This morning we headed off in a bus with a brilliant guide for a tour of Munich and a bit of an insight into this city’s history. We wound up at the Marienplatz then continued on foot.

We had a quick visit to the Hofbrauhaus. This famous beer hall operates over three floors and is owned and run by the Bavarian State Government who also owns the brewery that makes the beer they serve here.

If you are a regular customer, you can have your own table reserved for your use and bring your own beer mug which can be  kept on the premises in a locked rack.

in the Square we watched the famous Glockenspiel do its entertaining routine which occurs three times every day.

Looking at this medieval style town hall, you had to remind yourself that it was actually built in the latter half of the 19th Century by Ludwig II.

For a total change of pace, our next visit was to the very futuristic looking BMW plant. The silver clover leafed shaped main office building had each of its floors built on the ground then jacked up the central spine into position.

A Zeppelin Airship overhead really added to the 1930s futuristic vibe of the place

Jeanette, who is a BMW tragic, was in her element trying out the latest models.

Continue reading “European Mountains and Rivers Day 4 – Scenic Tour Commences” →

Today we hit our travelling groove. We caught the first hop on hop off bus of the day and headed to our first destination:The English Gardens.

This is a vast area of parklands covering some 900 acres of paths, brooks and grassed and wooded areas. Jeanette had a hankering to see the Chinese Tower that she had read was somewhere in the park.

Unfortunately the park signposting was fairly non existent and what there was was in German, as you would expect, and of no great assistance to us, but we knew it was in the middle of the park somewhere and we worked on the theory that we would follow the biggest path we could find and see where that took us.

So off we went and a short way in we struck the fastest flowing river we both had ever seen. The water was absolutely rocketing along .

Then over a couple of bridges we found a really large thoroughfare and followed that and after about half a K we found the Chinese tower.

The structure itself is pretty ho hum but the amazing sight was the sea of green tables and bench seats tightly packed together that surrounded it. Four workers were busily employed using long poles with squeegees on the ends to mop the overnight rainwater off the seats and table tops. This spot turns out to be an outdoor beer garden that can seat 7000 people.

We retraced our way back out of the park, picked up the hop on hop off bus for our next destination, the Deutsches Museum. This vast complex is their technological museum. It has a fascinating collection of a huge range of mechanical stuff from full size early pumping engines, a large steam tug with the side cut out so you can see the engine and boiler, examples of machine shops through the ages, through to bits of airships and Von Richthofen’s red Fockker triplane.

It even had an example of the interrupter mechanism fitted to a machine gun that enabled the gun on the Fokker to shoot through the propellor arc without hitting the prop. This was a real museum with lots of real historical stuff on display. It was a refreshing change from the dumbed down, photo displays and pap that so called museums in the UK and Aus dish up these days.

Back on the hop on hop off bus we headed down to the Marienplatz which was a sea of people. Looking up, Jeanette spotted a restaurant on the first floor of a building opposite the very exotic old town hall and we decided to have lunch. This venue was an absolute goldmine with tables packed with people . As soon as a table near the windows finished, a nearby table of people would relocate to it to improve their view. This tended to be a bit confusing for the waitresses bringing the orders. This was the view from our table.

After lunch we had a look in the  Frauenkirche Cathedral. Built in the 15th century, its twin onion domed towers are a symbol of the city and an old law still exists that no other building can be constructed higher than it. While it is a Catholic Church, its interior is very plain and austere.

We decided to walk back from there to our hotel using the iphone’s directions. After a ropey start that had us walking in circles for a bit we eventually got on the right path and made it back to the hotel.

 

 

Yesterday the weather here was beautiful so when we woke to a chilly morning we thought it would just warm up and dressed accordingly. Big mistake. There was a slight drizzle so we just took our rain coats and caught the hop on hop off bus.

Not quite in the time zone yet we had risen early, were first at the bus stop and got the front seat on the top deck. Great views but the best was when we were in the old part of Munich heading down an impossibly narrow two way street to the Marienplatz. The street was made even narrower by a delivery van parked in our lane so we swung onto the other side to get around it and encountered a BMW coming straight at us . We could look right down into the car’s cabin and if you have ever seen Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream you will get the look on the driver’s face. All this happened at walking pace of course.

We had to do a U turn to get out of that street . Two things we have learnt about Munich so far. First they love digging up roads, foot paths and parks. Every street corner seems to have some work in progress and every park seems to have sections enclosed by portable chainwire fence panels. Secondly they have a very different view of aesthetics. One jarring example was a strange sculpture made out of an old caravan plonked right in front of their oldest city gate.

