Visby, Sweden - Holland America Westerdam August 6, 2005

2923-E Olney-Sandy Spring Road Olney, MD  20832 Phone: 301-774-4646 Fax: 301-774-3610

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We had a 6:00 AM wake up call but blew it off for an hour then went to breakfast.  I had the best eggs over easy I’ll ever have according to the guy who made them for me.  They were good but Matt and I decided it was probably because of the best salt in the world that they have in the dining room.  We made our way down to the Queen’s Lounge and got our tender tickets.  We only had to wait 10 minutes and were sent down to catch the tender to town.  

We walked down the road and headed back out the city at the Osterport Gate.  Here we found the first of a bunch of concrete rams that are around the city.  We took our obligatory pictures sitting on top of the rams.  We walked down the outside wall again and ran into our dinner tablemates Ron and Barbara.  I hadn’t noticed before but Ron is about 5’2’’ tall.  We gave each other updates on what we’d seen since we were doing the same thing in different directions. 

We reentered the city at Dalmensporten Gate, which I climbed to the top of to take pictures.  This led us to St. Mary’s Cathedral.  We were on a hill over the Cathedral, which had a magnificent view over the city and cathedral out to the Sea overlooking the Westerdam.  Also on top of the hill were a bunch of houses for midgets.  Matt took pictures of me with my head at the roofline of one house and armpit over the top of the door of another. 

We went inside the cathedral, which was the first we went into that had stained glass.  It was a nice little cathedral and I lit a candle for Betty Ryan, I thought she’d like that.  The stand for the candles was a circular stand and pretty neat looking. 

Matt was in search of a library he had read about but couldn’t find on the map.  He only knew it was near Almedalen Park, which we had finally found.  It’s a very picturesque park at sea level with all the churches and ruins viewable from it.  Matt was determined to find the library, which I didn’t really have an interest in seeing so we split up.  I found my souvenir stand of the day and then stopped for a couple of beers, one at Anna Dubbes Krog and one at Trossen both of which were at the harbor.  This finished off all of my Swedish Krona except for 15.50 or about $2. 

I got into line and Bill and Eleanor Moser showed up right behind me.  It was about 12:30 PM and the last tender was 1:00 PM.  We finally boarded right about 1:00 PM.  The line behind us was huge.  It was going to take quite a while to get everyone aboard.  Bill told me that they had missed their tour this morning because someone had told him to set his watch back another hour last night.  Apparently his MIT education failed him, he knew we had been given two hours and had already given them back.  He said it did sound right but he did it anyway and he knew he was going to hear from it from the rest of the Murfreesboro gang when they met up again.  

We got lucky as it started raining right as we got on the tender and you could see the umbrellas all opening as we left.  We left the port and had a nice scare.  I was in the very front left of the tender and we hit the wake of another ship and nose dived pretty significantly into the water.  It was enough that water entered the closed window at the front left of the tender.  The seas weren’t that bad but we got a rough ride.  I guess we had a new tender driver. 

I found out that I didn’t have the worse tender experience of our cabin.  Apparently Matt’s tender died on them.  They had to be towed back into the ship.  Thank God we only had one tender day on this entire cruise. 

I went directly up to get something to eat and they had a cold seafood buffet at the Lido Dining Room.  I got a bunch of sushi on one plate and loaded up with jumbo shrimp, grilled salmon steaks, raw tuna steaks, teriyaki scallops and deviled eggs with raw salmon on top.  This is where I ran into Matt and heard about his tender adventure. 

I went to look for Matt after lunch at the Crow’s Nest where he said he would be but wasn’t.  I chilled out in a barc-a-lounger until we set sail.

I found Matt at the room who was upset I found a barc-a-lounger because he couldn’t find one to relax in.  I decided to go to the last art auction of the day and ended up buying my second take off piece of the cruise.  It was Speed Racer and Racer X signed by the voice of Speed Racer.  Luckily this is an older cruise and I had no one bidding against me for a cartoon cel.  I got it at the first bid for $75 plus the seller’s premium of 15 percent.  Park West, the people putting on the auction are real nice, all of them are from Australia or New Zealand and the four girls involved are all beautiful.  The guy in the auction liked to get the crowd to say the red headed Nicole’s name.  It always made her cringe because it always came out in a nasally New York type accent.  I talked to the blond girl from New Zealand, Le Ann, and found out we had the same taste in art.  Well sort of, we both loved and bought the Pink Panther ceracel Pinkasso. 

After the auction I decided to try and reach dad via the Internet.  I couldn’t get it to work by the pool and retreated to the Internet Center.  I found out I had used all my time and had to purchase another 100 minutes.  Dad wasn’t online so I logged onto Apollo and did my sales report for the week and then sent pictures of the trip home to everyone. 

As soon as I hit the logout button, since dad still wasn’t online, I got the MSN message that he had come online.  I told Matt later it was just like at home when I get to the bottom of our stairs and he calls me back upstairs for something.  I knew he had seen me online so I had to log back on and I spent the next 30 minutes talking to him and mom.  It’s still amazes me how well the MSN messenger has worked. 

It was getting close to 8:00 PM and since we were blowing formal night off again I headed to the room.  This was after going to the art gallery to finalize my purchase of the day.  We got to the Lido Dining Room just in time as it closes at 8:00 PM.  And it was a good thing we got there in time, as it was Surf and Turf night.  I had two lobster tails and a filet mignon along with a couple of shrimp cocktails.  The filet was great, the lobster a little dry but it was at the end of dinner so I could understand that. 

That was it for the day.  Warnemunde is tomorrow and since we aren’t going to Berlin on a tour it’s the day we can sleep in.  I slept until about 9:15 AM when I started to catch up on the journal entries.  Matt’s been out some and told me it’s raining so this has been a good time to play catch up.

Go To Warnemunde and Rostock Germany August 7, 2005

Return To Stockholm, Sweden August 5, 2005