Helsinki

EagleIZ at Uspenski Cathedral

We left the ship about 9:00 and started on a 1.3 mile hike into town and the City Museum. Along the way we looked for GC3P0C6 geocache but had to log a DNF. We arrived at the museum but found it was closed until noon so we proceeded on to GC9898 at Uspenski Cathedral. We could easily spot the onion domes of the Eastern Orthodox church, a huge affair on an island hilltop near the East Port. The cache, our first in Finland, was in the wall, behind a rock, in a tree covered corner, nicely hid. On the way we saw an interesting display of 100s of padlocks of all sorts attached to a small bridge to the church's island. We weren't sure of the significance at the time but have since seen others like it and even a few geocaches placed on these lock collections. Turns out it is a favorite custom of couples to seal their love for each other. 

A word about Judy's yellow jacket.  We bought these on a trip to Washington DC when the weather turned a bit nasty on us. Since that time we've worn them all over the world and I still have them packed away somewhere. One of the best buys I've ever made! We had them on in Amsterdam when a fellow approached us and wanted to take our picture. His "thing" was taking photos of couples dressed alike and we had caught his eye. He has a website loaded with interesting photos but we didn't make the bigtime.

The Bad Boy

On our way to the next cache (GC238FX Central Market Square) we ran into the Bad Boy sculpture and took a photo for our friend Roy. The cache was under a bridge and hard to get to without attracting the attention of 100s of nearby nubbles but I think we did ok. This area was known as Cholera Basin and was apparently infamous as a city sewer. The Bad Boy was an appropriate sculpture.

We eventually did make it back to the Central Market where I had lunch of some delicious fried fish, rice, and a local beer. I've heard stories that our beloved "french fries" actually originated as something like this during WWI. The fish vendor ran out of fish and fried up some potato strips instead. The Belgians were speaking French and our soldiers took the recipe home and called them French Fries. Whatever the story, the fish were excellent if just a bit much. Central Market was a beehive of activity and more like a flea market or a pulga mercado back home.

Lunch at central market

Central Market

             

The City Museum cache was worth the revisit.  This is billed as the world's largest geocache container and the entire museum is considered the container.. We spent some time admiring all of the travel bugs permanently affixed to a basket in a side office where the log was located. We beat it back to the shp and were soon off for our next stop: Saint Petersburg Russia.

Rønne Bornholm

Welcome to Ronne

 Our first stop was Rønne where we had a short but wild ride on a tender into port.We walked the short distance to the "large square" and were surprised to find no evidence of tourism. No vendors, no shored excursions and the local currency is not the Euro. The town/island is more of a vacation site with lots of cycling and camping. There were some geocaches in town but none that called out my name. While on ship we had met Richard and Jo-Ann Simon from Michigan who I had met online via cruise critic. I'm still friends on Facebook with Jo-Ann but Richard sadly left us a few years ago. We said goodby to town and took the tender back to the ship in time for 4:00 tea and met a couple of other English speakers:Angela and Bob from NY/FL and Shiela and Sonny from England/Belgium. The 8 of us had dinner and caught the second show: a nice variety singer from South Africa.

The next day was at sea on our way to Helsinki. Weather was partly cloudy, chilly in the 60s but warm in the sun. We listened awhile to Duo Caseopia (piano and cello) in the Chocolate Bar. 

The hike into the Large Square

A wild tender ride

Onboard the Costa Romantica

Boarding the Costa Romantica

 Before we left Rolla, Judy managed to snag a Baltic cruise on the Costa Romantica out of Amsterdam. The ship was smaller than many of our Caribbean cruise ships so we were surprised to find ourselves in a cabin that was actually larger than our hotel room with a lot more storage. The food was good and included the usual buffet with assorted restaurants around the ship. Coffee was scarce and only available at breakfast so I began hoarding instant coffee packets. No ice tea at all so Judy was out of luck until she discovered that hot tea and ice worked just as well. Entertainment included a piano/cello duet, Gordio (an Italian piano player singing rock songs), and a couple of guitarists from South America who were very good. Other than the crew, we were some of the few English speakers aboard. A comedy act one night was a lost cause! We missed the theater
shows on other cruises but the lounge music was great and we got along just fine. Unlike other cruises we were able to see coastlines often and saw LOTS of other ships - mainly cargo vessels.  The Baltic is a busy place. 

Goodbye Amsterdam

Amsterdam Trip

 I'm finally getting around to catching up on my travel blog. For some reason or other, we quit just as the travel was starting to pick up. In 2014 I was still volunteering for IEEE on the Region 5 executive board. This was Sections Congress year and the board decided to send everyone to Amsterdam. It almost broke the bank but we had a good time anyway. Judy went with me and did the sight seeing while I sat in a faceless conference room attending meetings. We and the Merediths stayed at the Citizen M hotel which John said looked like two WWII submarines welded together. He and I walked the few blocks to the conference through Beatrix Park, a gorgeous nearby park each morning, rain or shine. Some memories: Getting stuck at the airport in St Louis before even starting; an unscheduled stop in Frankfort; losing our luggage; running into Tim Ault, one of our old students from UMR; watching out for bicycles before crossing a street; riding the city buses; geocaching in Amsterdam (very fun, even in the rain). Judy managed to snag a cruise on a Costa ship through the Baltic after the conference. More on that later.

