As soon as we had installed ourselves in our cabin at the ship, we went to get a walk on deck, since it was such a lovely weather. Sun deck is never a wrong place to be when the sun is shining! Though before that, something fun happened…

When walking along the cabin corridor I noticed a man standing in the end of it, leaning on the wall, smiling and looking at us while we were walking towards him. I though it might be some kind of cabin crew or something since we were so close to the more luxury cabins, but coming closer to him I started to find his behavior more strange. He was looking at us in a way a crew member would probably not do and his smile got bigger and bigger….

When coming very close to him, about a meter or so we finally took a real look into his face and suddenly it came very clear: we know this man! Yes! It was a friend from our summer island, which we meet every summer when he and his family rent the fishing cottage from our farmer! Such a coincidence to meet at this cruise ship, right here, right now!

Even more of a coincidence were that he had been on a bus tour at the exact destinations as we had! How close we had been every day without knowing it…. Sometimes it’s so strange! Of course, as the well equipment guy he always is, he had something for us in the bag: yes, he has a tradition of making toasts with us, with whiskey! Skål x 3 for hubby, one for his belated birthday you see…. ha ha…

After that we went to the sundeck to get some… Champagne of course! Cheers my dears! Very suitable were that the theme at this cruise were: Fiesta! So we had Spanish music on the ship and very skilled Spanish dancers in the evening show – oh, how we enjoyed that!

We had a very pleasant cruise, the Baltic Sea were calm, the sunset were as nice as it can be… This time we arrived safe at home without any sea sickness! Hooray!

Though there was something that was not as it should: now hubby had got a terrible sore throat… oh, no, poor man! Was there no end on the bad things connected with our Baltic Cruise trip…? It really has been a mix of either very bad or very nice things on this whole cruise!

…and I can mention that me too got his cold when we arrived home, so we were sick for a whole week after coming home, hubby worse than me and he is still coughing.

I think he might need some more whiskey or what do you say? Ha ha…

You can see all Lifecruiser photos of Silja Symphony 2012 at Flickr.

Stay tuned to hear what we did learn from the cruise experience Stockholm – Tallinn – St Petersburg – Helsinki and what we really thought about it plus all the pros and cons…

©Lifecruiser Love Cruises

Related Baltic cruise posts by Lifecruiser:

How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 1
How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 2
Our night in Katajanokka Jail
Baltic Cruise Stop Tallinn – UNESCO Cultural Heritage
Saint Petersburg Souvenirs
The Idiots Sightseeing of Saint Petersburg
Photo: Illusionary Window
Baltic Cruise Stop Helsinki
 

We checked out from the Katajanokka jail hotel, took a cab to the railway station once again, put our bags in a locker temporarily and went to book a ticket at the cruise ship Silja Symphony at the internet terminals in the station. Choosing to read the booking site in Swedish, didn’t get us the right pages to book FROM Helsinki to Stockholm, it assumed that we were in Stockholm all the time, so we gave up and took the easy way: we went to the Helsinki expert stand in the station to get help.

There we could establish that it was more expensive to take the cruise home the same day, so we did book the next day instead, giving me time to recover from my… ehrm… toilet experienced night… So anyway, we needed to get another hotel for this night to finally (hopefully!) get some proper sleep. We did choose Scandic hotel for €132 per night and just uphills from the railway station.

We did check in and went to the elevators – and my, how suitable this hotel was for us! Just have a look at those elevator doors…

The room was satisfying, with free wifi to get in touch with peeps and the beds divine after the cruise ship beds and not having any sleep… but we went out anyway to see something more than just the hotel room, even though we had been sightseeing the day before and we have seen Helsinki before that too.

At the back of the hotel is a square, which has some pubs, among them Henry’s pub and we went for some beers even though it was too cold to sit outside. This day it was really freezing ice cold winds!!!

We also went for something to eat in the mall nearby there, some wraps we did eat watching people walking, no, stressing by. Have you ever watched people a Friday evening nearby any railway station or bus station? Oh my! People really are stressed… I got tired seeing them and we decided to head back to the hotel room and just have a relaxed evening there.

After being at our hotel room for a while, of course, the hungry monster in me did wake up. This time I might have had a proper excuse though, I mean: after emptying myself totally the night before, my body really screamed after nourishment to fill up the gaps with! So I asked if hubby maybe could go down to see if there was a hot dog stand or something nearby, I was craving for mashed potatoes or something potato-related to fill up with, but said that it could go with sandwiches from the hotel lobby.

I should have known, that as sweet as he always is, of course he did run around all the neighborhood for some mashed potatoes for me… without finding any and returning to the hotel – and of course: at the side of the hotel were he hadn’t been, there was the hot dog stand! Ha ha! How typical isn’t that?

After that we were both very full and sleepy so it was time to finally get a full night sleep – and not on top of any disco loudspeakers with a crappy bed with dirty bed covers, no, this time in proper, clean and very nice beds – feeling like the sleeping Beauty…. ahhh… life was good!

Next day we did relax as long as possible at the hotel room and then our bags went back to the lockers at the railway once again and then we went to the nearest Tapas bar to enjoy the sun with some beers, garlic olives, cornichons and salami to wait until we could take the tram to the cruise ship. Yum!

