2022: Back to Europe…..(Part 2: Amsterdam to Copenhagen and the Baltic’s)

For fifty years, I have been totally confused between the Dutch and the Danish. What is the difference? Who has Dykes and can I stick my finger in one? Tulips, windmills, wooden shoes, little Mermaids ….completely confused. Also, who owns Greenland and what happened to Holland? …. I heard it was someone over there. Well before I got too old to figure this out …. or cared anymore; I thought I should check it out.

After getting off the ship in Amsterdam, Netherlands, we planned to spend a day exploring the city and figuring out what was special about it. Turns out Holland and the Netherlands are the same country. Also, until 2019, the Netherlands was referred to in many completions as Holland or the Dutch. Thank you Wikipedia …… that still is as clear as mud. We arrived on the last weekend of the annual Tulip Festival but since we were advised that most of the tulips were already dead, we decided to skip that and go hang out in the red-light district instead. But before we get into that, lets just talk about this City in general.

Amsterdam is a large city full of canals and loaded with history. It has quaint streets, flower markets and a big city vibe. It is not particularly clean and traffic is difficult. It has more bikes than I have ever seen anywhere on earth. Later we found out that because parking in the city was extremely expensive (7.5 Euro per hour!) everyone rides a bike. Now we found out that people have multiple bicycles that they leave in different areas of the City. They usually have something nice at home, but the ones they have in the city are mostly crap. So, there are bikes everywhere! Sometimes stacked 3 high…its nuts. Also, there are bike lanes on most major streets along with the street cars and plenty of cars and taxis. This made getting across any roadway extremely hectic. I felt sorry for the cab drivers …. it was total chaos.

It was early in the day, so we thought it would be a good time to go check out the Red-Light district with its coffee houses and sex booths. The area is centered around the “Old Church” which in earlier history provided support to the prostitutes and became the center of the sex trade in the City. Down each narrow street in the area there were doors with full length windows. This is where the Prostitute (woman, man or sometimes something in between) would display their wares. If you were interested you just opened the door, agreed on the price, and closed the drapes. Above these doorways were lines of red lights. The lights would be on if the individual was working inside. There were coffee houses throughout the area. Some actually sold coffee but the main product was marijuana and the even in the morning, you could smell the patrons smoking inside. For the men, there were open area urinals on the corners which left us wondering; “What do the woman do?” But we didn’t stay around too long. This was a big city and there was much to explore.

In Amsterdam, the canals are a major method of transportation around the city and taking a canal tour is one of the more popular tourist activities. The city has a series of semicircular canals going around the city extending from the center which is on a large harbor. As the city expanded , they built additional canals. We had used a free night from my Hilton credit card for our stay and were pleasantly surprised when the canal boat tour driver went past our hotel the “Waldorf Astoria” and commented that it was the best hotel in the City. The nightly price was around $1,000 per night, but free was more in my price range.

After the canal tour, we headed over to check into our hotel. The taxi cab driver commented that we were staying in the best hotel in the city and that Madonna and various Heads of state would stay there. I insured him that we weren’t famous or important, just tourists with a free night. The hotel was actually four separate large residences from the 16^th and 17^th Centuries that had been combined into one. On arrival, three doormen greeted us and escorted us inside to reception. They weren’t ready for us yet and offered us a seat outside the reception area, water and a hot towel. After were were escorted into the reception area, more like a living room instead of a hotel lobby, we finished up the paperwork. Reva picked the scent she would like for bathroom in the evening and we were escorted to the room. Since the hotel was four connected, but separate 400 year old structures, the floors didn’t quite match, so we needed to go down a hall to an elevator to go up and over and back down an elevator to our room. The hotel had 93 rooms all of which were tucked into different small groups. There were only 4 rooms in our area. We had been upgraded into a beautiful spacious room with a beautiful view of wall….we were in the basement:) Great room…but not where Madonna stays when she is in town. The hotel had the largest private garden in Amsterdam and Reva was glad to see that their tulips were still blooming. Later that day we met our friends and walked along the canals to the Heineken Brewery which is another major tourist attraction and good fun….with a bar in the basement!

Our time in Amsterdam cleared up a lot of my confusion about the Dutch and the Danish. Amsterdam is Dutch! Netherlands and Holland are the same place. They drink Heinlein, ride bikes, plant tulips, play with windmills, have a wooden shoe fetish and there are Dykes everywhere. Got it! No mermaids here though. Now I always assumed that Denmark and Holland or the Netherlands were next to each other (I never did pay much attention to European maps…or politics) …. wrong again! They have this little country called Germany separating them. So the next day, after our night in Amsterdam, it was time to head west and north to Copenhagen, Denmark.

