Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Friday, August 14, 2026

This morning we docked at a small town called Nynäshamn. It is  a 65-minute train ride away from Stockholm. The Nynäshamn train station is about 30 or 35 minutes on foot from the cruise dock. There is a train every 30 minutes.

I know what you’re thinking. It sounds crazy to spend a minimum of 95 minutes go to Stockholm from Nynäshamn. Well, we were led to believe the train station would be only a 5- or 10- minute walk from the ship. The long walk was unexpected. We did expect that the fare would only be 43 SEK (or 26 SEK for seniors if you could figure out how to get it on the ticket machine). That’s only $4.50 US ($2.75 for seniors). 

There are other ways to get to Stockholm, but none of them are cheaper and they don’t necessarily save you time.

• You could take a taxi. Obviously quite expensive.
• You could take some the shuttle bus Princess offered. Expensive and inconvenient, although it does avoid the walk to the station.
• You could take one of the tours offered by Princess. Quite expensive, and you don’t get to wander around Stockholm on your own. You go where your tour goes.
• Not going to Stockholm is also an option. It doesn’t cost you anything extra and it doesn’t involve a long ride, but heck, you are SO CLOSE to Stockholm, why would you miss it?

The walk to the train station was brutal. It was hot, and it was all uphill, and we expected the walk to be short, and it wasn’t. When we got there, we had to buy our tickets from a machine - there was no ticket office. There was a train there that was going to leave in two minutes. I put my credit card in and no ticket came out. Panic! Finally, someone told me there is no ticket, per se. It is attached electronically to your credit card.

Church in Nynäshamn

I thought the train to Stockholm would be interesting, but it wasn’t. It was just a commuter line. At least we had seats.

After arriving in Stockholm, we strolled around Gamla Stan (the Old Town) and parts of downtown.

Klara Church - a church has been at this site since the 1280’s

In Gamla Stan, we ate lunch at a casual lunch place called Slingerbulten, where one of the standard menu items is Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes, lingonberries, and pickled cucumbers. They included a salad bar with the lunch. It was better than IKEA - maybe not a very high bar, but it was a treat for us. A lot of people who seemed like they might be office workers, showed up for lunch. I couldn’t help noticing how tall many of the young Swedes were.

Stockholm City Hall -  built in the National Romantic style - the Nobel Prize award ceremony takes place here (but the award for the Nobel Peace Prize happens in Oslo)

The three crowns atop City Hall are the national emblem of Sweden

Central Railroad Station

Street in Gamla Stan

The House of Nobility

Riddarholm Church, where Swedish kings are buried, established 1270

Lunch

After lunch we took a ferry to Djurgården, a peninsula across the harbor from downtown Stockholm. It was the fastest way to get there, although there is a bus/tram route also. All of the transportation in Stockholm is part of the same system and costs the same 43 SEK regardless of distance. You can tap a credit card at the the turnstile and it will give you access. Easy peasy.

Our destination was the ABBA museum. I had been hearing it was good since our first visit to Copenhagen 15 years ago. Over the years we have seen a few ABBA tribute shows on various cruises and they have been quite enjoyable. I like ABBA, but I wouldn’t consider myself a big fan.

I am sorry to report that the museum was rather disappointing. (I’m looking at you, Claude and Rick.) Despite the timed-entry ticket system, the small museum was overcrowded. The exhibits looked a little shopworn and low-tech. Only one room had any music playing - not counting a room where visitors could sing along with animated outlines of the band members - a video karaoke, if you will. ABBA’s music has so much energy. It’s a shame that energy did not extend to this museum.

How do I look with blonde hair?

Entrance to the ABBA Museum

We thought this young version of Björn (second from left)
looked a lot like one of our neighbors back home

Wax figures

I am sitting in Meryl Streep’s chair from “Mamma Mia!”
(Okay, probably not her actual chair.)

After all that walking, we were ready for a long train ride, so we took a tram back to the station and got on a train with minimal waiting.

Royal Dramatic Theater

Nordic Museum

Knowing what I know now, if I could do it over, I would probably just take one of the tours from the ship (but obviously not the one that goes to the ABBA museum). They would pick us up at the dock and during the long ride into Stockholm we would have a guide talking to us about the history and culture of Sweden, and then we would see some interesting things in Stockholm and we would be returned to the dock. If I had to make a recommendation to someone else, I would most definitely recommend a tour that includes the fascinating Vasa Museum, which Ken and I visited (and totally loved) several years ago.

