Heading home

Day 13
Nice to have a leisurely day to get the blog up-to-date and generally relax after our busy, yet most enjoyable St Petersburg visit.  I spent all day relating our thoughts and activities over both days while still relatively fresh in my mind and finished by adding photos, when ..."Blogger is restarting". NO, NO this can't be happening,  but yes it did.  The whole day was lost and what you have just read was actually version #2, some days later!  I was not a happy chappy.  The only good news is that Vivian & Don came top at bridge.

The weather has turned a bit and the sea is choppy - enough for the decks to be closed, but nothing really for us seasoned cruisers .  We are however steaming along at 23 knts, possibly the fastest we've ever gone - it must be the lady driver!  Although it is formal night, they have become a little repetitive and we did not "do" either the Ball or the entertainment.  We were a little peeved to find the corridor on deck 2 by the Queens Room was closed for a private function, meaning that to get to the front if the ship we had to go back up a deck!  We went down to the Golden Lion after dinner to see if our excursion group was there, but found the 2 girls (sometimes) from our table there, so partook informally in the trivia and surprised ourselves with 7.

We are also bemused (although that is not the word we used) at the Cunard experience.  To explain.  We (& most others, but not all) booked this as a 14 day Southampton to Southampton cruise Q721.  Well, tonight was the big farewell dinner and special mention if all those disembarking in Kiel tomorrow.  To make matters worse, not that it worries us, from tomorrow on there are no tobacco or alcohol sales and all shipboard sales of anything else will be subject to 19% German tax.  Our dining room waiters gave us our souvenir menus and seemed to think that we too were leaving - quite strange.

Day 14 - Kiel
A much brighter day as we sailed in.  We are here during Kiel Week, which is the bjggest regatta in Germany apparently,  the most obvious thing to us was the proliferation of old boats and sailing ships in the harbour.  They were truely a magnificent sight.  We had a leisurely breakfast yet again as we were not in a hurry to go ashore.  When we did, we met once again with the German immigration - certainly no friendlier than the Russians. 

There were 6-700 passengers disembarking here, many who joined in Hamburg (just 90 km away) but also some from UK  who were cutting short the part around Denmark & the North Sea.   Of course this in turn meant 6-700 new passengers getting on.  Some just having a 3 day cruise to Southampton but I understand some are doing the Fjords with us.
We walked the "blue line" through Kiel, but we found that the town was scruffy and very much a port/ferry town.  We were generally  unimpressed.  However in the middle if town they had set up stalls from basically every country in the world where they sold nztional national  food and by the Town Hall there was a stage and entertainment once again from every country represented.  We found the NZ stall which was probably the least impressive,  selling Lamburgers (I ask you).

There was a big band from Copenhagen  playing in the middle of the main street, which just happened to be outside Starbucks.  To explain, all the previous cafes etc had been outdoors, sold smelly fried/fatty food & encouraged smoking, so at least Starbucks was clean (& had free Wifi).  So coffee and cake (coffee OK, but cakes gave been better) and updated my tablet.  I have only 12 minutes left on my shipboard account and as it doesn't flow over to the next cruise ì am not buying any more until Saturday.  The same also applies to our shipboard coffee card.

Back to Kiel.  We walked the length of town, through the park which has or was currently being, taken over with stalls, tents, cars etc. for the regatta.  Carried on down to the waterfront and admired yet more boats & sailing ships (and another 4 or 500 bars and stalls set up) before deciding go return to the ship.  The Kiel Week regatta apparently attracts millions of visitors and thankfully they hadn't all arrived while we were there.  Oh, we were encouraged by the extensive Police presence.

Once aboard we had a snack lunch in the Lido (sounds posher than the Horror Zone!) before returning to the stateroom to rewrite the blog and watch the ships go by.   Something else I have learned about Kiel is the canal that runs through the country and exits in the Elbe, a little (or a lot) way from Hamburg.  This is a shortcut to the North Sea and saves time & distance of having to sail up and around Denmark.