Anyway after a very interesting and sometimes exciting (due to traffic) view of the city, we returned to our start point and caught a different bus out to the former summer residence of the Kings of  Bavaria, Nymphenburg Palace. This was originally a country hunting lodge but even in its palace days the city had expanded to its edges.

 

The first hint you get of this place is you start driving along a broad man-made canal running in a straight line then you come to the palace . A quick summary would be to say it reminds one of the Peterhof Palace but without as much gold leaf. It’s huge. You can’t get back far enough to get the whole building in the one photo. Behind it are vast formal parkland and woodlands stretching as far as the eye can see.

Inside is your typical palace with a couple of interesting variations. One of the Kings had a fondness for the ladies and had his French court painter paint this gallery of portraits of the most beautiful women he could find. Beauty, not rank, was the criteria and the subjects, both married and unmarried, came from all classes of society. So today we have this room filled with these portraits all beautifully framed with their name on each.

The other thing that fascinated me was the coach house. It had dozens and dozens  of the most amazing coaches and sleds you have ever seen. And when you get to King Ludwig the Second’s coach, you can stand next to and still have difficulty believing it could exist. It seems to have stepped straight out of a fairy tale.

For the grandchildren, how would you like to have this. It is reported to have been pulled by a sheep, a pony, a large dog and on one occasion even a goat.

The temperature had continued to drop as the day progressed and the wind was blowing an icy drizzle. When enquiring what time the bus returned Jeanette was told “hourly every thirty minutes” which we interpreted as every 30 minutes and we were on the bus stop which was out in the middle of a huge lawned area with no shelter at 5 minutes to 2. The bus showed up 35minutes later at 2:30.

We were literally frozen to the bone by then and got back to the hotel around 3:30pm for a much needed coffee and a very late lunch. By then it was raining heavily so we called it a day. We headed to our favourite Bavarian restaurant  for dinner around 8pm

Over the last few days of our cruise the weather has been slowly deteriorating. Our last day on the ship was a sea day as we made our way back to Copenhagen. The skies were grey and the seas lumpy and covered with white caps. We took it easy and organised our packing as our bags are supposed to be out by around 7pm tonight.

Not much was going on outside our cabin window. Early in the afternoon we slowly passed a fully laden tanker on the same course as us.

Its captain must have had its pedal to the metal as the seas were crashing over its bows and streaming off its deck through the scuppers.

We also passed a number of giant wind farms set out in the ocean.

Around 8pm this evening, we sailed under a massive bridge which our researches suggest is the Øresund Bridge, a combined railway and motorway bridge across the Øresund Strait between Sweden and Denmark. The bridge runs nearly 8 kilometres from the Swedish coast to the artificial island in the middle of the strait. The crossing is completed by the 4-kilometre Drogden Tunnel from Peberholm to the Danish island of Amager. So now you know.

We docked in Copenhagen during the night. Up at 5 am on our last day and by 6:30 am we were on a bus to the Copenhagen Airport. Security here was very thorough and the queues were massive. Around midday we boarded our Singapore Airlines flight and started the long flight home. The aircraft was lovely, the food was great and the crew were excellent. 

Only downside was that we were next to a family with three children, one of whom was around 10 months and who screamed for most of the flight at a pitch that was at pain threshold. We felt sorry for the parents who really struggled hard all night trying to keep the little tot happy.

After a four hour layover in Singapore we boarded our flight to Melbourne grateful that the noisy family was not on our flight only to find another family behind us with a child who had also mastered the art of pain threshold screaming. Still I think exhaustion finally took either me or the kid out and I arrived into Melbourne in fairly good nick. I have to give Singapore Airlines a huge tick for being a really great airline. Their staff are really outstanding.

It was a fabulous trip but it is great to be home.

This morning we docked in Nynashamn which is a port town some three quarters of an hours drive from Stockholm. This is our 5th port day in a row and everyone is feeling a bit worn down.

Hopping a bus into town our first stop was at the Stockholm City Hall. This is the venue of the Nobel Prize Banquet which is held here every year in the so called Blue Hall. It was supposed to be painted blue but the Town Council preferred the colour of the bricks so it never got painted.

And following the banquet they have their ball in the Gold Hall upstairs.

The building’s architect was inspired by the Doges Palace in Venice.

