything we've done over here falls somehow/someway into a "best ever" category, but it was indeed "the best ever" (or at least very very cool) to wake up on day 3 and look at the map on your stateroom TV and see the boat smack dab in the middle of the ocean, to stand at the rails and see nothing but ocean all around you and know that yep, there really is nothing but ocean all around you.  Six days trapped on a cruise boat with no where to go but on another lap around the deck might be a little much on any other cruise line, but I think I could spend 6 weeks on a DCL cruise and not once feel the need to send anyone up the crow's nest looking for land.   All the glowing things I wrote about our first DCL experience holds true, especially the dining room staff who made it their mission to get my picky two year old to eat something other than chocolate milk.

tuckered

luxury of time

And because this time there was more time, plus Grandma to pitch in with the kiddos,  I got to do ALL the cheesy Disney things -- take the tour that explains the art and decor on board;  learn how to draw Donald and Mickey, and  test my trivial knowledge. (D and I cleaned up at TV theme song night, btw.  No, we weren't latch key kids who spent every afternoon watching reruns on TBS, not at all.).  This trip there was time to go to all the broadway style productions and  to see a number of movies, King's Speech and a red carpet PremEAR of Pirates 4 among them.  And there was more time to try all the yummy recipes on board and to pop into Palo, the on board signature restaurant, for brunch.  But with so many days at sea, we also had more time to interact with cast and crew, some of whom have really remarkable stories of how they ended up sailing with DCL. Surprisingly, there weren't very many kids on board, so a number of the staff took a special interest in mine, which made their two weeks even more fun. (And helped me feel less guilty all those days we left them on the boat while we went ashore exploring.  Seriously, I didn't feel *that* guilty.  I know what it is to navigate Europe with the pint-sized set.  Furthermore, they know what it's like.  I think all parties involved would agree that the kids spending port days in the Oceaneer Club is a win/win all around.)

Pirate Night

(Full Disclosure:  Some of my continued  DCL enthusiasm comes from the fact that in the months since our eastbound transatlantic with Disney we have taken an  eastern Mediterranean cruise with another major cruise line, and while that was a great trip with some of the most AMAZING sightseeing, the cruise experience on that other boat can't compare to DCL's.  If we had never sailed with Disney, we would have loved sailing this other line, but as we had already sailed Disney we were left thinking this other company needed to find  itself a stash of pixie dust somewhere)
 

Castaway Cay

Didn't much care about spending the day on CASTAWAY CAY (Disney's private Bahamian island) but that's mostly because we were coming off two weeks at our own private beach house (AKA Grandma's house).

smak dab in the middle!

"The Rock"

My favorite port was GIBRALTAR.  We took a van tour of the Rock, stopping at all the main sights --to see the Monkeys, and the bunkers -- and learning about the Rock's history.   I can't really imagine what it must have been like living there before Spain opened it's borders.  Our tour guide remembers going with his father on day long trips into Spain to shop.  Day long trips because they had to get to and from Spain via a ferry from Morroco instead of  simply walking 10 minutes to the border. Speaking of Morocco, I was supposed to spend a few days soaking up the African sun last winter and had to cancel at the last minute when my kid-care fell through. I only got slightly perturbed when we stopped to look out over the Straits of Gibraltar at Morocco and the African continent. Oh well, at least I now have pictures of Africa, even if I didn't get to step foot there.  After touring we ate lunch in town and did some shopping. I designed my own champagne flutes at Gibraltar Crystal, where the crafters hand make their items on the island itself.

What a final resting place!

WW2 Tunnels

One of the most difficult landings anywhere. They have to shut down the road for planes.

Stalactites or is it Stalgmites?

AFRICA!

the most famous Gibraltan resident

beautiful Madeiran flowers

I also very much enjoyed MADEIRA, Portugal.  We made port at Funchal and took a sightseeing bus up into the mountains.  We saw some stunning scenery and ate a wonderful lunch of  Espada, the local catch,  at a cliffside patio cafe.  Then, we rode the bus back downtown to shop for lace and wine.  Here's another thing I like about DCL: We landed in Funchal on a Sunday, yet DCL made prior arrangements with some local shops to be open. (In contrast, that other cruise line  put us ashore in Malta on a Sunday where not-a-thing but a few tacky souvenir stands and bars were open.) Because it was Sunday, we couldn't go to a tasting at  the most famous of the Madeiran wine bars, but the wine shops we stopped into did tastings for us and of course we came home with several bottles of the famous spirit.  The Bordal lace "factory" also opened  and we saw where generations of Madeiran women have made lace products by hand; they still make their lace by hand at this factory. And although lace isn't really my style, I now have a far better appreciation of just how much work goes into producing one lace tablecloth.