We had a late morning flight, so we had plenty of time to enjoy the hotel in the morning. Breakfast was included which included a tower of fruits, breads, meats in their 4 star restaurant. Quite over the top for us, but good. The flight was less than two hours and our Copenhagen Hotel was located in the middle of the city next to the pedestrian zone. We found the Metro and it was an easy, short trip to the City Center. Our hotel was only a few yards form the Metro so it was easy to find it.

This Hotel, the Scandic Palace had been built in 1910 and was across a square from City Hall and the Tivoli Gardens amusement park. This amusement park had been Walt Disney’s inspiration when he got the idea for creating Disneyland. We checked into our room and headed out to explore Copenhagen. The main pedestrian street was just around the corner from the hotel. We were provided a map and advised that the following day, there was a marathon in the City and many roads were going to be closed. Our plans were to take the metro to the cruise terminal in the morning for the next part of our adventure, so no issue. The receptionist advised us that it was too far to walk to see the “Little Mermaid” statue in the harbor and recommended that we grab a taxi or bus. We thanked her and took off to explore Copenhagen … and maybe grab a danish! (Pastry type of course.)

Copenhagen was dramatically different than Amsterdam. The Dutch and Danish homelands are definitely unique! First, Denmark doesn’t use the Euro. Their official currency is the Danish Krone but they have decided to go cashless, so many of the stores no longer accept money…only credit or debit cards. The second thing I noticed was mow much more expensive things were here than elsewhere in Europe ….or the world for that matter. For example, a can of soda in the grocery store was $3.25….that was per can! Food, in general, was double what it was elsewhere in Europe or the USA. The next thing we noticed was that the Danish love to go out and shop. The streets were packed! It was a Saturday and everyone was outside. Covid clearly was no concern here. Even though this was a big city, it didn’t feel like that. Also, unlike Amsterdam, it was much cleaner and there were no red light areas, coffee houses or outside urinals. This is also a city full of bicycles, but it wasn’t crazy like Amsterdam….you could actually walk around and not worry about getting run over by anything.

We worked our way through the pedestrian area and realized we were already half-way to the Citadel where the Little Mermaid stature was located. We walked down the street where Hans Christian Andersen had lived and on through the Palace Grounds to the Citadel. We had heard that the Little Mermaid statue wasn’t very big or that impressive, but it is the biggest tourist attraction in Denmark. And Denmark is big……it is proud to be the 12^th largest country in the world…..since Greenland ss officially part of the Kingdom.

The Citadel was an operating military base, but you could walk through the middle or it and it is also the largest park inside Copenhagen. On one end of the Citadel you had a guards dressed like Palace Guards, all feathers, fur and fluff. While on the other end you had guards in typical NATO camouflage.

Along the star-like earthen walls of the of the Citadel, locals; jogged, walked their dogs, had picnics or just strolled. On the other side of the Citadel, there she was sitting in the harbor, with three cruise ships parked in the distance behind her; the Little Mermaid. Tour buss were lined up to look at the six foot or so tall statue of the mermaid perched on a rock a few feet out into the water. Hard to believe, that millions of people flock to see this. But this is a place where fairy tails are written. After all it is a Kingdom with princes and princesses. I could easily see where old Walt might have even thought of this place as a “Magic Kingdom”.

We took our time walking back to the hotel looking for where to have dinner. I thought to myself, “I even know where Disney got an idea for his restaurant prices in Disney World”. The next morning, I took a nice run back down to the Citadel and harbor. Unlike Amsterdam, I could see myself returning here.

I felt good! It had taken me 50 years but I got the Dutch and Danish thing figured out. I had a danish for breakfast, that I got from a Danish waitress and I was ready for the next adventure. We left the hotel and took the metro to the end of the line; found the shuttle bus to the Cruise port. There we we boarded the Voyager of the Seas for a seven day Baltic Sea Cruise. It was supposed to be a Nordic Capitals cruise but because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our visit to Saint Petersburg was canceled and replaced with an overnight in Stockholm. We had done our Covid tests the day before at the hotel, so we were approved to get on the cruise ship. No one had asked us about Covid vaccinations or tests until we got to the ship. Even then, they only glanced at the documentation.