Today’s fabric is “Svenskt Tenn Est. 1924” by Josef Frank for Svenskt Tenn, a leading Swedish design company. Josef Frank (b. 1885) grew up in a Jewish family in Vienna. He was a prominent architect in Austria, and also designed furniture and textiles. In 1933, he was forced to flee Austria due to growing antisemitism, and he relocated to Stockholm. When the Nazis invaded Norway and Denmark in 1941, Frank and his wife left Sweden for New york, where they stayed until the end of the war. He then returned to Sweden where he continued to work as an important designer and proponent of functionalism. He died in Stockholm in 1967.

Shabbat Shalom!

The Daughter of the Baltic

Thursday, August 13, 2026

Helsinki, the capital of Finland is a clean, modern city of nearly 700,000 and a metropolitan area over 1 million. The population of all of Finland is about 5.7 million. Helsinki has one of the highest urban standards of living in the world and always get top scores on ratings of “happiness.” 

Helsinki was officially founded by King Gustav I of Sweden in 1550, although there had been settlements in the area for many centuries before that time. The buildings were mostly wooden and the town suffered from recurring fires, war, and disease over the centuries. It wasn’t until 1809 that the town began to grow into a significant port city under Russian dominion The city was made the capital of Finland in 1812.

Given this history, it is no surprise that Helsinki does not have an Old Town, though it has a typical and charming European townscape full of neoclassical buildings as well as structures influenced by Art Nouveau and romantic nationalism.

We took a shuttle from the port to a street corner near the Esplanade where we board a return shuttle later in the day. 

Havis Amanda, 1906

The President’s Palace

Market Square - the white tents sell crafts and non-food items

Food is sold in the orange tents

Senate Square

Helsinki Cathedral (Lutheran)

Senate

University of Helsinki on the left, National Library on the right

Cinnamon pastries and lattes at Cafe Engel

After our coffee break (a very Scandinavian thing to do), we walked along the shopping street that runs along one side of the Esplanade. We couldn’t resist ducking into Iittala (glassware), Arabia (ceramics), and Marimekko (fabric and housewares). We did a little shopping and a little geocaching and then realized we were out of gas, so we decided to go back to the ship while we could still walk. You may have noticed that we have had port visits for several days in a row.

A ferry sailing along while the sun sets

I liked the shopping  because I love the Scandinavian minimalist approach to housewares and furnishings and they don’t sell all kinds of crap from China, but I liked Helsinki in general a bit less than I liked the other cities we have visited so far. Helsinki seemed to have less personality or character. The tourist attractions were quite spread out, and they didn’t seem as interesting as I expected. The things we did see were not evocative. I was disappointed that Market Square was simply a bunch of tents. Most of the buildings were shaped like big boxes (though they were well-maintained and not unadorned).

A lot of the architecture here is based on the principles of functionalism, which means design follows function - but aesthetics, not so much. Maybe that is what I was reacting to. On the other hand, people here are among the happiest in the world, so . . . ?

What would someone from Scandinavia think about Anchorage? Most of our buildings were not designed with any design philosophy in mind, merely expedience, and our townscape was planned to accommodate cars over people. Are people in Anchorage happy? I would be surprised if Anchorage made a list of the world’s happiest cities.

I believe there must be a lot of intangible things you can’t see when you walk around that affect happiness. Perhaps buildings don’t affect happiness much at all. How much of it is cultural? I wish I’d had a chance to meet some Finnish people.

Today’s fabric is “Kukasta Kukkaan” (“from flower to flower”) by Marimekko, a major Finnish design company.

Towers and Spires

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Today we are visiting the third Baltic state, Estonia. Estonia, with a population around 1,363,000, is a developed country with an advanced economy and a highly educated population. (Did you know that Skype was developed in Estonia?) Estonia’s capital is Tallinn (rhymes with Stalin), with a population of roughly 450,000. The written history of Tallin can be traced back to 1219.

Estonian is the official language, but English seems to be widely spoken. Estonian is part of the Finno-Ugric language family, and is therefore not an Indo-European language, like the Romance, Germanic, Slavic, and Baltic languages.

We visited Tallinn several years ago and took a tour, so we decided not to take one this time. We followed Rick Steves’ plan for a walk through the Old Town.

Our walk started at Fat Margaret.

Can you find the Fat Margaret?

Fat Margaret is the name of the tower that guarded the entry gate to the Old Town during the Hanseatic era, and perhaps earlier. There is a small cafe on the roof, and you can enjoy the view. There is also supposed to be a geocache up there, but I was unable to find it. 

View from the top of Fat Margaret. The Gothic tower on the right is the imposing
spire of St. Olav’s Church.

View from the top of Fat Margaret. Sapphire Princess is on the right.