View from our table

drying Espada

CADIZ:  We spent one morning in Cadiz, a not-so-picturesque, yet very "Spanish feeling" harbor town.  We followed a self-guided walking tour we picked up from the local TI office.  We've done self-guided walking tours all over Europe but what was unique and so user friendly about the Cadiz tours is that the city has painted colored lines all throughout town.  They provide four walking tours and each is designated a color. So if you're following the purple, Medieval District tour, you simply wind your way through town following the purple painted line on the ground.  

Cadiz Cathedral

lush gardens

War Memorial

Las Ramblas

I visited BARCELONA (and London and Paris and Munich and Rome) way back in 1991 as high school Junior and it's been good fun to go back to some of these cities now, as an adult, and compare today's experiences to what my 16 year old self remembers.  I was keen to visit Barcelona this trip because back in 1991 Gaudi's Cathedral was 20 years less completed than it is today AND not open to the public.    This time not only did I get to walk around La Sagrada Familia, but I also got to go inside.  We left the boat early and scooted to the subway and made the Cathedral our first stop.  As it was, we had to wait in line about 25 minutes.  I'm guessing that by the time we left, the line to get in was at least an hour, if not longer.  After learning all about Gaudi, we walked through Barcelona's oldest historic district, following a Rick Steve's walking tour which happened to begin at a square that was being occupied by Barcelona's unemployed youth. This was months before it became the cool thing  to "occupy [insert major city here]."  (Although Barcelona's unemployment rate among young people  is close to40 % percent, so you certainly understand the frustration).  The Barcelona police were in the process of trying to clear the square when we got there.  Barcelona's futbol team was playing in a championship game that night and the city anticipated needing the square for victorious futbol celebrations.  Except, we found all this out later.  At the time all we saw were lines of police in full riot gear, oodles of news crews, and helicopters circling overhead.  In researching the event, it apparently got pretty ugly, but fortunately we were there ahead of or behind the real violence.  We also spent a couple hours strolling Las Ramblas before heading back to the boat for dinner and one last evening on board before disembarking.

Barcelona Market

school children celebrating

people protesting

helicopters circling

Gaudi's Passion

Having spent 26 nights, total, cruising with DCL, I'm still one of their biggest fans.  I can't tell you how disappointed I am our move back to the States isn't going to coincide with a westbound transatlantic reposition.  BUT, I've heard a rumor that DCL is planning a Mediterranean itinerary out of Venice in 2013 and if the stars align........

feels like "home"

 final cruise blog--  Warnemunde/Rostock, Germany and Tallinn, Estonia

Warnemunde and the North Sea

At the half-way point of our cruise we stopped at Warnemunde, Germany.  The cruise lines have dubbed Warnemunde the "Gateway to Berlin" and 90% of the passengers dutifully trekked to the train station at 5AM  for the 2 hour train ride into Berlin.  We watched them all pour out of the trains 14 hours later, exhausted.  As D and I have already been to Berlin, we skipped the fun and stayed in port.   Our table-mates (who live in Landsthul)  also skipped  Berlin. They ventured to the beach.  D and I grabbed B and bopped over to Rostock, the area's historic county seat.

Rostock Market Square

As we left the port, we had to pass through customs control.  They had two lines: one for passengers and one for crew members.  The lines, however, were not clearly marked. (Surprise surprise -- Europeans, even the super orderly German variety, can't queue).  D and I ended up going through the crew turnstyle.  The German bean counter nearly had a meltdown.  Welcome "home", I thought.

Shopping and the big red balloon

It happened to be market day in Rostock, so we bought cheese and bread and fruit for lunch and strolled the main shopping district.  If we hadn't been living here for the past two years, we would have marvelled at the quaintness of it, but Rostock's market is like any other market in any other town.  We did, however, get to get our shop on at the T.J. Maxx buying a winter coat for C and some fill-in clothes for D.  See, upon leaving Dover, D and I had a misunderstanding.  I had packed for the boys and I had packed for myself.  I packed for our weekend in Dover separately.  I thought I had explained perfectly well that the dirty clothes from Dover were spending the cruise in the car.  D missed the memo, and by our halfway point he was running out of clothes, even though I had already done laundry once.  The rest of us could get home without doing more wash, so I couldn't help but laugh when I found him in the men's department with a shopping basket full of underwear, socks, and t shirts.   I guess he didn't want to do laundry either.

the shipyard

  The best thing about Warnemunde is that it made me feel better about my limited German language skills.  Most of the time, here, when I try to speak German, the locals look at me like I have horns growing out of my head.  In Rostock, however, every market vendor, barrista, and store clerk understood me.   I'm not sure whether the difference is dialect or if in a tourist area the locals are more willing to roll with an outsider's slight mispronounciations and figure things out.  Probably a little of both.

