Chillin' in the Summertime

" This is a city of half-crazy people... there are few places where you'll find so many gloomy, harsh and strange influences on the soul of a man as in St Petersburg ." – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment A U.S. citizen is required to obtain a visa in order to enter Russia. However, visitors on a cruise ship may opt to be part of what is in essence a group visa: as long as you stay with your licensed guide on an organized tour, you can be in the country without an individual visa. Since I was signed up for several excursions that qualified for this group visa, I opted to skip the individual visa. If I had it to do over, I’d get the individual visa for this particular cruise. Why? Our ship, being much smaller than the usual cruise ship, was able to dock on the Neva River, right in the center of town and walking distance to many sites. It was rather frustrating not to be able to just walk off the ship and visit some of the places nearby that my t

“ You should tell the truth, but all truths don’t need to be told .” – Queen Katarina of Sweden This segment of our cruise has taken us through some of the major cities along the Baltic Sea. St. Petersburg was certainly the highlight, but the other cities were no slouches either. St. Petersburg will be treated in its own entry, but as for the others: STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN Ice Bar, Stockholm Having spent some time here several years ago on a land trip, my expectation for this visit included one thing I found still to be true: Stockholm is one of the loveliest cities in the world. Spread across 14 islands where Lake Malaran flows into the Baltic Sea, Stockholm was settled by the Vikings around the year 1000 on sites that had been settled since 6000 BC. Rune stone, circa 1000, on a street corner in Stockholm's Gamla Stan My time in Stockholm was divided into two pieces: a walking tour around Gamla Stan (the old city), which is a warren of alleys