Our home in Amsterdam: Citizen M

HP3 arriving at Sectons Congress 2014

Meeting the Cousins

We left the hotel and went to Webster Groves and had brunch at Stafford Restaurant where we met up with two cousins of Hardy's.  He had never met these two and Nancy was from his mother's side and Carol was from his father's side.  They both live in that area but did not know each other...now they do!  They were both a delight to meet but we forgot to take any pictures.  How redundant is that! 

After the brunch, which lasted for three hours, we went back to the hotel then started geocaching in the area.  The geo's that we found were in the downtown area close to the hotel and in parks nearby.  One of the caches was a multi-cache in City Garden which has sculptures all over and this cool fountain of dancing water that the kids were really enjoying running through and getting totally soaked and trying to catch the water.  We had to go from sculpture to sculpture and answer questions to get the coordinates of the real cache and sign the log book.  There were two young girls where we signed the log book so we explained what we were doing so maybe they would want to start geocaching too.

Later that evening we went to an Irish restaurant called the "Dubliner" for dinner.  After that we stopped at Jack Patricks which is an Irish Pub.  I asked a young man if we had to go in to order our drinks and he very politely told me that he was just a customer but we did have to go inside.  He wanted to know if we were from there and we told him we were from out of town and there celebrating my birthday.  He bought me my birthday drink! 

Birthday Celebration

This is the big birthday milestone for me.  When you are young you think 70 is really old.  Well, it is old but not really old as I am still functioning, dancing, hiking and all those fun things we do.

The day started off with breakfast in Rolla, then a trip into St Louis to meet up with brother-in-law Jan who is also celebrating the same birth date.  After we checked into the Omni Majestic Hotel, we went to the Scottish Arms for dinner and I had Bangers and Mash along with a glass of wine.  I topped that off with a huge slice of strawberry-rhubarb bread pudding with a gob of real whipped cream.  It was way too much to eat but it was great.

The Omni Majestic is a beautiful old hotel that sat empty for many years and was renovated a few years ago.  The hotel was built in 1914 and had over a hundred rooms at that time.  It now has around 90.  The hotel belonged to ATT&T who sold it to Omni and Omni did the renovation.  This hotel sits right downtown in St Louis and is in a part of St Louis that was really in bad shape a few years ago and you didn't want to drive down there let alone stay.  In the past several years they have done major renovation of the downtown area and the old warehouses now have little shops and lofts and is really quite nice.

Pre Birthday Celebration

Today is the day before my big number 70 birthday and I am totally enjoying still being 69.  There is something about each of those milestones that remind you that life is passing by quickly but Hardy and I do not let any grass grow under our feet because we go, see, do as much as we possibly can.

I finally went over to the "Dark Side" and signed up with a geocaching name so now I go out and hunt for treasures along with Hardy.  I usually went with him but never logged my name.  Because I can usually find these caches, my geocache name is EagleIZ.

We topped off the day with dinner at AppleBees and a glass of wine so the birthday celebration has begun.

Uncle Jim

Visitation was very nice and in the same funeral home where Aunt Catherine's visitation was when she passed away.  It was easy enough to find and just about 50 miles from where we were camped.  Hardy's dad and sister and her husband met us at the funeral home.  Hardy II made the trip to Tennessee to meet up with Mary Ann and Larry and then they continued on to Dallas for the funeral.  Poppa seemed to do quite well considering the circumstances.  Jim was his only sibling and they were both in WWII, Jim as a pilot and Hardy II as a pilot instructor.

Roy Roberts State Park

After leaving Boggy Depot State Park in Oklahoma we drove to Tishomingo to the Chickasaw Cultural Center.  They had a really nice museum with many artifacts and a lot of local artistic displays.  Of course we had to geocache while there.

We left Oklahoma and continued to Roy Roberts Lake State Park where we camped until after the visitation services for Uncle Jim in Dallas.

We took off early to do some geocaching in the area and to visit some of the counties in our Texas County Geocaching Event.

Wizard Well

Hardy at the Well

The Labrynth

    

We went to Wizard Well to find a geocache.  This was an interesting area and really off the beaten path.  These mineral springs were visited by the Kiowa Indians for many years and then as a way stop for travelers later on.  The railroad bypassed the area and now there are only a handful of people living there.  We did find the cache!!

Uncle Jim

It has been a long time since I have posted so will give it a shot again.  We received word that Hardy's uncle, Jim Pottinger had passed away and the funeral was to be in Dallas.  We were just getting ready to leave for Montana on our annual trip so we diverted to Dallas for the funeral and then would continue looking for geocaches in the northern counties of Texas before we headed out to Montana.

We left fairly early in the morning and headed through Oklahoma on US 69.  We found this really nice state park called Boggy Depot where we camped.  It was out in the middle of the boonies and very few campers.  Actually we were the only campers in our area.