It's not a bad thing, to stay on the boat when every one else goes exploring.  There were no character meet-and-greets in port, but there were still activities, demonstrations, movies, and other fun to be had.  As we left Warnemunde that evening the boat --the Disney Magic-- sailed right past the shipyard where she was built.  As a side note, Disney's newest cruise liner, the Disney Dream, is being built in another German shipyard, in Papenburg, about 3hours from us.  It's due to leave dry-dock this weekend and then float out to sea in the next couple of weeks.


Tallinn, Estonia

Of the 7 ports of call, Tallinn was the one I was most excited about.  The thought of going to St. Petersburg was cool, but going to Estonia sounded downright exotic.  I mean Estonia of "Estonia-Latvia-and-Lithuania" fame, one of the big three Baltic rebels that told the USSR to stuff it.  We've seen a lot of Europe, but I couldn't shake the feeling that somehow going to Estonia would make us world travelers in a way that going to Italy, Austria, or even Poland just couldn't.



Except...
No one ever told me and I never bothered to learn that Estonia spent much of her life under German rule, was established by Germanic peoples, and looks and feels a lot like any other German city.  I kid you not, if you blindfolded me and plopped me in the middle of Tallinn's historic district, I could have been in Heidelberg, Rothenburg, Monschau, or any other historic German city.

Sweater Wall -- stall after stall of knitted items

 We took B with us into Tallinn so we wandered the historic district, followed along with a walking tour, climbed some old ruins, drank some good beer, and ducked into a local church or two, one of which was the picturesque Russian church, which apparently the Estonians hate, but  keep  around as a political and cultural peace offering to the Russian minority that still calls Estonia home.   Before heading back to the boat, we detoured to an Estonian grocery store to buy diapers.  I had brought plenty, I thought.  But B spent a lot more time in the nursery than we anticipated and I think they changed the kids hourly, whether they needed it or not, and I was running low.  Diapers on board cost a whopping $1.50 a piece.  I'm happy to report that Estonian pampers are just like the German ones.  As we re-boarded the ship each day we had to pass through metal detectors and have our bags x-rayed.  I caused the crew members manning the machines to chuckle as I sent my mega-pack of 100 Pampers through to be scanned.  (It was the smallest bunch they had in B's size) --  Good Times!

View to the port from the ramparts

Tallinn's New Town

The Russians are coming; the Russians are coming!

still cruise blogging.... next up,
ST PETERSBURG

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood

I'm just about convinced that cruising is the best way to see the Baltic/North Sea/ Scandinavia.  There are downsides, mainly that it's crowded. You can only cruise in Summer and that's when everyone else, crusiers or no, head north.  But the upsides are worth considering.

It's expensive, with a big 'ol "E", to travel in Northern Europe.  It's expensive to sleep and it's expensive to eat, let alone expensive to do things.  (Dinner for two, no wine, at a moderate eatery --easily 100 Euro).  Book the right cruise and cruising can be a good value as you eat and sleep on the boat.    Cruising is also the most hassle free way to see a little snippett of Russia.  Russia requires US citizens to obtain a visa,  an expensive and sometimes a lengthy process. I know people who have done it, but it does require planning and leg work.  If you travel last minute, like we so often do, both of those things can be difficult.  If you cruise into Russia, you do not need a Visa.  The only catch is you *must* disembark with an organized and prearranged excursion/tour. 

When we booked our St Petersburg excursions online, we simultaneously tried to book B into the Nursery, to no avail.  Our philosophy on Europe with little ones is this:  It's not that we don't  do things  b/c of the kiddos, but we almost always do things a little differently with the wee set than we would on our own. We don't plan more than one event each morning and one event each afternoon. We respect lunchtime, pack oodles of snacks, and make sure there is a stroller available come afternoon nap time.  So, that was the plan.  We scheduled museums in the AM (when B's at his best), walking tours in the afternoon when we hoped he'd crash in his stroller, and D quickly volunteered to stay on board with the boys while I went to the ballet.  But, a sprinkling of pixie dust later, turns out the nursery had space for him on our St Petersburg days after all. SCORE! (Though D still begged off the ballet, so the kids wouldn't be up past their bed times.  Took one for the team, he did.)

First up was an afternoon walking tour full of churches, palaces, Russian history, and BRIDES -- lots and lots of brides.  Because St. Petersburg is such a beautiful city, it's a popular destination wedding spot for Russian couples.  Marriage in Russia is still largely a state thing and sprinkled all over the city are wedding halls that seem to function kind of like wedding chapels in Vegas with ceremonies scheduled every 15 minutes in high season.  Apparently summer is high season.  During our three hour walking tour we saw 25 brides and grooms posing for pictures in local parks.  (One of the teenage girls on our tour was keeping track).

