CRUISE PHOTOS: Oslo

Oslo

Oslo Harbour

Frogner Park, a huge sculpture garden that contains hundreds of statues.

CRUISE PHOTOS: Cruising by Denmark

Windmills

The Bridge between Denmark and Sweden

Hamlet's Castle, the very one

CRUISE PHOTOS: Gydnia

So I went to Poland, and all I got was this lousy sign.Actually it's a rather nice sign.

CRUISE PHOTOS: More St. Petersburg

The Hermitage

The Church of the Spilled Blood

The street market where apparently you can buy black market DVDs of first run movies for a dollar.

Counting their change

A dancing bear

CRUISE PHOTOS: crew cabin

Here is the cozy crib that I share with Andreja, a stewardess from Slovenia.

CRUISE PHOTOS: St. Petersburg

Here is a bedroom in the Czar's summer home outside of St. Petersburg.

Here's his backyard

Here is the kind of place that normal Russians live today.

And this is why I was hesistant to take the subway anywhere by myself.

CRUISE PHOTOS: Helsinki Again

Helsinki Train Station

This guy has been a one man band street musician around the world for his entire adult life. Now his teenaged daughter is joining him. That's an acoustic bass guitar that she is playing.

Check out his website. http://www.kettelbeat.com/ to get the full story.

CRUISE PHOTOS: Stockholm

Stockholm is a beautiful city. I'm only posting a few of the many pictures I took because I really couldn't decide which ones to keep and which to leave out.

Street musicians visiting from Russia. The contrabass balalaika can cause some serious back strain because you spend a lot of time slightly bent over. I remember how it felt when I played in a balalaika orchestra for a little while. The shape of the balalaika makes it nearly impossible to not hunch over at least a little bit. But the novelty of it and the amazing feeling of all of those strings being plucked at the same time definitely makes it worth the pain that it induces.

The route from Stockholm back to Helsinki passes through many small islands. The scenery is splendid.

CRUISE PHOTOS: Helsinki

CRUISE PHOTOS: St. Petersburg

CRUISE PHOTOS: Copenhagen

CRUISE PHOTOS: Amsterdam

CRUISE PHOTOS: Dover

CRUISE PHOTOS: Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a beautiful old French city that is a couple of hours inland. But the river is big enough for an ocean liner to come in and dock there.

Sorry, I'm being a total asshole stalker paparazzi here. This is Doug and Julie from Days of Our Lives walking back to the ship. Did you know that he sang the original Davy Crockett theme song? They were working on the ship as guest lecturers. I used to watch Days a long time ago and I remembered that one time they came back to the show after a long absence and the story on the show was that they'd been off on a cruise. I guess that's right.

CRUISE PHOTOS: Back in Lisbon