The Interior DIYer
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Baltic Cruise – antihistamines in Helsinki

Helsinki was the second destination on our Baltic Cruise. We originally were hoping to take a guided cycling tour excursion through Helsinki, but we should have known as weeks before our cruise it was unavailable online. We tried, in vain, to book the cycling excursion as soon as we got on the cruise, but just as we thought, it was sold out. So we resorted to stumbling around Helsinki for a couple of hours, weaving our way through the pretteh city. 

Husband picked up a map in a cafe and said, “hey, there’s a design museum not far from here. Do you want to go to it?”. Why yes, yes I do. So we made our way towards DesignMuseo.

The Ball Chair by Eero Aarnio, the Mademoiselle Chair by Ilmari Tapiovaara [there was actually an extensive exhibit dedicated to him and his work, drawings and designs. It was really very good], the PS MASKROS pendant light by Marcus Avronen for IKEA, and two hooded velcro figures hugging but I can’t remember the name of this piece. I thought it was cute and kind of creepy. These were my sneaky phone pics of my highlights from the DesignMuseo. 

After the DesignMuseo, we wandered the streets of Helsinki, guideless, looking up and zooming my camera in too far. We wandered to Esplanadi park, had a bit of lunch at Konig restaurant, then headed back to the ship. 

Funny story – before we embarked on our cruise, I spoke to a couple of pharmacists about combating sea legs. I have sensitive inner ears and at the best of times [aka, when I’m on dry land the other 358 days of the year], I can have pretty dodgy doses of vertigo. Spending a week on a ship? I wanted to be prepared. So a pharmacist advised antihistamines actually help keep your inner ears clear and will help combat sea legs. Great! I already take antihistamines for my allergies, but I wanted to be sure to nip it in the bud so why not take some stronger anitihistamines for our holidays? WRONG. I took Claritin with me on holidays and it made me soooo dozy. Unfortunately, I only realised 3 days in to our trip what was causing me to have zero cares about everything. I was really mopey in Helsinki and our next destination, St. Petersburg. Hense the lack of decent pictures. I actually fell asleep in some cafes. But once I realised, I stopped taking Claritin and dealt with stumbling around looking like I was drunk. 

I did snap a good few pretty sunset pictures that night on the cruise sailing between Finland and Russia, so at least the end of this post has a semi-decent amount of photos. Kinda. Goodnight, Finland.

xx A

Stockholm – Helsinki – St. Petersburg – Tallinn – Riga
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Baltic Cruise – cottage creeping in Stockholm

Do you ever feel so tired after a holiday that the last thing you want to do is relive it all over again? Don’t get me wrong, I love travelling, but I have a rather short expiry date and after about 5 days away, I start to get home sick. I love getting home and back to my normal routine after a holiday and sometimes the last thing I want to do is go through all our photos out of pure exhaustion. Case in point – we’ve been home from our holidays for 3 weeks and I’m only going through our pictures now. I know. Bad blogger. I’m hanging my head in shame. But enough time has passed that I’m able to fully appreciate and relive our holiday all over again. Is this a weird thing? Just me? Okay. 

Anyways. Hubster and I went on a Baltic Cruise and it had its moments where our minds were blown. We flew from Dublin directly to Stockholm and while we spent a pretty poor amount of time in Stockholm itself [zomg. must. go. back], we did get one hell of a view of the Swedish countryside. We had been on a cruise before so we knew once we got on the ship to book a table in the formal restaurant asap. We were polite and funny, batted our eyelashes and crooked fringes, and I plucked up enough courage to ask if we could have a table with a nice view … 

The cruise ship began departing Frihamnsgatan port in Stockholm just as we were sitting down to dinner, and to say we got the best seat in the house on the ship was the understatement of our cruise. We were sitting facing a huge set of windows and THIS WAS OUR VIEW. I still can’t get my head around it. It made for most excellent and optimal cottage creeping … 

I want to go to there. So badly. I was amazed by how much this part of Sweden reminded me of where I grew up in Canada which was aptly called, Cottage Country. It stole my heart. And to give you an idea of what it was like through the medium of fancy moving pictures …

It was so romantic I could have vommed. But that would have been a waste because our dinner was intensely yummy. I ate all of the seafood in case you guys were curious. And we of course had too much wine but that’s what holidays are for, right?

You guys, it really blew our minds and we soaked up every minute of it. I know I don’t have any photos of Stockholm itself, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share these bad boys. I think you will agree they are pretty sweet [side note: I am so pleased I invested in a new lens before we left. It upped my zoomage-creeping skills].

I’ll be sharing pictures from each of our cruise destinations over the next couple of weeks so stay tuned for bigger and bolder photos of the other cities we visited. But Sweden, we will definitely be back. You are far too pretteh.

Stockholm – Helsinki – St. Petersburg – Tallinn – Riga