St Petersburg is a beautiful beautiful city, but other than an onion-domed church here and there and the magnificent Church of the Spilled Blood , it doesn't really look "Russian".  Peter the Great built St Petersburg, from scratch, out of the marshlands in the 1700s, so it's not a very old city.  Peter was a well-educated, well-traveled man, who loved Amsterdam. Lo and behold, St. Petersburg looks a lot like Amsterdam, more ornate, but with the same general character.

Winter Palace

Every excursion we went on  began with a guided bus ride narrating the sights we passed.  Curiously, not a single guide pointed out any  revolution/communist era sights. They gave us current information concerning demographics and daily life in St. Petersburg, but no 20th century history --at all.  We drove past Lenin's command post, churches used to store/hide huge repositories of art and other  valuables during WW2 when it was clear St. Petersburg would come under siege, and old KGB headquarters, yet the guides said nothing.  When asked directly about life in soviet-era Russia, the guides quickly brought discussion back around to Peter and Catherine's eighteenth  century heyday.  Disney offers lectures before each port of call, providing guests with historical overviews.  I didn't attend any of the lectures --too much other stuff to do. But, fortuitously, the guy who gave the lectures happened to be on our tour, and he filled us in as we drove past.  I'm sure many Russians simply don't know very much(having never been taught) about Russia's embattled past.  Really, what society --anywhere-- wants to highlight again and again the darkest days of their history.  It's not so much that the guides denied Russia's bleak years, they simply had no interest in discussing it.  I would leave it at that.......

Except.....

St Isaacs Cathedral

All of our guides spoke excellent English and all were university  educated.  Two of them were teachers who picked up tours in the busiest tourist   months for extra income.  All were significantly younger than D and I (10 years, give or take).

Hmmm??????

I was 10 when the Cold War started thawing.  I was 15 when the Soviet Union collapsed and  20 when the former Soviet republics  first competed under their own flags in the Olympic games.  That means our guides were babies, preschoolers and  tweens and have spent much of their lives in an, presumably, increasingly "free" Russia.  Consider too that one of the guides explained to us that just like America,  Russia is a large country divided into states because smaller states are easier to control.  Yep, control was her word.  Maybe she meant govern and the word choice got lost in translation? Maybe she's only had a brief primer on American government and  legitimately believes that improving administrative logistics is the main impetus behind statehood?  I realize it could take more than a single generation to undo years of  entrenched thought  and maybe today's Russian tweens (the ones who will be tour guides 15 years from now) have a markedly different perspective,  but I thought the statement telling nonetheless.

Back to touring....

Summer Palace

The next morning, we boarded buses and rode about an hour outside of St Petersburg to Catherine the Great's summer palace.  Palatial is indeed the right word.  Stunning.  We saw the outside of the Winter Palace during our walking tour but didn't go inside.  We chose to tour the inside of the summer palace because of the Amber Room-- an entire room with floor to ceiling Baltic Amber siding.  The current room has been recreated. During the war  the palace was occupied, bombed, and burnt and the siding was not removed for safekeeping.  Presumably there's some Nazi treasure chest somewhere stuffed to the brim with Catherine's amber.

Ballroom -- look at all the people!

As we drove to the outskirts of the city, we learned that 95% of St Petersburg's residents live in apartments and that real estate is expensive, Southern California kind of expensive.  What was not clear is whether there are any subsidized paths to home ownership or whether most Russians in the city rent because that's the affordable way to do it, which of course begs the question:  who exactly owns all the property--corporations, businesses, government or the Russian nouveau riche? 

It happened to be Naval  Day in St Petersburg the morning we went to the palace, so our bus ride back to the boat took close to three hours. We had to wait for parading sailors, cheering crowds, and booming canon as St Petersburg put her naval might on display.  As an outsider how do you see such a display and not call to mind news footage of May Day parades and  tanks rolling through Red Square?  Just another instance how St Petersburg, as an example of both historical and modern Russia, leaves me scratching my head.  I can't shake the feeling that it's a city stuck at a crossroads, a city that wants to be progressive but just isn't sure how. Other than our guides we didn't get to interact with any "real" Russians. We didn't get shoot vodka with a local or breathe any local air, so there's much I didn't get to experience.  Even the performance of Swan Lake  I attended  was scripted for cruise passengers.   Don't get me wrong, it was an AWESOME performance, by a respected Russian ballet company in the oldest theatre in town, but there wasn't a Russian in sight -- by necessary design, I imagine.  After all, what do so many tourists, me included, want to do in Russia? What do they view as the quintessential Russian experience, if not attending the ballet?   It makes sense, then, that the ballet company would simply contract with the cruise lines to fill the theatre with ballet-seeking  passengers. All in all, St Petersburg was my favorite port city of the cruise, so definitely go if life ever hands you the chance.