You can see all Lifecruiser photos of Helsinki at Flickr.

Stay tuned to hear how our last cruise leg was, if we arrived safe at home without any sea sickness – and later on what we did learn from all this and what we really thought about our experience plus all the pros and cons…

©Lifecruiser Love Cruises

Related Baltic cruise posts by Lifecruiser:

How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 1
How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 2
Our night in Katajanokka Jail
Baltic Cruise Stop Tallinn – UNESCO Cultural Heritage
Saint Petersburg Souvenirs
The Idiots Sightseeing of Saint Petersburg
Photo: Illusionary Window
 

After the bad cruise experience at the budget cruise we escaped from, I was determent to make the ending of this trip great, so I made a reservation at a much better accommodation: The Katajanokka Hotel, a Best Western Premier Hotel – which actually is an old prison turned into a hotel!

No, it was not worse than that, we didn’t had to be locked in with only bread and water in a cold jail cell… ha ha… Though I must admit that at that time we really felt like disobedient teenagers on the run!

I was aiming for a room with Jacuzzi from the beginning, but kinda adapted to the country tradition of Finland: the junior suite with an own sauna in the room! How cool (or hot I mean) isn’t that???

The sauna of course demanded a use of the minibar in the room too, despite the fact that those can become quite expensive. One can’t skip the most important part of a Finnish sauna, right? After all, it was hubby’s birthday.

We had a really relaxing sauna before making us all handsome and dressed up (with our nice clothes we had been carrying around all trip to be used this special evening) for the dinner at the hotel restaurant: The Jailbird. Very suiting and interesting name, don’t you think?

So how was the jail food? Well, it didn’t come as a complete surprise for us that it was really excellent! That chef knows what he/she is doing and the ingredients used were very fresh too!

We started with a whiskey drink called Godfather (Scotch whisky and amaretto almond liqueur) for hubby and a modest glass of sparkling Cuarenta Cava for myself.

Hubby did consider Snails with Garlic and Angelica as a starter, but he wanted them to be in the shells and they were not, so he went for the Lobster Soup Flavored with Sherry instead. I did choose the Grilled Goat Cheese and Lettuce, because I just love goat cheese.

    

To go with the dinner we did drink a dry Austrian white wine of Rabl Gruner Veltliner, which went very well to our choice of courses.

For the main course hubby did choose the Grilled Lamb with Smoked Garlic Puree and Garlic Potatoes, since he love lamb and I went for the Glow Fried Salmon with Grilled Asparagus and Quinoa Salad, since I love salmon. Both were excellent.

    

Not to mentioning the staff, our own prison guard. I must admit that he must have been the best prison guard ever, giving us such a great service! Ha! He had humor too and you know how we love people with humor.

As a dessert I did choose a Champagne sorbet with strawberries – what else for a Champagne lover like me? Hubby were celebrated by our prison guard with a birthday cake in the shape of e Creme Brulee with a lightened candle in the middle! Surprise!

    

I’m very happy over the fact that we didn’t have to eat the same as the former prisoners: mostly soup and occasionally salted meat, for breakfast gruel or porridge. Once a week boiled potatoes and salted Baltic herrings…

- And no, we did not hear anything from any prison ghosts, no wandering about or making any noises, not even any knocking on the walls – to my disappointment… ha ha… I think that would have add up to the experience as well, don’t you?

Helsinki County prison years 1837 – 2002

Helsinki County Prison, called Nokka or Skatta was a pre-trial detention facility. Criminals were sent there from all around the Province of Southern Finland to wait for their trial, so more than 40 % of all prisoners in Finland was passed through this place. The prison also housed default prisoners, people who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay their fines. the prison had 164 cells with 128 places for male and 7 places for female prisoners. In reality there could be more than 200 prisoners in the quarters at the same time. The cells were 7 m2 in size without toilet or shower.

Source: The Hotel Site of bwkatajanokka.fi

Ouch, that fact that there were no toilets would have been really devastating in my case, considering my "lock-up in the toilet experience" you could read about in the earlier post!

Click to see some more Lifecruiser Flickr Photos of Katajanokka Hotel and Jailbird Restaurant.

Stay tuned to read more about our sightseeing time in Tallinn and St Petersburg, which included an Idiot (or maybe more) and Russian Vodka!

©Lifecruiser Love Katajanokka Jailbird

Related Baltic cruise posts by Lifecruiser:

How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 1
How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 2
 

I’m a stubborn person (Finnish Sisu!) and won’t let anyone bully me or destroy my travel experiences for no reasons, so I just went obstinate thinking that we should create a nice ending on this cruise trip instead of being left with an unpleasant memory. Especially since it was a birthday involved…

We needed to find somewhere to stay for the night, somewhere really nice. Not so very easy when there is a sport event in town filling up the hotels with sport freaks… We stood there in the railway station searching and searching for a more luxury place to stay, when I found the perfect place for hubby on his birthday: a jail.

Yes, he should be locked in again! This time in a Finnish Jail and not a Swedish Jail. It was the perfect solution!

