Embarkation Day - June 17, 2017

Saturday was another bright and sunny day.  The Swedes were enjoying the sunshine and warmth.  Half the population appeared to be out strolling along the harbors.  I’ve never seen so many blondes in one place.  We sat on our balcony at the hotel after breakfast and watched people boarding boats which we figured out must be taking them to outlying islands for weekend getaways.

 

Lining up for the weekend boat

Amidst the buses and tourists in front of the Royal Palace all of a sudden a little parade took place.  The bellman at the hotel told us it happens every day. A company of what appeared to be Swedish navy marched followed by a company of the palace guards with their spiked hats.

A little hard to see but if you look closely you'll see the guys in the white pants, blue jackets and spiked helmets

Around 12:30 we checked out and secured a cab to take us to the ship.  Boarding is easy on these  small ships.  There are no lines and after securing our boarding cards we went to the Colonnade restaurant for lunch.  We were able to sit outside and enjoy a pleasant meal with some nice wine.  Our cabin was ready at two.  This cruise we decided to try a Penthouse Spa suite, one of only four at the stern of the ship.  It has a great veranda and is a nice size.  I’ll  take some pictures later and post them.  The only negative we can see is that we have to go up a spiral staircase to get there.  We don’t know how we’ll like that in seas of any kind.

The sail out from Stockholm is quite scenic.  It took nearly four hours to clear the archipelago through which we had to pass.   As we sailed along we passed lots of what looked like vacation cabins and a few little communities.  There were some car ferries and a couple of forts at narrow points. Finally around 9 PM the pilot left us and we were in the Baltic.  It has been totally calm.  The sun doesn’t set until close to 11 PM and even after that it’s never really totally dark. 

One of the hundreds of little islands we passed

Car ferry to somewhere

One of several small forts we passed

We had a nice dinner, outside again, and then made it an early night.  Clocks go forward an hour tonight so we’ll be 7 hours ahead of EDT.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Tallinn, Estonia.