New Calling

Ok, it's been a while and my friends figure I'll never post again, so thought I'd better take some to to update my site.

My husband and I went on a cruise to the Baltic with Cruise Lady. It was a very wonderful experience. I have always wanted to go to Copenhagen because my ancestors are from
Denmark. So that was where the cruise started from. We were
fortunate enough to go first class, we used all our miles we have
been saving for years and boy were we glad. It was such a long
flight and the seats actually recline almost to sleeping and we got
so many meals we ended up skipping some of them. This picture is
Terry standing in front of Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.

Now if you go to Denmark, take lots of money for food,
etc or your own food. We paid about 15-20 for a
hamburger in McDonalds and you have to pay 25 cents
for ketchup packs every where in europe, and that's each.
No refills either. This picture is looking
from the ship over copenhagen.







Next we went to Sweden, because it was our first stop, I don't remember much about it. Everything was green in all the scandinavian countries.


This is the place in Sweden where
the Nobel gifts are given. The
Nobel Peach Price is given in Norway.










Back on the ship and on to Finland. Finland is very rocky, and as we go north, it is starting to get colder. There are tons of waterways and lakes in all of the scandinavian countries. Here we are looking at the older part of Oslo.








After Finland we go to Russia for two days St. Petersburg. We had lunch with a family, that was very fun, it consisted of the mother a ballet dancer who now taught dancing to young dancers, the daughter who was going to Paris to study and the Grandmother who was celebrating her 85 birthday. We were served borshe first, which was just a very good cabbage and vegetable soup, followed by a rolled chicken, rice, vegetables and bread. Then for dessert was what they call apple pie, but was really a cake with apples in it. Food was very good, but we couldn't eat it all and the Grandmother who had been through the war and gone without food was not too happy we couldn't clean our plates.
A new perscpective. Russia was interesting and I will put more pictures when I figure out a better way to get them where I want them. It doesn't seem that the country has changed much from communism. The people all live in very small apartments which line the streets. Many buildings are not maintained. The people don't get up early and go to work, they go when they want to, work for a while then go drinking and then come home to sleep. The streets at 10 am where almost empty. No work ethic and probably no incentive to better themselves.

The guide was fairly open, but very careful about whqat she said. She did tell us during Kruschef's time if they said anything negative their family would lose their house, job and they would have no place to go. So it was bad then, but they miss all the free stuff they got too. Guess they don't realize nothing is free. It is either paid up front or through their taxes.

Well I will write more about our trips later.