Weigh yourself before and after a cruise, and it’s a safe bet to say that you’ll be heavier afterwards. While you might not need to be rolled off the boat, you’ll definitely need to walk or exercise a little bit more to burn off the pounds you packed on during the trip.
More commentary to come. In the meantime, take a look at the photos.
The Celebrity Cruise’s Constellation is a huge cruise ship. When we arrived at the pier in Dover, England, I was astounded by the size of the ship, “Look at the size of that thing!” I figured it was nuclear-powered instead of gas turbine-powered! With a crew complement of nearly 1000 people and a passenger complement of 2000, the Constellation was a veritable floating city/hotel. 12 decks (plus a number of lower decks unknown to the passengers) featured things like a gym, basketball court, Broadway-sized theatre, movie cinema, multiple restaurants and eateries, two swimming pools, and much, much more. After several days at sea, however, the ship started to feel small, only because it’s packed so densely with everything a hotel or city offers.
I’ll have more to say about the ship and cruise later. Enjoy the photos!
Growing up in San Diego, one would expect to see a lot of boats visiting the coastal town. Still, I don’t recall ever seeing as many large boats as I’ve seen in the places we’ve visited on this cruise. Sure, there are tons of smaller personal boats and military vessels docked in the harbor, but there aren’t as many cruise ships or tankers around San Diego. Ships are everywhere on the open sea in Northern Europe, ferrying oil, goods and supplies to who knows where.
Adam the accupuncturist told us about Cristiania, a 1000-person commune located on one of Copenhagen’s many islands. Cristiania reminded me of a huge Synergy or Columbae co-op from Stanford. Vegeterian or vegan food smells wafted through the restaurant where Rae, Levi, Vanessa, and I had lunch (we also ran into Adam and Jen the Amber Girl there). Everywhere wasn’t so much run-down in the commune as it was well-used and heavily tricked out. They even had there own postal system for mail within the commune and mail to the outside world.
Another day at sea, another port of call. Our cruise took us to Stockholm, Sweden.
The highlight of the day was visiting the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a Swedish warship which sunk on its maiden voyage. Years later, they discovered the resting her underwater resting place and raised her to the surface. Today, the Vasa is proudly displayed in a museum of its own. The amount of preserved artifacts they were able to recover from the ship was amazing — games, cheese (I wouldn’t eat it though!), clothes, books, and more. Looking at the ship, one could easily tell why it sunk — it was far too top heavy.
Following the museum, Rae and I wandered through the Old City. We had fun in the Ice Gallery, a re-creation of a room in Sweden’s famous Ice Hotel that’s built every year. Remember the ice hotel/structure that was built in the last James Bond movie? This is the real deal, not some Hollywood facade! Though I’m not much a fan of cold weather, I would love to visit and stay in the Ice Hotel one of these days!
St. Petersburg was the furthest port of call that we cruised to. From that point on, we started heading back to Dover, England. Our first stop was only a few miles away. Helsinki, Finland is so close to the Russian border that they actually moved the Russian capital from St. Petersburg (also known as Petrograv and Leningrad) to Moscow (back when Finland and Russia were warring nations).
The public transportation system in Finland was a little more difficult to decipher than in Oslo, Paris, or London. It took an English-speaking Fin to help us find our way to the bus that would take us to Sibelius Monument, a monument dedicate to the works of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. 600 stainless steel tubes were welded together and arranged by artist Eila Hiltunen, looking very much like a church’s organ pipes.
The Church in the Rock was next on our list of tourist things to-do. When you only have a few hours at each city, pretty much the only thing you can do is visit tourist attractions. Yes, you can eat or go shopping (which we did), but you can do that anywhere. I do wish that we were able to spend a little more time at each city, but that desire would be fulfilled when Rae and I transitioned from the boat to the City of Lights in Paris, France.
After two additional days at sea, we reached St. Petersburg, Russia. The Russian government required guests who wished to visit the city without the supervision of the cruise company to have visas. As we did not have visas, we had to go on several of the cruise company’s tour packages of the city. The first day, we took a bus tour around St. Petersburg. I quickly came to the conclusion that I will never go on an organized bus tour of Europe! The bus insulates you from ever feeling that you are anywhere but a bus. We would drive around from monument to monument, stopping for the occasional 15 minutes to take a photo of a famous church or to grab trinkets being sold by the Russian street vendors.
In the evening, we attended an exclusive performance of Gis&egrav;le by a Russian ballet company. No photos from the bus ride or the performance, as I left the camera (about the only time the camera wasn’t with me) on the boat. The story didn’t really do it for me, and the dancing was only so-so. We felt that the second lead male and female dancers were better than the leads. Also, why couldn’t Prince Albert get offed by the swamp ghosts in the end???
The Constellation’s first stop after a day at sea was Oslo, Norway. I was eager to see the fjords that I had heard so much about. Sadly, I didn’t realize that not all fjords are created equal. There are small ones and the towering cliff ones that people normally associate with Norway.
We had a self-planned tour to the Vigeland Sculpture Park. Gustav Vigeland (1872-1943) was one of Norway’s most famous artists, and the park contains some 192 sculptures spread across 80 acres. The life-sized sculptures of adults and children are almost exclusively nude, something “Americans” would find too distressing. I read that during NBC’s Olympics coverage of the Opening Ceremonies, the network deliberately cropped out the bottoms of the performers, who were dressed as faux-Greek statues (i.e. naked).
I’m leaving for Europe this afternoon for a month of vacation followed by an appearance and presentation at the first World Wide Newton Conference. My talk will center around my personal history with Newton. It will cover my introduction to the original MessagePad as a college freshman in 1993, the creation of Foundation Systems in my dorm room, the Newton protest I organized days after the product’s cancellation in February, 1998, and the Newton’s renaissance in recent years.
Before that, however, I’m off to vacation on a cruise to Scandinavia and Russia. We’ll be embarking on a 12-night cruise through the Baltic Sea. I’ve never been to Northern Europe, and I’m very much looking forward to it. Following the cruise, Rae and I will travel from England to France, where we’ll be hanging out in Paris, the City of Lights.
Here are some photos from various places over the past several weeks, including watching the Lion King in San Francisco, meeting Raja (former Palm co-worker of mine) at the Cupertino Post Office, cooking yummy food for Randy and Rae, celebrating birthdays with Supriya and her fiancé Mitchell, gorging on Korean food with Phil, Randy, and Rae, the COBA Sensor Cleaning and Noise Reduction seminar, processing wedding photos, and helping out at the DVF Offices in Stanford.
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