Next off, we visited the museum that held the Vasa. The amazingly intact ship was completed in 1628 and capsized and sank only some 1300 meters into its maiden voyage. The problem was the king had ordered an extra gun deck fitted and the weight of these extra  guns carried high up in the ship had made it very unstable. It was located in the 1950s just off a busy shipping lane in Stockholm’s main harbour. It was still largely intact as the brackish water had protected it from marine borers. Divers dug tunnels under the wreck through which cables were passed to barges on either side and it was winched up to the surface.

The extent and detail of the wood carvings are mind boggling. This is a very good museum and one could spend days here.

Next stop was the Royal Palace. The bus unfortunately opened its doors and discharged us right into the path of a detachment of the Palace Guard and we were ordered to move in a very forceful manner.

As a palace, this place was rather poor and plain by European standards.

From the palace we walked down through the Old Town. It’s very pretty.

Up a little alley we were taken to see the smallest statue in Stockholm. This is supposed to bring luck if you leave a small offering and rub its head. It seemed to attract a lot of visitors.

We had lunch in a pub in the old town called the Bishop’s Tavern. The main course was, of course, meatballs.

After lunch we spent our remaining time exploring the alleyways and shops of the Old Town. I keep telling Jeanette not to talk to strange men but she never listens.

After stopping at a lookout we headed back to the ship. This is a fascinating town and Jeanette and I agreed it would be nice to come back one day.

 Now it really doesn’t matter which city you visit immediately after St Petersburg, it is going to be an anticlimax and if you are going to have an anticlimax, Helsinki is probably a good place to do it.

A large portion of this city has been handed over to demented modern architects to do their thing and careful readers of this blog may have picked up that I am not a great fan of modern architecture so such sights as the world’s largest spherical building  did little to quicken my pulse. It contained an indoor tennis stadium – can you think of a more inefficient and inappropriate shape for a tennis court?

Our first visit was to a park containing a memorial to the great Finnish composer Sibelius. This had been done by a modern sculptor. Now modern sculpture happens to be one thing I dislike more than modern architecture but Jeanette said I had to take a picture of it and stop grumbling so I did and here it is.

 

Next we went to the Church in the Rock. More modern architecture. I was starting to lose  the will to live.

Still my spirits picked up a bit when we got to have a little walk around the streets.

What do you think of this for the front of their museum.

Fortunately we then went to the Senate Square which was in the old part of town which had been built during a period of Russian rule and had a real St Petersburg look about it.

We wandered around the streets here, visited a market and found an impressive looking  Orthdox church. Interesting fact is that their Orthodox Churches here are Greek Orthodox rather than Russian.  Finally we headed back to the ship.

Early start today. It’s quicker getting through Russian Immigration the second time but they are still rather frosty.

We had a drive around the old part of St Petersburg and had a stop at a few squares before the crowds of the day started to build up. These two shots were taken in the square in front of the Hermitage.

This is a shot across an old parade ground, now a park called the Field of Mars

We then had a ferry ride around some of the canals and the Fontanka River which gave a great view of the old St Petersburg.

Then the main act of our St Petersburg visit, the Hermitage. Originally the Tzars‘ winter palace, this huge place now holds one of the most extensive collections of Western art in the world, as well as other curiosities such as the Napoleonic room; a huge gallery with portraits of all the Generals involved in the defeat of Napoleon. There were an awful lot of them. The blank blue spaces are for those Generals who had died before the artist got to paint their portrait. Their names are listed under the blank frames.

All the famous artists of history were there, mostly in large numbers. There was an extensive gallery just of Rembrandts, and you could see many examples of the work of Titian, Raphael and Jan Steen.  There were even a couple of Leonardo  Da Vinci’s paintings and a sculpture by Michael Angelo. There are obviously way more artists than this but my knowledge of art is at best sketchy. My favourite picture was a portrait of an old Jew by Rembrandt. It just seems so alive.

They claim if you spent 8 hours a day here, 7 days a week, and took one minute to look at each exhibit, it would take you 8 months to see the entire collection. I suspect you would have also been driven mad way before you finished by the crush of tourists that pour through the galleries in an unceasing flow.

Lunch was at what was claimed to be the last banqueting hall built in St Petersburg. It dated from 1914. The food was good but no musicians today. Still we all got a glass of vodka and of sparkling wine which gave the day a nice rosy glow.

Back on the bus we headed across the river to the fortress of St Peter and St Paul. It was built to protect the new city of St Petersburg but spent a lot of its time as a political prison. 

Prior to the completion of the big St Isaac’s Cathedral,  the church in the fortress was St Petersburg’s main Cathedral. It has remained the church of the Romanov family and all the Tzars from Peter the Great to the last Tzar Nicholas are interred here.

