Passenger in Transit

Our cabin smells like cantaloupe. Chris succumbed to a similar but, according to the CDC guidelines, less severe version of my stomach bug. He was not officially quarantined, but spent all of our day at sea cloistered in the cabin watching "Twilight's" melodramatic "Breaking Dawn". While I only had a taste for jello, Chris only wanted cantaloupe. Both of us thought crackers were OK, too. Yesterday was his first day out in the big world, in the vibrant city of Copenhagen. It was actually a change-over day; most of the passengers disembarked in the morning and new passengers came on board for the next cruise, the crossing. We had to carry "Passenger in Transit" cards when we went ashore and got to feel like Emerald Princess natives when we came back on board. The emergency drill passed barely noticed, we only had to put down our books to plug our ears at the sounding of the general alarm. For hours afterwards I saw people wandering around with life jackets. May as well explore and have a drink, now that I'm up.

Copenhagen is a cool city. At least I think it is. We'll have to come back to both Stockholm and Copenhagen some day. We couldn't really explore either city, as throughout both one of us walked cradling a still tender tummy. Even still, we appreciated the beautiful architecture of Copenhagen, the abundance of bicycles and the miles of pedestrian zones. Lots of the main streets and squares have been torn up and blocked off while the city frantically renovates and upgrades the metro system, the roads. We've noticed lots of construction on this cruise, everything has to be finished before the winter weather sets in and work freezes to a halt.

Although we didn't see much of Stockholm on foot, it reminds me of a cleaner, brighter version of St. Petersburg. The cities' bones are quite similar. Both are built across dozens of islands, with countless bridges crisscrossing the rivers and canals. In both cities the buildings reflected in the water look like cakes; in St. Petersburg the buildings are wide and sprawling, great big sheet cakes, while in Stockholm they're more square and contained, dainty little petit fours. And, both cities are large and busy. For us, the best, most captivating part of our visit to Stockholm was the archipelago. It took a few hours to navigate away from the city and through the thousands of islands. Apparently the Baltic does not have much of a tide, so houses are built right up against the water. Large ships must maintain a slow speed to not throw out a destructive wake. Chris and I sat up in the dining room and looked out as rocky, pine-covered islands of every size drifted past. We saw little wooden summer houses perched on the edge of even the smallest islands and listened to the lecturer describe Sweden's enlightened relationship with the outdoors.