Inside the tower you will find a very well-curated museum. We weren’t planning to visit the museum, but we were drawn in by the nautical theme of the exhibits. The first level had a display reminiscent of the fabulous Vasa Museum in Stockholm. An ancient cargo vessel had been discovered and carefully excavated. Many artifacts were found with the boat and were remarkably well preserved.

The boat was a type called a “cog” and was used by traders to transport goods in the Baltic region.The boat was shipwrecked in a location that was under water at the time, but is now on dry land. The wreck was discovered in Tallinn in 2015 during construction work, and was named “Peeter’s Cog.”

It was carefully excavated and preserved, and now is on display in the museum. Scientists used dendrology to date the wreck. Dendrology is the study of tree rings in the wood. They found that the trees used to make the wood for Peeter’s Cog were cut down afetr 1296 in an area that is now part of Poland.

Models of the wreck and an intact cog

Other levels of the museum had displays of sailing ships from later periods, early steamboats, and motorized vessels. The models were very detailed and fun to look at.

Below is a model of the passenger ferry MS Estonia, operated by EstLine. In September 1994, this ship sank in the Baltic Sea, en route from Talinn to Stockholm, during a severe storm. Of the 989 people on board, 852 died - making it the deadliest peacetime shipwreck in European waters. As a result of this disaster, new international safety regulations were adopted.

MS Estonia

After an hour or more at Fat Margaret, we strolled along Pikk Street, a medieval market street. We passed old warehouses with cranes on the gables, and guild halls such as the Brotherhood of the Blackheads and the Great Guild Hall.

Typical warehouses with cranes on the gables

In medieval times, German nobles dominated the Estonian economy. The leading German nobles were part of the Great Guild. Single German men belonged to the Brotherhood of the Black Heads.

The Great Guild Hall

The Brotherhood of the Black Heads

Town Hall Square (Raekoja Plats) and Tallinn Town Hall (Raekoda).
St. Nicholas Church on the right, in background

Riga doesn’t have a monopoly on Art Nouveau

We found a shop that sold beautiful buttons made from various local woods

Just look at these colorful fabrics from different regions of Estonia!

We had lunch at a place on the Town Hall Square called Kaerajaan, which describes its food as “modern Estonian cuisine.” The food was outstanding. I had a goat cheese salad that was perfect in every respect, from the dressing to the cheese. Ken loved his duck breast salad. I was also fascinated by the clever little homemade napkin rings they had. They were made from a traditional Estonian folk fabric. I am going to try to make some when I get home.

Duck Breast Salad

Goat Cheese Salad

We didn’t have time to visit the upper part of Old Town or any new parts of Tallinn, but we really enjoyed this clean, charming, pleasantly quirky Old Town. It was fun and relaxing to explore the lovely shops and interesting nooks and crannies without being on someone else’s schedule. 

On the way back to the ship we encountered St. Catherine’s Passage with five curious medieval stone arches.

I really liked Tallinn. The shops were inviting and sold interesting locally-produced crafts at reasonable prices. The architecture is varied and lends so much character to the Old Town. The Old Town is bustling, but not overcrowded. There is so much history in the old walls, the defensive towers, and the soaring church spires.

The other noteworthy experience today was the European Eclipse. We were not in the zone of totality, but we were in the zone of about 90%. The eclipse here occurred just before sunset, which means the sun was very low on the horizon, which means you don’t get a sore neck from watching the eclipse. 

In case you are wondering, yes, we did have some of those cheesy cardboard eclipse glasses, and they did meet the proper safety standards of some institute. I ordered them from Amazon earlier this summer. We received several warnings from Princess about the danger of looking at the eclipse without eclipse glasses and a multi-page letter came to our room about eclipse safety. Te letter also explained how to photograph the eclipse. You needed special lenses for your camera, which we did not have, so we didn’t even try. Princess also arranged to live-stream a special broadcast from NASA on the ship’s TV system, so we watched part of the eclipse in our stateroom. The NASA program was very well done. As sunset approached, we went up to one of the top decks to see the eclipse at its maximum point, along with the sunset. It was very cool, but it was over so quickly. 

The Perseid meteor shower was going to be visible in the middle of the night, so we did not try to see that also.It was a long day.

Today’s fabric is packing fabric. In the Middle Ages, goods were wrapped in coarse, durable material to protect them during shipment. Typical fibers used in this region would have been flax, wool, or goat hair. 

I encountered an exhibit in the Fat Margaret museum which included a length of packing material found with the wreck of Peeter’s Cog, described above. I believe the primary fiber in this piece is goat hair. The fabric is estimated to be around 700 years old. Amazing!