Peter the Great’s tomb still has flowers put on it every day. In addition to the flowers placed by various institutions, it is also a custom here for couples on their wedding day to visit here and the bride to place flowers.

And that ended our visit to St Petersburg. This is a city that has suffered much during its history. It was under siege by the Germans in WW2 for 900 days. During this time over six hundred thousand civilians and over four hundred thousand troops perished and their city was almost totally wrecked. That they have restored it to its current condition is an enduring testament to the indomitable sprit of the Russian people. I strongly recommend a visit.

Today we finally made it to our trip’s ultimate destination: St Petersburg. The exterior of the city is ringed with a modern expressway. Inside that you travel through a lot of grim, very large Soviet era apartments with modern apartment blocks going up alongside them at a great rate of knots and finally you get to the old St Petersburg of Peter the Great with its magnificent cathedrals, elegant public buildings, numerous parks and monuments, and huge palaces. The city here is criss crossed with rivers and canals, and gold domes glint in the sunshine. It is an amazing and very impressive place.

Our first visit was to the Peterhof Palace. This was the Tzar’s country retreat and is located out of town. The scale of the place is massive and the gold domes at either end are stunning.  (I could not get back far enough to get the dome on the left in this picture.)

Inside the Palace, the opulence was mind blowing. The room in this photo used around a kilogram of gold on its decoration and there were many similar rooms.

 

Outside we walked through the extensive gardens and fountains before returning to the rear of the palace where they turned on the main fountains at 11am. There are no pumps at work here, it is all done by gravity. The water is stored in nearby lakes and flows into the bay after exiting the fountains.

Back in town, we visited the palace of Prince Yusupov. He was the one who killed Rasputin by inviting him to this place and feeding him poisoned food and drink and finally shooting him when that did not work. We saw the cellar where this happened. The scale of this palace can be imagined from the fact that in addition to the usual ballroom and banqueting hall it also boasted its own private 150 seat theatre with a special box in case the Tzar called in. After the Revolution, this palace was for a time given to the teachers of St Petersburg for use as a social club.

Lunch was in another old palace’s ballroom which was in need of a bit of TLC but the food was good and they gave us a free glass of Vodka and a group of Russian musicians played, one of whom was on the Balalaika. It was so good.

After lunch we visited St Isaac’s Cathedral which is the biggest in the city. Its dome is the second largest after St Peter’s in Rome.

Next stop was the Church of The Savior on the Spilled Blood. It was built on the spot where Alexander II was assassinated. 

We had had a 5am start to get to Russian Immigration at 6:30am, the day had been hot and muggy, and we had been travelling all day, getting back to our ship around 5:30pm. I was beat but Jeanette, AKA the Energizer Bunny, got changed and headed off on another tour at 5:45 pm to St Catherine’s Palace. She got back to the ship at 10:40pm.

Around 8am this morning we tied up at the cruise terminal of Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia. 

I was hanging over our cabin’s balcony rail admiring the view when another cruise ship pulled into the pier alongside ours, taking out our view.

Shortly after that another cruise ship had docked on the other side of that pier and by the time we had got back from breakfast a third cruise ship had tied up, this time alongside the other side of our pier and we were staring into adjacent cabins

Now Tallinn is a relatively small town with a population of around 450,000 and every visitor wants to go and see the Old Town which only makes up a tiny part of it. I estimate these four cruise ships had just dumped 12,000 plus tourists into the Old Town so the streets were really crowded.

Estonia in the past millennium, has had a pretty rough time being occupied by Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany (twice) and Russia (twice). It got its current independence in 1991. The Old Town is composed of two parts, the top castle where we went first was where the aristocrats lived and used to be shut off at night from the lower town where the merchants and poorer people lived. We saw some  magnificent old buildings here including this impressive Orthodox Church.

From the top Castle there are some magnificent views of the lower town. Up there also were two of the most enterprising street buskers I have ever seen. These two old Estonian guys equipped with a piano accordion and a fiddle had taught themselves the words and music of some popular Chinese songs. In the middle of their bracket they would suddenly start playing a Chinese tune and singing in Chinese. You should have seen the Chinese tourists faces light up with delight and they would rush over and sing along with them and pour money into their hat.

Down in the lower town we visited the world’s oldest continuously operating pharmacy which has been in the same family for over 500 years.

We had a nice lunch at the Peppersack, a restaurant located in a 16th century building, and spent the rest of the day exploring the lovely old streets.

This is a truly beautiful town and late in the afternoon, as the tourists went back to their ships, it had a lovely peaceful feel about it. Jeanette and I have added it to our highly recommended list of places to visit.