Cruising the Baltic's: Copenhagen and Stockholm

Our first day in port was in Copenhagen and man did it start off badly for me.  I had booked a private tour for our whole group that sounded amazing.  We exited the boat and started looking for our guide.  We looked and looked and finally a lady in charge of tours helped us out and called the number of our guide.  Turns out I had booked our tour on the wrong day.  Epic fail.  I was very frustrated, flustered, and all sorts of other words.  So, we pulled ourselves together and got started touring Copenhagen on our own.  We got on a hop-on-hop-off bus and set off.  The day probably was not as good as it would have been with our tour but we made it work.  Thankfully, no one in the family gave me too much heck about the mix up.

The first stop we made was at the Little Mermaid statue.  She is very famous but we weren't overly impressed.

From the Little Mermaid we continued on to Rosenborg Castle.  Personally, I really enjoyed this castle.  It felt very homey and lived in. It was built by Christian IV as a pleasure castle and houses the crown jewels.  We had fun touring, walking the grounds, and even a little time for playing.

When we finished touring the castle we hopped back on our bus, made a quick stop for lunch and continued on to our next stop, Christianborg Castle and Royal Stables.  

Christianborg is near the center of Copenhagen and the powerhouse of Denmark.  It is over 800 years old and is currently the home of parliament, the Prime Minister's office, and Supreme Court. One of the rooms held really extravagant, bright tapestries.

The royal stables typically house 14-16 royal horses but during our visit the horses were spending some vacation time in open pasture. It was still fun to see the stalls and the royal carriages.

For our final time, we took in the sights of central Copenhagen, looked at the statues under the water, and marveled at the amount of bikes.

Our next stop on the itinerary was Stockholm. This time I didn't have a tour planned but I had everything for the day planned out.  It was a super busy but very fun day. We started first at the Vasa Museum.  This museum houses the massive warship named the Vasa that sank within minutes of its first sailing in 1628.  The ship is in excellent condition and just beautiful and huge.  The carvings on the back were extravagant.  Other sections of the museum had artifacts, cannons, and other items found on board.

From the Vasa museum we walked over to the Skansen open air museum.   This was the first ever open air museum founded in 1891 and brings traditional Swedish culture to the visitors.  It has old farm houses, schools, churches, and other buildings from all around Sweden. The park also offered some great views of the city.

After speeding through Skansen we made our way out and hopped on the hop-on-hop-off boat and rode the boat to the city center.  From there we started the Rick Steves' walking tour and just took in the sights.  Stockholm is a beautiful city. The stops on the walking tour included the smallest statue in Sweden who offered good luck, the old town center where the Nobel Peace prize museum, and a fountain that flowed with drinking water.

We had wonderful days in Copenhagen and Stockholm.

Cruising the Baltic's: The boat and days at Sea

The first few days of our vacation were jam packed with tons of walking.  We were all pretty excited to be able to get on our cruise ship and relax for a day and a half to recover.  The cruise line we used was Royal Caribbean and our boat was Brilliance of the Seas.  Everything on the boat was very nice and was a great place to spend some down time.  When we first boarded, we checked out our rooms and then we all pilled into Mom and Dad's room to hang out.

 Jacob loved playing on the bed in our room and since it was so low to the ground he was able to get off the bed by himself.  He also loved walking the hallways and saying "hi" to everyone we passed.

 As anyone would expect from a cruise ship, there were lots of extracurricular activities to enjoy.  We spent some time at the pool but since we were so far North it wasn't warm enough to swim very frequently.  There were several rounds of family putt putt, ladder golf, and bean bag toss.  Beau enjoyed playing basketball and the kids loved the arcade.  The adults even spent a little time in the adult arcade, aka The Casino.

The ship had a kids club that Beau and Bailey frequented and even Coleton loved going to the section for his age. After the first few nights of long formal dinners, Beau and Bailey decided to eat on their own in the buffet area so that they could get to hanging out as soon as possible.  Beau would stay at the kids club pretty late and enjoyed "bringing home the gold" in dodgeball.  They even had a nursery for Jacob (for an extra fee) and Micah and I would take Jake most nights so that he could have room to play and we could have some adult time. 

While the kids were off playing, the adults had to find something to entertain themselves.  Time was spent in the Spa and at classes, lounging by the pool and playing lots of cards.  I taught my family how to play Shanghai, a Saudi ladies favorite, and we played many rounds.  

Almost every night for dinner we would all eat together (minus Beau and Bailey) at the same table with the same waiters.  Our waiters were awesome! We loved them.  They would have our stuff out and ready the moment we sat down. For me, deciding where we are going to eat dinner every night is one of my most hated parts of vacation so having it all set up and ready to go every night was amazing.  Some nights were formal nights while others were casual.  It was fun to have a mix and to have an excuse to get dressed up. 

We had pretty smooth seas and no one ever got sea-sick or just sick in general!  Can't ask for much better than that. The boat was excellent and we all had a blast.