We had not done anything criminal at all, but we really did feel like teenagers on the run since normal grownups may not leave a booked cruise in the middle of it like we did. At least not all grownups…

Second thing we did were to explore the city until it was time to be locked in our jail, we are after all true explorers (even though we have already been to Helsinki many times). We did get some photos which you’ll get to see later too.

We did take a taxicab to the jail and while doing so I noticed that the driver was having a cold, he had a nose flow he tried to hide. (My old readers know about my bad luck with sickness during travel and understand why I instantly thought: oh no…! But I did shake it off my mind!)

It was in the night, in the jail, that I started to feel strange… No, it was not the fact that we were locked in a jail, more like the fact that I had to lock myself in at the toilet… Yep, it was now that undone breakfast buffe content from the cruise ship started to make themselves reminded.

I thought the sausages tasted strange, but ignored it because I was so tired that morning, tired of bad sleep and all the bad things happening. I should have known that you can’t ignore such things… it always has to come out!

…and it did. I actually paid 210€ to spend the night in that toilet… Though I was happy that at least I could be sick in style, this toilet were so much fresher than the one on the cruise ship! One has to love that fact! What a memory for life!

I’ll tell you all about the actual (nice) birthday celebration in the jail in another post with photos, so be sure to stay tuned to read more about our ehrm… interesting… experiences.

- Especially in the end of the week when we will tell you about our day in Tallinn and St Petersburg sightseeing, which included an Idiot (or maybe more) and Russian Vodka!

©Lifecruiser Love Cruises

Related cruise post by Lifecruiser:

How we escaped from a cruise and ended up in jail… Part 1
 

We had jumped on a bargain cruise deal Stockholm – St Petersburg and were happy to board the ship in Stockholm, though we did notice that the ship was not exactly a luxury cruise ship when arriving. You could tell from the outside already that it was a bit worn.

As usual we had done some research on the internet, but had not read anything too bad about it, so we thought that it was alright to take the chance – not expecting real luxury either. What was awaiting us though, was not really what we had in mind.

Our A-cabin should have had a rather decent standard and not the worn look it had. The small holes in the bed linen – and one of the bed covers looked like someone had both used it as a toilet and vomit on it – together with the flaking bathroom floor and moldy shower made it very unappealing to us, to put it mildly.

We would not let that lower our mood though, so we adapted to the standard, thinking that we should make this cruise memorable anyway. The general areas at the ship were not that bad, with some bars and restaurants that looked pretty decent (even though the prices were not exactly matching in our minds). We had some nice champagne and the performance of the professional dancers were excellent.

It was when we were going to bed in our cabin the first night when we noticed the biggest problem. Had we got a cabin in the machine room? We had to laugh at the thought. First. Then the noise increased even further. Our bed started to shake. And the floor too. And not of the right reasons (lol). No, not even the neighbors were having fun there.

What the heck was this? Did we have the machine room right below us? But no, we were on the 6th deck, it was not possible. Still, everything was shaking. And it was totally impossible to sleep even though neither one of us normally are easy to disturb when it comes to sleeping. We are used to people partying around us, making noises. We have no problems to sleep to normal noises.

After a whole night without any sleep, we still were determent to make this trip as memorable as possible, thinking positive that now we would be so tired that we would sleep as a rock the second night. It was then we realized the truth: we were on top of the disco loudspeaker equipment somehow! Have you ever tried to sleep in the middle of a disco…? A smoky disco too, because we could smell smoke in our cabin too.

For some (strange?) reason, we did not feel so very fresh at this cruise trip… Without hardly any sleep for two nights (and for me it was actually the 8th night without full sleep!) we were not so forgiving any more. We asked desperately for a new cabin, which we finally got, but a C-cabin way below, in a more quiet part of the ship.

Of course it was more quiet – anything would have been more quiet than our first cabin! But at this time we were so tired that we didn’t even care that we had paid extra for an A-cabin and got a C-cabin, we so desperately needed our sleep to be able to do the sightseeing during the days.

The new cabin were not in any better standard, but at least a bit less noisy – we were not sleeping on top of the loudspeakers any longer, but we still noticed that it was more noises than we are used to hear from cruise ships and didn’t sleep well anyway.

By then I was really tired of this lousy ship experience and said: Let’s escape this shitty ship tomorrow morning when arriving to Helsinki port. I don’t care that we don’t have any other tickets to get home from there, I refuse to stay here any longer. I don’t want to cruise from Helsinki to Stockholm with this ship.

We abandoned the ship the next morning right after the breakfast buffet (which by the way, was not so very fresh and would cause after effects!) without having any return tickets home…

Come back to read Part 2 where we will tell you all about our following nights and how we ended up in jail…

©Lifecruiser Love Cruises
 

This time it should be no heavy Sea thankfully….

I will Tell you all about our Cruise experience when at home again!

Lifecruiser from the iPhone

Her name is Valborg, a 36 meters two-masted wooden galleass. She is from Helsinki, Finland, built in Porvoo, Finland 1948.

Today the ships purpose is sail training and teaching ship building skills, participating in Tall Ship’s Race and other events as well as offering charter trips.

Lifecruiser ♥ Wooden Ships