The Baltic Sea is fairly warm, so the cities along its coast are reasonably mild. This is important since the Baltic states are very far north…think Alaska. Also, since it was now late May, we were seeing 17-18 hours of light. Sunrise was at 4 in the morning, which made it important to keep the window shades pulled tightly. Temperatures in this area are cool, 60s and 70s which is great for walking and exploring.

We had just completed our transatlantic crossing on the Jewel of the Seas which was a significantly smaller ship than the Voyager of the Seas. The Voyager had also been recently “amped up” with some new amenities and restaurants. It is a nice ship, but maybe not the best one to have this far north. Each RCL ships has an all adults pool area referred to as the Solarium. However on the Voyager, this area is not enclosed like it is on the Jewel which meant that in the evenings when the temperature was dropping into the high 40’s the pool areas were very cold.

Our first stop on this trip was Stockholm Sweden for an overnight, which meant that we would have two full days to explore the City and area. Stockholm is a series of islands and sailing into the Archipelago (network of Islands) was incredibly beautiful. Of course, I was most interested in finding the Swedish Bikini team, while Reva was much more excited about seeing the Abba museum. One of us found what they were looking for…… not me.

We opted to us the hop-on, hop-off bus for transportation since we were docked well away from the main area of the City. In retrospective, I think the public transportation, busses and ferries would have been a better choice since the hop-on, hop-off bus stopped running shortly after 5:00. However, it did take us to all of the main sights in Stockholm.

Stockholm is a very clean and beautiful city, however it is not very old, so although they trace their history back to the Vikings, there were not a lot of exceptionally old buildings. The main tourist attraction here is the Vasa Museum, which houses a ship which sank in 1628 and sat under the water for almost 400 years. It was surprising more interesting than I expected and worth a visit, but not very exciting. The city had several pedestrian areas and was exceptionally pleasant. Their currency was the Swedish krona and the prices here were high, but not ridiculous. That is except for the Abba Museum which used a demand pricing structure. So what was expected to be $10 tickets were $35 when a cruise ship was in town. “MOMA MIA” that was a rip-off…..but Reva enjoyed it.

We were traveling with our friend, John (Check out my Casino blog), who has a passion for aircraft and wanted to see the 747 Hotel at the airport. We opted to take the metro to a stop near the airport and Uber the remainder of the way to the hotel. Unfortunately, the hotel was closed, but we were still able to roam around on the grounds and wing of the plane. We opted for a private bus to return to the city. By the second day in Stockholm, we felt that we knew the city and how to get around. Very easy, very comfortable, very safe, very clean….and kind of boring.

Our next stop was Tallinn, Estonia. I had been told a decade ago that I needed to see Estonia and that it was possibly the most beautiful place in all of Europe. The port was about a mile from the center of the old city and it was an easy walk. The City itself was perched on a cliff with parks surrounding most of it. Unlike Stockholm, this was a mid-evil city with old city walls that you could wander. Estonia had been part of the Soviet Union and there was no hiding their opinion of Russia. As we were walking the cobblestone streets between the various squares we passed the Russian Embassy. Signs were posted along the fence, many in English denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Here residents remembered living under Russian rule and realize that they are on Russia’s doorstep. In touring the City, we came across the KGB Prison Museum, which was pretty much a tourist trap, not much more than the basement of an old building. The museum did have stories about how the KGB treated their guests and you quickly understood the despise for one of Estonia’s closest neighbors.

We may have walked 10 miles along and throughout this City. It would be worth another visit, but I can’t say it was the most beautiful place in all of Europe (I have been to Croatia) but it was exceedingly nice.

Our last stop on this cruise was Helsinki, Finland before returning to Copenhagen. Again, the archipelago was beautiful and reminded me of Alaska. Here we docked quite a distance from the City and were compelled to take a bus into the town. Again, this was a clean and pleasant City to be in. There was also a festival going on in town and sponsors were giving handing out free ice cream bars. Hard to not like a City with free ice cream. Here the number one attraction was to take a ferry out to an old military installation on an Island a few miles out in the harbor. We arrived early and unfortunately is was a fairly cold day. We purchased ferry tickets and traveled to Suomenlinna, which was on a beautiful rocky Island. Both a park and Museum, Suomenlinna was nice to explore even though we wished we had brought warmer clothes. Afterwards we headed back to the City to explore Helsinki’s churches and streets. Again this City was clean, safe, modern and unfortunately, boring.

We had one last sea day to get back to Copenhagen and our next Adventure. I kept replaying that old Clash song in my head over and over “London Calling to the faraway towns”. Off we go!